Affiliate marketing is a great way for starting an internet business. I’ll be using it for some of the software products I use, my platform to buy WordPress themes and of course for the Internet Business Mastery Academy*. However, it may be not obvious how to start with affiliate marketing. I want to show you, how I started and how I chose my affiliate products.

1. Choosing an affiliate product

Choosing an affiliate product is not that simple as I might seem. If you decide to recommend products to your audience, you have to align that strategy with your overall goal of building a relationship based on trust with your audience.

So you want your products to be valuable and usable for your audience. They need to be high quality and their websites must look trustworthy. Be sure, that the products do actually help your customers and that they are presented nicely, so your customers are not scared to buy them.

Ideally you’re using your affiliate products yourself, have used them or at least know somebody who does. This is key, because you’ll need to have detailed information about the products. When you start with affiliate marketing, you’ll have to present those products to your audience, so you’ll want to know what you’re presenting and why your audience needs this product.

2. How to become an affiliate

If you’ve decided on the right products for starting with affiliate marketing, you’ll have to register for them.

Most vendors have an affiliate program available on their website, where you can signup with your name and email address.

Some vendors want to know the site, you’re going to promote their products on, but that’s only a few.

After you signup up (e.g. as a Clickbank affiliate) you’ll be approved. This approval may take some time, usually between 24 and 48 hours. You will be notified, when you’re successfully approved and when you can start with affiliate marketing.

Sometimes your vendors are using a service like Nanacast. Be careful with these services!

Most of them offer different subscription plans.

Most times you can stay within your free subscription plan as affiliate, but you could also subcribe to a payed plan, where you’re offered more information, different channels or something else.

Because I want to earn money as affiliate and not to pay money for being an affiliate, I never subscribed to payed plans, so I can’t give you any feedback on this.

3. Actually start with affiliate marketing

The third step to actually start with affiliate marketing is to present the product on your website. Mostly every vendor provides his affiliates with logos and banners, some even give you newsletter templates or copy-paste blogposts. Use this material, it’s great! On this way you can present the affiliate product on your website.

Ways of presenting affiliate products

You need to have a strategy when start with affiliate marketing. How will you convince your audience, to actually buy the product? You must get the attention of your visitors and make them the decision to buy as easy as possible. So you’ll have to create great content for your affiliate products. Let me show you, which methods I’ll use, to promote my affiliate products:

• Do a review of a product
• Compare similar products
• Show, how a product changed your daily life
• Create a „how-to-use“ tutorial for an affiliate product

This are only four ways to create content for your products, I’m shure that you’ll find more creative ways!

You should make sure, that you present your affiliate products on prominent spaces on your websites. Use your sidebar to display little ads and banners on your most popular pages.

I’d be happy, if you share your ideas in the comments, so that can get this post as helpful as possible.