Editorial Staff
Last Updated: August 27, 2022

What is Affiliate Marketing? Definition & FAQs

Affiliate marketing is a business model to make money online by promoting third-party products, know more.

What is Affiliate Marketing ?

Affiliate marketing is the process of making money by promoting third-party products for a commission. You become a sort of salesperson for a company, and on making sales of their products, you get rewards.

Once you have channelized traffic, you can join an affiliate program within your niche. Once you join, you will get access to their affiliate dashboard to generate affiliate links.

You add the link to your content and every time a customer clicks on those links they will land on the product page. Once they make a purchase, you receive an affiliate commission as per the pre-decided percentage.

The best part about affiliate marketing is that you don’t have to work for a single company. You can sell products from many different companies and earn commissions from all of them.

Many online companies have dedicated affiliate managers and affiliate programs that are absolutely free to join and even have guides to help you in knowing and selling their products better.

Why Affiliate Marketing is a Good Revenue Model?

There are affiliate marketers who make thousands of dollars in affiliate commission every month. Even if you are a small publisher, you can still make a good amount of money if your traffic is targeted.

Affiliate marketing is a good revenue model because you don’t need a starting fund. All you need is a good website or strong social presence to drive traffic to those affiliate product pages.

You don’t need your own product to make a good amount of money through affiliate marketing. You just signup on different affiliate programs in your niche and start making money.

Once you join an affiliate program or network, you get a unique affiliate link that you have to use for selling the product within your content.

You can promote affiliate products by:

Starting a blog and promoting various affiliate products on your blog
Use your social media accounts like Facebook, Instagram, Quora, and so on
Doing Podcasts and recommending products on your portal
By creating YouTube videos
Promoting through your email lists

Affiliate Marketing FAQs

Q1. Can Anyone Start Affiliate Marketing?

Yes, anyone with targeted traffic can start affiliate marketing and earn money. You can drive traffic to the affiliate product pages through your blog or even social media channels to drive sales. You can keep a track of all the sales done through your affiliate link in the affiliate dashboard provided by the product company or the affiliate network.

Q2. What is Affiliate Network?

You can look at affiliate networks as a marketplace for affiliate programs. Here you will find affiliate programs that you can join in various niches. You need to join the network and get approved to apply for different affiliate programs that you wish to promote.

Q3. What Are Some of the Top Affiliate Networks?

Some of the top affiliate networks include Impact.com, Shareasale.com, ClickBank, MaxBounty, etc. You can make a Google search to find affiliate networks related to different niches and business types.

Q4. Is It ok to Promote Products from Various Niches on a Single Site?

No, it is not recommended. You need to stick to promoting products that are around your niche to get good results. For example, if your site is about Automobiles, you need to stick to products that are related to this niche. If you start promoting fashion products on your Automobile site, it will not make sense to your users.

Q5. What is Recurring Affiliate Commission?

While many product companies one-time commission to affiliates once a sale is done, there are affiliate programs that offer Recurring commissions to affiliate marketers. So, once a sale is closed through your affiliate link, you will keep earning commission month after month as the customer goes on renewing their plan.

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BeginDot is a platform to discover new products that can help your business grow. Sometimes we publish content that includes affiliate links, however, we never accept any money for positive reviews.