Zero to Hero
This article may contain affiliate links, which means I could earn a commission if you buy through them, at no extra cost to you.
I’m John Crestani and I say I make over half a million dollars a month with affiliate marketing. This guide will show you how to get started as a complete beginner, step by step, to go from zero to hero.
If you’re looking to start affiliate marketing and you are a complete beginner, I recommend you check out my introduction series to affiliate marketing. This guide shows exactly how to get started.
First Step
The first part of affiliate marketing is joining an affiliate network, and this is where you find products you can sell or link to and make commissions from.
Second Step
The second step is to find a product. A specific product that you can sell on the internet that you resonate with and that you can make money with.
Third Step
The third step is to actually go out there and sell it. If you are a serious action-taker, go through all of these steps and you could start earning your first commissions quickly.
Affiliate Networks
If you Google affiliate networks, you’ll find a ton of results. If you look up the top 10 affiliate networks that aren’t Amazon, you’ll see ClickBank, JVZoo, GiddyUp, ShareASale, Avangate and many more. Two great affiliate networks to join are Amazon and my other favorite, ClickBank. Amazon is easy to join, so here is how to join Amazon’s affiliate network.
Joining Amazon’s Affiliate Network
On amazon.com, scroll down to the bottom of the page. In the footer it says Make Money with Us. There are a lot of ways you can make money with Amazon, including selling, private label brands and business, but the one to look for is Become an Affiliate. Click on it and you’ll see the page that says profit from our experience. Earn up to 10% advertising fees with a trusted e-commerce leader. Join now for free. It says Join, Advertise, Earn, and one of the things it will ask you for is a website.
Put in a Website
Do you have a Facebook profile? If you don’t, you can create one for free. That’s your website. I’ve also heard of some people just putting in random websites that have a lot of visitors in their niche, and I guess Amazon doesn’t check, but keep in mind that you can set up a YouTube channel for free. Your Facebook profile is free too, and you can set these things up and use them as your website.
You Don’t Make a Lot of Money
With Amazon, you don’t make a lot of money. For purposes of demonstration, say I’m selling the book “Anathem,” which is about a $20 book. If you earn 10% of that, you’re making two dollars. You’re not going to become a millionaire recommending books to people unless you’re making more than 10%.
ClickBank
The affiliate network that I really like is called ClickBank. There are a lot of affiliate networks, but in my opinion ClickBank is the most trustworthy and the oldest affiliate network around. By my count it’s been around for 21 years and it’s based in Boise, Idaho. This is the network that I made my first commissions on, many people have made their first commissions on it, and it’s also the affiliate network that I currently make most of my money with.
Affiliate Marketplace
If you click Affiliate Marketplace, you’ll see all of the products that you can sell on a commission-only basis. Click the search icon and you’ll see there are over 4,500 products in the Marketplace. This gives you a lot of options for what you want to sell. They tell you how much money you’ll make if somebody buys what you’re selling as an affiliate. It’s $37 if you sell one product, $56 if you sell another, and $41 if you sell another. There’s real money to be made selling these different products.
Something You Resonate With
I personally sell business-opportunity-type products, but what I recommend is to get started on Amazon. The way you make big money is with another affiliate network outside of Amazon, but Amazon works for the time being for demonstration purposes.
Back to Amazon
Back on amazon.com, say I want to start off by advertising the book “Anathem,” which is a book I’m reading right now and it’s a really good one. Search for it on Amazon and look it up. It’s $9. Click on the book, and once you’re accepted into the affiliate network, you’ll see a bar that says Amazon Associates SiteStripe. This is where you get your affiliate link.
Get Link Text
Click Get Link Text. It says Text Link created below. This is the affiliate link that I will use to sell this book. People need to click on this link and buy the book, and I make money.
We can look at the full link. The way affiliate marketing works is the link contains information that tells Amazon that the person clicked on my link versus searching for it online or otherwise. That information is in the tag. We’ll just grab the short link and copy it. Now I have my link. I joined an affiliate network, I selected a product, and the next step is posting so that people actually come to my link.
Get Your Link Out to People
There are a few ways to get people to come to your link, and you already have access to them. Do you communicate with anybody digitally? You probably use text messages, so that’s a way to get your link out. You use email, which works too. You use Instagram, so that’s another option. Do you ever post comments on YouTube? You can share your link there as well. Then there’s Facebook. Any of these methods can get your link in front of people.
Most of the time you’re probably talking about random social dynamics in your life. That’s cool, but we’re talking about making money here, so that’s what we’ll need to be talking to people about in our emails.
Say I’m recommending this book. The first place I could start is through email. I want people to click on my link. I could send an email to a couple of my close friends, or just people I know. I could send one to my friend Carlos. I’m not actually going to type in my friends’ emails here, but I could type in my friends and write something like, book recommendation.
I could say, I remember you asked me for a sci-fi book recommendation and I’m reading a really good one right now. I absolutely love it. Check it out. And I put my link there. I wrote a short personal email in the way I normally communicate and then I just put my initials. You could send an email to people whose emails you have, and in this case I’m sending an email to Carlos, who I know is interested in science fiction books. That would be a good way to start affiliate marketing.
Another way to start affiliate marketing is to go on Facebook. A lot of the people I’m friends with on Facebook are into the future and science fiction and all this stuff. I’m not going on my Facebook page. I’m going on my personal Facebook because I want to communicate with people personally. Do you buy things from ads? Probably not. Do you ever buy things or see movies or listen to music based on personal recommendations from friends? My guess is yes. If we want people to buy from our link, it needs to be somewhat of a personal recommendation. That’s why I’m posting on my personal profile.
If you don’t want to sell anything, that’s cool, but the other methods of getting your link out there are expensive, they cost money. So we’re doing this for free. If you are interested in going deeper into affiliate marketing and paid advertising and the art of copywriting, I suggest my playlist called The Art of Copywriting, which goes over how you can use paid advertising to make money with marketing.
Create a Post
I’ll just say, really good sci-fi book I’m reading. Mindgasms every day so far. Check it out. Neal Stephenson is a genius. I’m not spelling correctly because I’m doing personal communication. That’s what tends to sell. If you’re writing something that looks like an ad, you’ll rarely get anyone to buy. Most people don’t want to buy from ads. A personal recommendation feels like you’re in love. So here it is, a very simple post. Then I just share it and that’s how it works.
Affiliate Marketing in a Nutshell
Join a network, pick a product, and get your link in front of people. That is how to start affiliate marketing in a nutshell.
Needs Review
- “GiddyUp” in the list of affiliate networks does not match a network I can confidently identify. It may be a transcription error, but I couldn’t match it to one real network, so I left it as is.
- The book “Anathem” is called “about a $20 book” in one section and “$9” in another, with no explanation. Both figures are left as stated.
- The claim that ClickBank has been around for 21 years may be out of date depending on when the transcript was recorded. I framed it as the speaker’s count and left the number alone.
- The remark about people entering random high-traffic websites on the Amazon application is unverified hearsay and may conflict with Amazon’s program rules. I left it unchanged because removing it would alter the content.
- The disclosure at the top is generic. Confirm it matches your actual affiliate relationships (Amazon, ClickBank, or others).
