Seen as the future of online marketing, affiliate marketing is one of the top ways of making money online. The industry is worth $3 billion dollars and produces 6-7 figure income makers frequently. Great industry to be in if you really want to make money fast through your internet sojourns.

Affiliate marketing is a system of marketing based on performance. In it, the marketers use their internet marketing skills to promote products and services of brands or retailers and get a commission on every conversion. It’s important to understand that internet marketing skills are necessary to become a great affiliate marketer. Hence, doing an online digital marketing course may be helpful for anyone looking to start out with affiliate marketing.

However, doing any course is not compulsory and for anyone who has natural marketing skills, the industry can turn money quickly. There are certain niches in affiliate marketing that make the biggest money:

• Health and Fitness: Never goes out of fashion and is among the top research themes on the internet. Hence, a great market for affiliate marketing.
• Dating and Relationships: Humans will always need a companion and this is one niche where advice never dries out. Another great niche to start the affiliate marketing business.
• Business/Making Money: Everyone, everywhere in the world wants to make money and/or have a successful business. Like the above two niches, this one is also an evergreen niche for affiliate marketing.

So, what is the step-by-step process to become an affiliate marketer and start earning money? Let’s go through some steps below:

1. Create a Website: This is a necessary step. One can create a website or a blog in one’s chosen name through WordPress. WordPress is used across the board since it has an easy to setup interface. It is blogging and SEO friendly and provides a number of plugins for marketing and customization.
2. Choose a Niche: The website has to belong to a niche so that the consumers are not confused. They should come here and find what they are looking for. This is one of the ways to retain customers and create repeat purchases.
3. Create great content: As an affiliate marketer, you aren’t just hard-selling another person’s product. It is important to make the product relevant and seem authentic to the customers. Hence, create content that goes with the product – honest reviews, recommendations, an article or video on a related subject etc.
4. Spread the Word: This is the most important step as this is how you get traffic on your website. For this, you have to do search engine optimization to increase the rankings of your landing page. You can also go for paid ads, email marketing, social media marketing, as well as content marketing.

After this process is done one has to think of how to monetize or start making money through affiliate marketing. Below are a few steps to do that:

1. Join an Affiliate Marketing Program: Amazon and other e-commerce websites have affiliate marketing programs. By joining these programs, one can make money every time the e-commerce website gets a conversion through them.
2. Join an Affiliate Network: This is even better. By joining a network, one can get access to different e-commerce companies in one place. Moreover, one can be part of all existing affiliate programs on the network as well as get access to sell different products, services, e-books, etc. Some of the networks one can join are:
   1. Awin: There is a joining fee of $5 which can be earned back as commission. They have several partners like Airbnb, booking.com etc.
   2. CJ by Conversant: One of the older affiliate networks, this one has a great set of partnerships. They are also hosts for thousands of companies like Bluehost, Hostgator etc.
   3. Amazon: Despite lower commissions, Amazon is a trusted affiliate partner. Marketers get paid for promoting their products irrespective of what the consumer buys. There are commissions for conversions as well.
   4. Clickbank: Those looking to promote digital products will find this as a great resource. It’s as big as CJ in this industry.
   5. Maxbounty: One can make money here through survey affiliates. It is a CPA affiliate network.
   6. ShareASale: They also have several partner companies across niches such as fashion books, web hosting etc.
3. Use a Software: Installing the following software will help in getting more traffic and conversions for ads:
   1. Clickfunnels
   2. GetResponse
   3. Aweber
   4. Convertkit
   5. Sumo
   6. Studiopress
   7. Clickmeter
   8. Adskills
   9. Namecheap
   10. Hostgator
   11. Bluehost
   12. SemRush

The above are different software which helps in funnelling traffic to your website and get commissions from this software for getting conversions through your website. Some of these pay up to 40% commission on each product sold. Hence making affiliate marketing a very lucrative industry to be in.

More Information:

Ultimate Guide to Career in Marketing

A Step-by-Step Guide to Digital Marketing

7 Lucrative Careers in Marketing and Branding

Get The Edge With An Online Digital Marketing Course

Brand Managers & Why they are Important for Start-Ups

10 Best Digital Marketing Courses to Advance Your Career