Today I’m going to talk about the best resource for learning affiliate marketing for free. So if you want to learn affiliate marketing basics for free, this resource is for you!
Affiliate marketing is one of the most convenient and profitable business models that you can do online. Working as an affiliate takes away a lot of the risk, work and financial investment of selling your own products or becoming a vendor.
If you don’t know what affiliate marketing is or how it works, don’t worry! I will show you in a second. For now, you just need to remember it’s essentially working as a middle man between a company and the customer for a commission.
Affiliate marketing is so popular in the online business world because it can be completely automated, which allows building a system that creates passive income 24/7.
This means that instead of having a linear income where you get paid once for your work, you can get paid for almost indefinitely for the same work. You can use your time to increase these income streams to get cumulative income over time.
The best part is that some of the affiliate programs are extremely lucrative. You can earn anything from significant supplemental income to full-time income or even fortunes if you work on it long enough.
Have I got your attention already? Great! Because today you are going to learn how to use affiliate marketing to create a successful, automated online business.
I’ll Teach You How to Succeed With Affiliate Marketing
There is really nothing mystical about creating a successful affiliate marketing business. It’s only a matter of learning the necessary skills, applying them and staying consistent with your work.
The great thing is that there are a million ways to build an affiliate marketing business, some are common and some are not even invented yet.
The mistake most beginners make is that they try a little everything, overindulge in information, buy several products and end up failing because they are spread too thin.
The only, and I really mean THE ONLY way to move forward successfully is to learn a proven method, apply it and stick with it until you see results.
Don’t try to learn new things until you have mastered the previous thing. I can’t underline this enough. The longer you keep searching for information, the more confused you will get.
The internet is full of both free and paid programs for teaching you affiliate marketing. Some are legit, others are scams, some are something in between.
The problem is to know which ones to trust and to actually apply the information. You can’t really apply advanced tactics either if you don’t know the basics, so you need to stick to something simple in the beginning.
My recommendation for learning the basics for free is Wealthy Affiliate. It’s a beginner-friendly, free to start training platform for affiliate marketers. You can read my full review of Wealthy Affiliate here.
What is Affiliate Marketing
So like I said in the beginning, affiliate marketing is essentially working as the middle man between a company and a customer. You earn commissions by referring customers that buy products from the company.
The great thing about this is that you don’t need to worry about things like inventory, customer support, reclamations, logistics, storage, and office space, etc. All that is taken care of by the company whose affiliate you are.
This means that you can earn an income with minimal investment on your behalf. Of course, you won’t make as much profit as the company does, especially if you market physical products, but you do get a significant piece of the pie.
Let’s Talk Money
How much exactly? Well, that depends on the products. Physical products have much smaller affiliate commissions because they have a lot smaller profit margin and the vendor has to make a buck as well.
Digital products, on the other hand, can offer up to 60% or 70% commissions on the sale. While this might seem ridiculous at first glance, it’s actually very profitable to the product maker as well because affiliate networks can increase conversions at an incredible rate.
Since digital products don’t involve as many expenses as physical products, they have much higher profit margins. By offering the product to affiliates at a high commission, you increase your reach and create a win-win situation.
Products to market
So what can you market with affiliate marketing? Almost anything. Seriously. For example, you can market affiliate products from large online stores, including Amazon. That’s hundreds of thousands of products alone to choose from.
You can also find digital products like online courses, ebooks, and software on affiliate marketplaces like ClickBank and JVzoo. Many companies also offer direct affiliate programs so your favorite companies very likely already have affiliate programs for marketing their products.
This is great because to become a successful marketer, you should know the products you market and it also means you can turn your passion into a profession!
Love playing the guitar? You can market guitars, guitar courses, amps, etc. Love fitness? There are tons of weight lifting and fat loss programs and products you can market. I’m sure you can think a couple things right away you would love to market. Exciting isn’t it?
So, how does this all work in practice?
Marketing strategies
Affiliate marketing is essentially connecting people with products they are looking for or are interested in. This can be done in several ways. Free and paid.
Virtually always the affiliate sale is done through an affiliate link. This is how the vendor knows who referred the customer. To get people to click your affiliate link and make purchases, you need traffic.
You can work as an affiliate marketer for free or almost free through content creation. If you have a popular blog, website, YouTube channels or significant social media following, you are already set. You can market relevant products to your followers.
The other way to go is by paid ads. You can use the well-targeted advertising platform on Facebook or YouTube, for example, to drive traffic to your sales page.
But the real magic is to build systems that are completely automated. Let’s look at how they work!
Automated marketing
The simplest form of the automated process is search engine optimized content (Blog post, YouTube video) with affiliate links. You target a certain keyword or keywords and include affiliate links to the products in your content.
When someone looks for the keyword in Google, for example, your content comes up in the search results. If you’ve done several things correctly, you might be on the first results.
Once you are there, it’s relatively easy to stay there. People will constantly flow to your content through search engines, some will click on your affiliate links, some will buy something and you will earn commissions on automation.
A bit more advanced strategy is to use an e-mail autoresponder. You get people to join your e-mail list by offering them something valuable. You can then use the autoresponder to automate your follow up email that you can use to recommend products.
You can combine these two tactics to form an extremely powerful, fully automated money-making machine that earns you an income even when you sleep.
Get Started Today!
So if you are interested in affiliate marketing, I really don’t think there’s a better free resource than Wealthy Affiliate. I’m not going to lie to you. If you want to build a successful online business, it takes serious effort and work, just like a regular business.
But the great thing about online business is that it’s a lot less financial risk than most (if not all) regular businesses to start and the rewards can be much greater.
The important thing to know is that it takes time to both learn and to grow your business. The income will not be gradual. It will be exponential.
This means that you will earn nothing at first, then you start gradually earn a bit and soon the income will grow at an increasing rate.
This is why I recommend you get started today! The sooner you start, the sooner you will see results. Just don’t expect overnight results, work hard and trust the system. You will succeed!
So if you are truly interested in affiliate marketing, download my free 7-day course to making money online and join Wealthy Affiliate today. Not tomorrow. Today! It’s time to take action.
Conclusion
I hope you found learn the affiliate marketing basics from the piece and checked out the free training at Wealthy Affiliate. I think their free training is top-notch for understanding the whole affiliate marketing process.
Affiliate marketing isn’t really that difficult once you learn the process. Learning is just like any other skill. First, you need the information, then you need to apply and practice it until you master it.
There are a lot of nuances and technical details to this but it’s not really that complicated. You don’t need technical skills like programming or graphic design skills.
The tools that many marketers use are very easy to use these days so all you need to do is to apply the knowledge and create your own content.
If you found this piece useful, please subscribe to my newsletter for more thorough affiliate marketing training and bookmark my site. Social shares are much appreciated as well!
See you next time.