What Is Affiliate Marketing and How to Get Started

Affiliate marketing is a marketing model in which third-party publishers promote a merchant’s goods or services and receive a percentage of the sales or web traffic generated as a result. It is typically considered a key part of modern digital marketing. 

Affiliate marketing appeals to businesses because it enables them to meet their marketing goals at a low cost. It benefits affiliates by allowing them to earn income simply by promoting products they use and enjoy themselves. Generating affiliate income requires developing a platform and building an online audience. In addition, it's essential to stay current with affiliate marketing industry trends. New technologies like generative AI, new social platforms like TikTok, and shifts in consumer behavior over time will change how you interact with your audience and how they react to you. 

Keep reading to explore this career path, how affiliate marketing works, and how to begin your affiliate marketing journey. If you're ready to start building skills in this field, consider enrolling in the Meta Social Media Marketing Professional Certificate.

What is affiliate marketing?

Affiliate marketing is a revenue-sharing marketing method in which a third-party affiliate, such as a blogger, YouTuber, or influencer, advertises a business’s goods or services to help it meet sales or marketing goals. In return for generating sales, the affiliate earns commissions or rewards. A business might work with an affiliate to achieve the following:

• Increase sales

• Attract more web traffic

• Improve brand awareness

• Connect with the affiliate's audience

For example, a shoe company could partner with a fitness blogger to reach the blogger's audience of fitness-minded readers. Through the blogger's efforts, the shoe company could experience more site visitors and boost sales. Some of the new customers could go on to become long-term subscribers.

Amazon affiliate marketing program

Amazon Associates, Amazon’s affiliate marketing program and one of the largest such programs in the world, boasts tens of thousands of affiliates earning up to 10 percent commission on qualifying referrals [1].

What makes affiliate marketing attractive is that businesses can partner with affiliates at a low cost. Typically, businesses offer their affiliate marketing partners such rewards or compensation as:

• Commissions (percentage of the sales)

• Free products and samples

• Exclusive rewards

• Networking opportunities

• Access to training or education

While revenue-sharing is not a new marketing concept, modern affiliate marketing usually refers to online digital marketing in which affiliates link to a business's product or service online and receive a percentage of sales or web traffic. 

How does affiliate marketing work?

Affiliate marketing involves a relationship between four main actors: the affiliate, the merchant, the affiliate network, and the customer. Each plays a unique part in the marketing process:

• The affiliate (or “publisher”): This is an individual or entity that promotes the merchant’s product or service.

• The merchant: This is an individual or entity selling the product or service that the affiliate promotes. 

• The affiliate network: A network serves as an intermediary between an affiliate and a merchant’s affiliate program. While affiliates and merchants can connect without an affiliate network, it is a common channel for such relationships. 

• The customer: A customer is anyone who purchases a product through an affiliate. Merchants partner with affiliates to connect with the affiliate’s audience and convert them into customers.

As an affiliate, you can connect with merchants through affiliate marketing programs. After making some initial connections through a program, you may be able to find other appropriate merchants and gradually build a wide network of brand partners in a particular industry. For example, if you are an affiliate who reviews cell phones, an affiliate marketing program might suggest a range of tech products for you to review. You can then build a network within this industry and focus on reaching new customers who are interested in tech products.

Occasionally, an affiliate and merchant connect organically through direct outreach. For instance, a merchant who manufactures cake pans might connect with an affiliate who blogs about baking in order to get their product in front of the affiliate’s audience of baking enthusiasts. 

You can learn more about creating and managing a content calendar to engage your audience with The Strategy of Content Marketing from UC Davis.

Affiliate marketing examples

You’ve likely seen examples of affiliate marketing before, even if you didn’t realize it. This is because the most effective affiliate marketing tends to be paired with quality content that readers enjoy and find useful. Although it can be tempting to promote various products to make sales and drive traffic for merchants, affiliates who have developed trust with their audience by highlighting quality products they believe in are more likely to inspire audience members to make a purchase. In other words: quality and relevance sell. 

Some common examples of affiliate marketing include: 

• Websites covering general topics that occasionally include affiliate links in blog posts or articles, such as in this list of Kitchen Essentials compiled by the cooking-focused website Kitchn.com 

• YouTube videos that include affiliate links in the description, such as the one attached to Android Affiliate’s The Best New Tech of CES 2024 video

• Dedicated review websites that cover products that appeal to a targeted readership, such as Gear Patrol and Wirecutter

Affiliate marketing salary 

Affiliate revenue is highly variable and can often fluctuate from year to year because affiliate marketers earn pay based on the results of their work rather than a standard hourly or annual salary. Furthermore, it can take time for an affiliate marketer to build an online audience and make a profit. Despite the differences in pay structure, several career sites offer insight into how much the average affiliate marketer can earn. As of October 2024, these sites report the average affiliate marketing salary as:  

• ZipRecruiter: $82,015 [2]

• Payscale: $56,141 [3]

• Glassdoor: $53,447 [4]

How do affiliate marketers earn money?

Unlike some sales roles, affiliate marketers can earn money even if the person they refer doesn’t purchase a product. Although some affiliate marketing programs pay per lead, you will also find programs that offer to pay per click or per lead. 

• Pay-per-click: With pay-per-click affiliate marketing, you can earn a commission every time a user clicks a link that routes them to your affiliate partner’s website. 

• Pay-per-lead: Pay-per-lead affiliate marketing allows you to earn a commission every time a user you directed to your affiliate partner completes a lead capture action, such as filling out a contact form or subscribing to a newsletter.

• Pay-per-sale: Pay-per-sale is similar to more traditional sales commission structures where you earn a percentage or set amount every time a user makes a purchase for your affiliate partner. 

Is affiliate marketing right for you? 4 signs

Becoming an affiliate marketer and even building a thriving affiliate marketing business could be a rewarding career path for you. Four signs that affiliate marketing may be right for you as you consider taking the first steps are:

1. You want to create an income stream based on your interests.

2. You want to build an online audience and create unique content that engages them.

3. You want to create partnerships with brands you love and promote their products to your audience.

4. You are ready to take on an entrepreneurial mindset to grow your affiliate marketing business.

Read more: A Guide to Startups

How to become an affiliate marketer

Becoming an affiliate marketer involves choosing the niche you'd like to work in and selecting a related digital channel to market your affiliate products or services. You might also join an affiliate marketing network to build relationships and increase your reach. Furthermore, you'll continue to expand your network through various digital channels and strategies, stay up to date with current trends, and continuously build your skills.

Ready to begin your journey? Follow the steps below to streamline the process.

1. Pick your niche.

Affiliate marketers are valuable to merchants because they can reach specific audiences composed of potential customers. The better you define your niche market, the easier it can be to build an affiliate platform and create original content that meets your audience's needs.

Affiliate marketing in action

OutdoorGearLab reviews outdoor equipment used for sports, camping, hiking, climbing, and travel. The site offers its readers value by testing, reviewing, and promoting equipment that outdoor enthusiasts like them would find useful. As a result of serving this niche audience,  OutdoorGearLab has become one of the most successful outdoor product review sites.  

Ideally, the niche you build your affiliate marketing efforts around should relate to your interests and those of a sizable, underserved audience. As you brainstorm ideas, conduct research with Google Trends to discover what people are searching the internet for that might correlate to your niche topic. 

In this exploratory phase, ask yourself the following questions: 

• What is a topic, hobby, or field that is of particular interest to me that’s not currently being served? 

• What physical products or digital products do I use that I would enjoy promoting to others?

• How can I add a new angle or perspective to a topic with a lot of competition? 

• What kind of content would I like to make that would allow me to serve this niche and use my skill set? 

2. Pick a marketing channel that matches your niche.

Once you decide on the topic, audience, and products your affiliate marketing brand will cover, you will want to decide on a marketing channel. While creating a dedicated review website is a popular approach, you can also do affiliate marketing on social media platforms like Instagram. You may find that one channel is more appropriate for your affiliate marketing goals than others or that a multi-channel or omnichannel marketing approach is best.

Some common approaches and channels include: 

• A dedicated product review website specifically oriented around offering readers insights into products 

• A website or blog covering a specific topic that includes links to relevant affiliate products in articles or posts about that topic     

• Social media platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or YouTube, where you post content related to the products and brands you promote.

Read more: How to Become an Influencer in 11 Steps: Your 2024 Guide

To explore different digital marketing channels, enroll in Unilever's Customer Understanding and Digital Marketing Channel Course. This program covers customer segmentation, performance metrics for different channels, business models, and more.

3. Join an affiliate marketing network.

Affiliate networks connect affiliates and merchants. While it’s not always necessary to join an affiliate network, you will likely find that doing so will make it easier to build relationships with merchants and ultimately increase your potential to earn affiliate commissions. 

The type of affiliate network or marketing program you join will depend on the type of products your audience is interested in. In fact, different types of affiliate marketing programs offer a range of products and services from industry to industry. To optimize your chances of success, research networks and programs that best fit your target product and audience.

Some examples of popular affiliate networks and programs include: 

• Awin

• ClickBank

• Amazon Associates

• Rakuten

• Etsy Affiliates

• eBay Partner Network 

• Coursera Affiliate Program 

4. Expand your network. 

Creating a successful affiliate marketing platform takes time and dedication. To increase your overall audience size, though, it is helpful to use a mix of digital marketing approaches, including: 

• Content marketing 

• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

• Social media marketing

• Email lists 

For instance, you might find that a combination of timely email blasts and SEO content will improve your marketing efforts more than either one on its own. 

5. Be consistent and master your skills.

In addition to taking time and dedication, affiliate marketing also employs a wide range of skills, including:

• Conducting market research to understand your audience

• Analyzing the competitive landscape to know where you stand among other affiliate marketers in your niche

• Improving writing skills to convey ideas and information through a blog, social media caption, or email blast

• Improving your presentation skills to convey ideas and information through a slide deck, lecture, or live stream

• Improving videography skills to create videos that delight, entertain, and educate your audience

• Learning graphic design to generate attractive graphics related to the products you promote and the message you convey

• Learning data analysis and marketing analytics to understand how your affiliate marketing campaigns perform

• Using software, like customer relationship management (CRM) tools, to keep track of your marketing, sales, and customer experience data

The exact mix of skills you employ in your marketing pursuit will likely depend on the platform you build, the audience you connect with, and the approach you decide to take. For example, if you run a YouTube channel that reviews collectible toys, you will likely need a combination of video production, presentation, and social media marketing skills. However, if you are instead running a website that features only written reviews of collectible toys, then you will likely need to focus on expanding your content marketing skills. 

Over time, you might start using all of these skills and more as you work to drive traffic, produce eye-catching content, and increase affiliate sales. 

Watch this video for ideas on how you can design a marketing funnel that helps you reach your audience.

Affiliate marketing tips

As you begin setting up your affiliate marketing business, follow these tips to get the most out of your efforts.

Study affiliate marketing strategies.

Staying abreast of the latest affiliate marketing strategies can enable you to make the most of your time and resources and ultimately earn more affiliate income. Strategies might include offering a webinar on a particular topic and promoting affiliate products during the webinar or building a list of email subscribers.

Consider the rewards you can earn.

When you know what rewards are available to you through different affiliate programs, you can choose which brands can help you reach your affiliate income goals. Be sure to ask potential partners about the commission rate they offer, as well as other rewards for selling products, and factor these details into your overall affiliate strategy.

Build an affiliate dashboard.

An affiliate dashboard is a web-based interface that an affiliate partner or program provides so that you can see how your campaigns perform, generate referral links, monitor your earnings and payouts, and more. When setting up affiliate marketing partnerships with brands, be sure to ask about the dashboard they provide and the information you can track.

Cultivate strong relationships.

Given that affiliate marketing is all about relationships, you'll want to take action to strengthen the relationships you have with your audience and the brands you promote. You can do this by staying up-to-date on the brands' latest developments, products, and initiatives so that they can communicate accurate information to your audience.

Begin your affiliate marketing journey with Coursera

Affiliate marketing has the possibility to provide a passive income stream when you create compelling content and put in the time and effort to grow your audience. Start building your marketing skill set with the Meta Social Media Marketing Professional Certificate, the Google Digital Marketing and E-commerce Professional Certificate, or the Unilever Digital Marketing Analyst Professional Certificate.

In these programs, you'll practice skills like interacting with customers online, creating ad campaigns, using analytics tools, and more. After earning a credential, you might have an easier time finding partnerships with brands you love.