Affiliate Marketing Tutorial for Beginners // Step by Step Affiliate Marketing Guide
– So you wanna make passive income online? Well, here's the thing,
there's no such thing as making money right
in your sleep overnight. The good news is that slowly but surely with affiliate marketing,
if you work hard enough, you can eventually make it happen. So today I'm gonna give
you my five step process for getting started with
affiliate marketing, and making money online. And the best part is you don't have to buy a $2,000 course
to learn how to do this. Let's jump into the video. Everybody this is Roberto Blake helping you create something awesome, welcome back to the channel. Today we have another
make money online video, today we're gonna be talking
about affiliate marketing, and I'm gonna walk you through a simple step-by-step process with five specific
steps to get you started with affiliate marketing. Now for the new people here
my name is Roberto Blake. I'm a creative entrepreneur,
public speaker, and the founder of Awesome Creator Academy and I have actually made
a substantial income from affiliate marketing.
I've talked about it here
very openly on the channel, I've transparently shown
you some of my numbers, and one of my best affiliate programs is actually generated me almost
a quarter million dollars over the last four years. And that affiliate
relationship is with TubeBuddy, and so I have been very open about how affiliate marketing
works, at least for me and showing you real
world examples of this and something that you can
do if you're willing to put in the work upfront. I'm gonna walk you through
these five step processes, it's not gonna take very
long to start to grasp this, but I do want to just answer
some of your skepticism.
The thing is that when
you work at a company, you're probably earning that company a lot of money in revenue, probably much more than what
you're getting paid in salary. What would it look like if
you were getting a 10% cut of all the value that you've
generated for the company over the years. That would look very interesting for you in terms of your income, right? What if there were scenarios
where you were getting 30% or even 50% of the value that you created since the transaction, since the sale would not have
happened without you at all.
That would be very different
from the experience that you're having right now. So when we talk about affiliate marketing, we're really talking
about commission sales, and we're talking about revenue
sharing or profit sharing. That's the relationship
we're talking about. We're not talking about
sketchy, multilevel marketing. We're not talking about anything
like that, that's a scam. We're talking about the simple fact that sometimes we can
actually be compensated for the value that we
create proportionately. And the reason that I think this will resonate for people more, is when you understand that regardless of what a
transaction is taking place, if you facilitated it, then you should probably
share in the profits. So let's get into step number one. Step number one for affiliate marketing is gonna have to do with traffic, and it's really the thing
that I know a lot of people have the biggest criticism
of, "Roberto I can't do this, "I don't have a big YouTube channel." I didn't have when I started either.
"Roberto, I'm not well known,
I don't have an audience." You have to start somewhere. You either have to have a
website that is a niche site that is targeting search engine traffic, a blog that caters to a
very specific community. A podcast that people listen to and is distributed across
all the different podcasts, apps that people enjoy,
or a YouTube channel. This is going be the
home for your content, and a place to put your affiliate links, and to also connect them with an audience. So the thing is you do need to figure out what platform you're
gonna use to get traffic, so that's the first part.
Now in terms of building
that up from scratch, the good news is that there's
over a thousand videos on this channel, and
one of our big focuses is helping you to create
content for different things. So whether you wanna
start a blog or a website, there is content here on
the channel to help you. If you wanna grow and build
an audience on YouTube, we have content around that, and we also have some
getting started tutorials around creating a podcast just like I did.
So step number one, is
creating that traffic source. Step number two is gonna be signing up for an affiliate program. The most common ones are amazon.com, Commission Junction, and ShareASale. These are larger affiliate
networks that have access to a lot of different
products and services. The most common one that
people will be familiar with is going to be Amazon. And there are a lot of other ones they're very niche specific
that are out there. You also have individual websites that offer affiliate programs. My specialty has always been software. Now I do a lot of tutorial content, and so there are people who ultimately wanna use the
same software that I'm using to do my work, produce my
results, for the things I use to save me time in terms of productivity.
So when I create tutorials around that I end up getting affiliate
commissions usually directly from those companies. Amazon is the way that I
think most people should go, and it's pretty easy to sign up. Now you do sometimes have to
be able to give them a website or have a certain number
of social media followers, I believe at least 500 right
now is what you would need for the Amazon influencer program, you need that in some platform. It makes sense since that's probably going to be a prerequisite
to actually making money and getting people to
click in the first place. Other affiliate programs may not have any requirements at all. I've actually made a video on
10 of the best highest paying affiliate programs that exist. It's a long video, but I get
into the details you need to know about each of these
and how much they pay, so I'm gonna link that
in the info card up here, and in the description down below, if you wanna watch that video. My suggestion though, is that you don't just chase
the thing that pays the most.
I think you should make your content, and your audience revolve around the thing that you are
confident to recommend and that you can, you know, truthfully suggest that
people use and pay for. Ideally you use yourself
on a regular basis. Step number three is gonna
be once you are signed up to an affiliate program,
you need to start creating and generating your affiliate links. I'm gonna recommend that
you use Google Sheets, or Microsoft Excel to also keep track of these in a spreadsheet.
This is gonna make it really
easy and convenient for you to always get access to this links, and to share it with people if you want. If you're out and somebody asks you to refer or recommend something, you might even be able to
pull it up in your phone, grab this link and to refer them. With regard to this by the way, if you happen to use an iPhone, and you are using the
Amazon affiliate program, there's a great app called Affiliator, and you can use that to generate
links on the fly, you know, right here from your phone, and then you can copy and
paste them and send them to whoever's asking for them.
I have a lot of people who
might direct message me, and we'll go back and forth, and they might be trying
to figure out like what camera they want so on and so forth, so I'm just able to go
into the app, grab a link and send it to them. If I didn't have Affiliator
or let's say I need a link from one of my other affiliate programs, then I would just go
into my Excel document or my Google sheets document in my phone, grab it out of the cloud, and then I know exactly
what link I'm sending them. Another thing that you can do is if you have your own website, then you can also set-up
short links that refer people to your affiliate programs
whatever they might be. Primary example, for a lot
of my background music, I use epidemic sound, and I have a link for a
30 day free trial to that. So when I want people to
go to that affiliate link, I tell them go to
robertablake.com/epidemicsound and use my affiliate link
and get a 30 day free trial.
When they do that, it directly
takes them to this very long, very complicated link that I
would never be able to remember that they would never be able to remember, and that I might type in
wrong using, you know, my browser or whatever. So it's actually making it very simple to have these short links. This is something you can do if you have a WordPress
blog, if you don't have one, then I'm gonna recommend
you check out Bluehost with my affiliate link down below, or go to robertoblake.com/bluehosts. And you see what I did right there. That is a example of how
affiliate marketing works in the real world. When you have a solution that
solves someone's problem, you can send them to this link, and as long as you make it
convenient and easy for them, people are happy to use it.
And if they buy, then you gain value, or if they sign up for the
free trial, you gain value. This is also something people
struggle with with Amazon. A lot of you say, "Roberto,
I have not been able "to stay in the Amazon affiliate program "because I didn't make the
required sales in 90 days." Use the free trials that Amazon offers for things like Amazon
Prime, Amazon Music, or even audible. With audible, if you recommend
the audible to people, they get to keep two
free audio books forever, even if they don't keep the subscription and you actually get
$5 commissions on that, if they decide to buy audible
off of your recommendation, you get $10 commission. So the thing is it's a
zero risk to your audience to do free trials, and there still might be
paying commission bounties in exchange for that. So just look at when you sign up, and you do create your affiliate links, look at some of the rules, look at some of the terms of service, and look at the opportunities.
And then also consider
something like a blog to generate short links,
to just refer people so that it's easy and convenient to give them your affiliate. I told you, this was
gonna be a step-by-step that you probably didn't believe me when you clicked on this
video, but that's okay. I do understand the skepticism
around these videos, I'm okay with it, but I'm
just gonna tell you how it actually is and what you need to do. So that fourth thing that
you do need to go ahead and set-up and put in place is you need to actually start making
individual pieces of content that give you a natural opportunity to offer your affiliate link.
For me, in the case of
doing a lot of things that have to do with
software, I do tutorials. Sometimes when it has to
do with hardware though, I'll do lists, like top five
list, top 10 list, budget list. This worked really good for me back in the day with laptops on Amazon. And I think back then
laptops regardless of price had a top out commission,
regardless of their price at about 25 or $30, I can't remember. And this suit well for me because I had these, you know, extensive laptop buyer's guides and I would list multiple
options for laptops, so people were clicking on those links. I do have some videos here
on the channel specifically about tips for Amazon affiliate marketing, if you're interested, but I'm
just using this as an example. So by making buyer's guides
for hardware recommendations for camera lenses, laptops, camera bodies, lighting gear, microphones,
things like that.
I was able to make substantial
commissions from Amazon when I was focused on tech
content earlier in my career, making as much as, you
know, $1,500 a month in Amazon commissions, which
is actually really isn't bad, it might be comparable to what
some people are making now with their full time job, just depending on what your job is. But with software as a service, there are often recurring commissions like the ones I received from TubeBuddy. Those of you who are unfamiliar, TubeBuddy is a tool that a lot of YouTube content creators use to just help us with productivity and SEO. By recommending this
over the last four years, and actually being a user
and being a power user who uses the advanced features, you know, I've been able to refer
thousands of people to them, and as a result of that
I get 30% commissions when I started, or was it 20%? Was something like 20
or 30% when I started. They've changed the program
now, and you start at 30%, then you move to 40%. And then if you become a
super affiliate like me 50%.
So in the case of TubeBuddy, I've had a long relationship with them. I've been doing a lot of content that would actually encourage
people to get this plug-in for their YouTube channel, and as a result over the last four years, I've earned about a quarter
million dollars in commissions, and that's my cut of the revenue. And because this is software as a service, it's a subscription, so that means that the money
is recurring in nature. So when you're creating your content, something to keep in mind is think about what you're promoting? Think about how to structure the content to where it's a natural fit
for you, and for the audience. I don't think you should
make content just based on how much money you stand to
make from doing those videos, but I think your realistically should make it a consideration.
I think it should play some role in there 'cause I'm not naive enough
to think that, you know, you're not going to be thinking about that when you make content. I don't think it should be
the number one priority, but I do think it's
fine if it's a priority, because I understand that
you have bills to pay. And since I know that's exactly how it is, and I don't think there's
anything wrong with that, I'm not gonna sit here
and virtue signal to you and pretend that money
doesn't matter to you, when you are putting affiliate
links in your content, just make sure that you're
properly disclosing everything that you're up front with your audience, make sure in your description that you have the appropriate
Amazon disclaimer, 'cause they really need that.
And just make sure you're
compliant with the FTC In the future I may do a very brief video on affiliate disclosures, I just think that's
something that's very easy for you to Google search, and so I'm not a hundred percent sure if it matters doing video, but I'll probably just do it for reference because some people would
rather watch than read, that's just how it is. The fifth and final step is
once you have an inventory, a library of content that has
your affiliate links in it, you might gonna go ahead
and just start promoting that content more often. It's like I said, you need traffic for people to eventually
buy using those links. So if you're gonna create the content, you need to promote the content. So let's go over those five steps really quickly before
we close out the video.
And then I'm gonna give
you a last and final tip. Step number one is to
have a traffic source, somewhere where you're making content, whether that's YouTube,
a blog or a podcast, or a niche website. Number two, sign up for an
affiliate program of your choice. Number three, in your
affiliate program of choice, go ahead and create the affiliate links that you're gonna post to your content. I also believe in having a
spreadsheet that lists these out. Number four, make content that gives you a natural opportunity to
share these affiliate links. Go ahead and put that
where it's appropriate, and makes sure that you're
offering your audience something that you can truly recommend honestly. And step number five, promote your content so that it gets eyeballs on it. Those are your five main
steps to getting started with affiliate marketing. I have more detailed
information here on the channel whenever you need it. My final tip, when it comes
to affiliate marketing is to do your research
and do your homework. Make sure that when you
are recommending something that you understand enough about it to where you can follow
up with your audience and answer their questions.
One of the reasons that people trust me and my affiliate links is they know when I recommend software, it's something I'm using in my
business probably every day. When I recommend hardware, when I recommend camera
gear, microphones, lighting, anything that use here
on the YouTube channel, people are able to see on a
regular basis in my content, in my Instagram, post on Twitter, that I'm always using and experimenting with these pieces of
gear, changing things up and that I know my gear
and my hardware intimately, and I can give them advice on what to buy, and what fits their
needs and their budget. So the more research you do, the more you understand something
that you're recommending, the more people are gonna
trust that relationship and come to you as an authority, whether through your content
or through you directly.
So just make sure you're
really educated about anything that you're gonna recommend people buy, because they will probably come
back to you with questions, and I think that the
better you serve them, the more likely it is that
they come back to you again in the future and use your affiliate link before anybody else's. Question of the day,
what do you wanna know about affiliate marketing
and passive income? And if you don't have a
question, you can't think of one. Tell me something, what do you think about
affiliate marketing as a whole? Do you think that it's a way that someone can make a full time living, or do you think that's just
only good for a side hustle? Let me know in the comment section. Like this video if you like
it, don't forget to subscribe, check out there other awesome
content on the channel as always guys, thanks
so very much for watching and don't forget, go out there and create
something awesome, take care.
(soft music).
