How to make legit money with affiliate marketing

1. Find your niche
2. Start a blog or YouTube channel
3. Sign up for affiliate programs
4. Be careful with Amazon
5. Learn how affiliate programs work
6. Add affiliate links to content
7. Be a “how to start a blog” YouTuber
8. Use coupon codes
9. Get traffic before sales
10. Master SEO
11. Create the perfect pitch
12. Get involved in Facebook Groups
13. Bookmark affiliate statistics in your browser
14. Set up email alerts when a sale is made
15. Build your community
16. Avoid Google penalties
17. Monitor conversion rates
18. Use an affiliate disclaimer
19. Mistakes I Made
20. Donate to charity
21. Share your story
22. Promote Black Friday deals

How Does Affiliate Marketing Work?
You partner with a company selling products/services you would like to recommend to your audience. If they buy something using your affiliate link, you get a commission from the sale. There are other types of affiliate programs, but this is the most common and is also what I do.

1. Find Your Niche

My career journey went like this: online marketing > web design > WordPress web design > WordPress SEO > WordPress speed optimization. Now I’m focusing on WordPress hosting.

While I was doing WordPress speed optimization I noticed lots of people needed it, but very few people supplied it (there were a lack of services and tutorials when I researched Google). I also knew hosting was the #1 factor of website speed and hosting companies paid up to $200/sale. Hosting is a competitive space but the commissions and lack of supply enticed me. 

I expanded my SEO blog and started writing about hosting, cache plugins, and other relevant topics… while recommending Rocket.net in many guides. I added proof like Facebook threads and performance benchmarks. Each tutorial was super detailed (like this one) and tons of people found them helpful – many get 100+ visitors/day since great content = higher rankings.

Once I found my niche (WordPress speed optimization), a solid hosting company with a high commission affiliate program (Rocket.net) and created tutorials around topics people in my niche would find helpful (and might want to change their host), that’s what got me to $150k.

2. Start A Blog Or YouTube Channel

A blog and YouTube channel are completely different, not just because one is writing and one is shooting videos. But each of them are different in terms of SEO, conversions, time, and the cost.

Blogging vs. YouTube Videos

• Competition – the SEO competition in YouTube is often less than Google.
• Ownership – you own your blog, you don’t own YouTube (or their policies).
• SEO Traffic – it takes longer to get SEO traffic to a blog than YouTube.
• Cost – YouTube is free, blogs require domain, hosting, development costs, etc.
• Content Updates – it’s easier to update a blog post than to remake a video.
• Coupon Codes – YouTube is great if your affiliates let you use coupon codes.
• Time – it takes longer to set up a blog, but starter templates have made this easier.
• Expectations – in your niche, do people prefer watching videos or reading articles?

Start A WordPress Blog

• Domain – GoDaddy or Namecheap.
• Hosting – Rocket.net, Cloudways, or NameHero for the win.
• WordPress – what I recommend building your website/blog on.
• Themes – GeneratePress and Blocksy are solid choices. They use the Block Editor (Gutenberg) which is much more lightweight than Elementor, Divi, and other page builders, yet still easy when you use GenerateBlocks. I built my site in the GeneratePress “Search” theme and am very pleased. Kadence theme is good too but also very expensive.
• Have A Developer On Hand – I’ve been working with the same overseas freelancer since 2011 who has saved me a lot of time when I can’t do things. Here’s his freelancer profile if you need help setting up your website. His name is Pronaya and he’s from Bangladesh.

3. Sign Up For Affiliate Programs

Hosting, Amazon, and affiliate programs related to “making websites” are very popular.

Websites – if you’re in the “how to make a website/blog” industry, I’ve accumulated a list of affiliate programs for WordPress, hosting, themes, plugins, SEO, email, CDNs, and services. Remember that to get approved, some companies require you to be somewhat established.

Affiliate Marketplaces – these have hundreds of merchants to choose from. It’s nice to login to 1 place and check the performance of multiple affiliates without going to each individual portal on their site. Many programs aren’t part of a marketplace though. I use ShareASale and Impact.

Do the math – to make $300 in a day, I would need to refer about 2 people to hosting, 10 people to themes, or 30 people to plugins. Before deciding on a program, ask yourself a few questions. I personally have roughly 3,000 readers/day and make about 2-3 sales per day at $150 per sale.

• What commission will you get?
• How many sales will you need per day?
• How much traffic will you need to get those sales (roughly)?

4. Be Careful With Amazon

Amazon’s commissions are based on categories and you’re only making 0-5% unless you’re referring people to Amazon games, Luxury Beauty, or Amazon Explore. Otherwise you will need a lot of sales to actually make a living and will likely need to refer people to big ticket items (video equipment on YouTube is a big one especially if you’re into cameras, lenses, lights, etc).

But be careful with Amazon’s affiliate program.

They have a long history of reducing commissions and writing content that competes with affiliates (and most people go directly to Amazon). I don’t recommend being an affiliate for any monopoly. You could very well end up getting trampled on, like most Amazon affiliates have. However, if you get lots of views, many affiliates are making “how to do something” YouTube videos and listing their equipment in the video description. A million views can make it worth it.

Examples of people making money with Amazon:

How he makes money – at 1m26s he focuses on his video equipment. The video description includes links to geniuslink.com. This is a website that showcases different stores (e.g. Amazon) where people can buy the equipment (using his affiliate links). Genuinely helpful video though.

How she makes money – at 40s you will see the video is sponsored by Skillshare and she also uses an affiliate link in the video description, as well as affiliate links to Amazon for the video equipment she uses. Another person recommending video equipment (that’s a hint for you).

How he makes money – he found a keyword on YouTube “best gadgets on Amazon” which has a lot of searches. People are searching this on YouTube (not Google or Amazon) which means they’re looking for a video review of the best gadgets, otherwise they would have gone directly to Amazon. His Amazon affiliate links to each of the gadgets are found in the video description.

Conclusion: a lot of people are making money by referring people to video equipment they use.

5. Learn How Affiliate Programs Work

One Tier – get a commission when a sale is generated from your affiliate link.

Two Tier – get a commission when you refer other affiliates and they start making sales (think multilevel marketing). An example is WP Engine’s program where I tell my readers about their WordPress hosting, they start making sales, and I earn $50/sale from each sale they generate.

Climbing Tiers – increased commissions as you get more sales.

Recurring Commissions – usually happens with subscription services… you continuously receive commissions as long as people are signed up. AWeber and SEMrush are examples.

Sitewide Commissions – get a commission no matter what people buy on the affiliate’s website. Amazon’s affiliate program does this.

Pay Per Lead – get a commission based on the number of leads (e.g. contact form fill-outs) you send to a business. Be sure to set up your analytics to track this and have a solid, written agreement with your affiliate. You don’t want to spend tons of time and get burned like I have.

Cookies – amount of time after people click your affiliate link you will receive a commission if a sale is generated. Usually 30-90 days but shouldn’t be a deal breaker when choosing affiliates.

Individual Affiliate Programs – affiliate programs that are located on their website.

6. Add Affiliate Links To Content

Step 1: Sign up and get approved. You usually need a decent amount of traffic (or a history of sales) before getting approved. If you have a large following somewhere else (i.e. YouTube), you may be able to convince affiliates to approve you. Otherwise, you need to generate traffic first.

Step 2: Get your affiliate links. Login to your affiliate dashboard and grab your affiliate links. With most individual affiliate programs, they assign you an affiliate ID which you can add to any URL on their website to turn it into an affiliate link. In affiliate marketplaces like ShareASale, they preassign affiliate links but also have a custom link generator. Use these to add deep links.

Step 3: For blogs, install an affiliate link management plugin (I use Thirsty Affiliates) and add your affiliate links here. This lets you organize, track, cloak, nofollow, and add affiliate links.

Step 4: Configure the Thirsty Affiliate plugin settings.

• Choose a link prefix (I use /go/)
• Enable statistics in the “Modules” setting
• Use nofollow + sponsored (recommended by Google)
• Consider Thirsty Affiliates Pro if you want automatic keyword linking

Step 5: Add affiliate links to posts. If you’re using the classic editor like me, use the Thirsty Affiliates button to add affiliate links. When you do it this way, all the attributes you configured in the sett