**Don’t have time to read now? Save this pin for later when you have a little bit more time. There’s a lot of good stuff in here.**

Affiliate marketing has been around for a long time, and it is honestly such a beautiful thing! It’s a great way to make some extra money (or even make a full-time income), and it all comes passively! I’ve heard countless stories about people who make $30,000+ a MONTH just from affiliate marketing!!! That’s a lot of money to make in your sleep! If you want to be one of those people, read on;)

To get started, get my free list of 200+ affiliate programs that you can sign up for - all organized by niche!

In this post, I am going to teach you:

What affiliate marketing is and how it works
How to make money with affiliate marketing
How to make money on Pinterest with affiliate marketing
Things to look out for with affiliate marketing

What is affiliate marketing and how does it work?

Simply put, affiliate marketing is when you promote someone else’s product through a special link, and once someone makes a purchase through your link, you are paid a commission at no extra cost.

You can work with affiliate marketing in two different ways:

the person promoting the product and getting paid, or
working on the other side and setting up an affiliate program for your own products and selling more through others.

Let’s look at both a little more.

With option 1, there are SO MANY affiliate programs out there. Rules and qualifications will be different from others, like you may need to have a high number of followers, or you need to have purchased the product yourself. If these don’t apply to you, don’t fret. There are some wonderful options out there to get you started. The best and most commonly used are Amazon and Shareasale.

Amazon is pretty self-explanatory. All you need to sign up is your own account (does NOT have to be a prime account). Anyone is eligible to be an Amazon affiliate, however, if you abuse or violate any rules (which would be hard to do), then it can be revoked. But you really don’t need to worry about that. Amazon is the best place to get started with affiliate marketing. They have millions of products that you can promote and many possibilities within their program! You can create your own lists within and promote them using social media. Or use them throughout your blog posts!

Shareasale is like a marketplace full of places to do affiliate marketing with. You can go to their site and make an account, then once you are approved (which for me I was auto-approved, and then they reviewed my application for 5-7 business days), you are given a full list of businesses that you can apply for their affiliate program.

I have created a list full of 200+ places that you can do affiliate marketing with - all organized by different niches. This list will help you get started with finding the right companies to do business with and get you a good head start on affiliate marketing. And I am going to give it to you for FREE!

With option 2, you are looking for more people to help promote your products and giving them a commission as a thanks. You can get some help finding more people by signing up for marketplaces as a seller rather than an advertiser. Some examples are FlexOffers, ShareaSale, and Impact. These places will let you partner with them and show up as a business that promoters may choose to do business with. It’s perfect for beginners to help you get the word out about your products and find the right people to market your products!

You can also choose to build your own affiliate program. I only recommend this if you are a well-known business or blog. But you then have the freedom to create your own rules for the program!

How to make money from affiliate marketing

To help you make the most out of affiliate marketing, here are the steps you’ll need to follow to actually make money from it.

Have a niche

It is simply impossible to make money without having a specific niche and target audience. You want to make sure you have a niche that is profitable, and something that you’re passionate about. To learn more about finding your target audience, you can check out this blog post.

Have a website or blog

One of the best ways to make money blogging is through affiliate marketing! There are several people out there who are able to make thousands of dollars a month alone through affiliate marketing in their blog posts. There are a variety of website platforms out there that you can use to create your perfect site. I personally use Squarespace because it’s got several options to beautify your site, and it aligns perfectly with my blog niche and goals. There are other free options out there but keep in mind what your business goals are! If you are wanting to sell products on your site - no site will be free, so focus on your important goals with your site. I guide you through picking the best platform for you in my course!

Promote the products you have used and love!

The most important thing in business is to have a loyal customer base, and in order for them to be loyal, you need them to trust you. If you are promoting things that you’ve never tried and are simply crappy, you will have a hard time building a loyal customer base. Also, be sure to promote products that are related to your niche! You never want to promote some random thing just to make a little extra money off it. People will want to buy the product you’re promoting if it’s something they’re interested in (meaning you’re promoting something related to your niche) and they feel like you’re being honest with them. Share your success stories using that product so people know you’ve tried it, and then they will probably want the same success as you had with that product.

Choose relevant products to promote in your blog posts

If you have a long list of products that you can promote through affiliate marketing, that’s wonderful! But you want to make sure that you use products that are relevant to each other and what you are teaching in your post. There is no rule of how many products you can promote in a single post, but keep in mind that if you’re trying to sell something in every paragraph, you’re going to sound desperate and salesy. Make sure your blog post has a nice flow, and when you are bringing up a product, make sure it makes sense with your story. It’s always a good idea to talk about a “problem” that you had (that relates to your readers) and then bring up the product as a solution.

How to make money on Pinterest with affiliate marketing

I found out recently that you can use affiliate marketing directly on Pinterest and make money - you don’t have to have a website/blog!

On Pinterest, you can create pins with affiliate links so all your audience has to do is click on the pin and make a purchase, and boom - you’ve got easy money! No extra writing or marketing required.

Here are some things to keep in mind to be successful with this type of affiliate marketing:

Make sure pins are high quality and up to date

On your pins, you will want to include a simple picture of the product. Make sure it is beautiful and self-explanatory. Create your pins according to the Pinterest style guidelines and make sure they are all the same size of 1000 x 1500 px.
You don’t want to promote anything that is out of date - or has bad links! Keep track of your pins and make sure links are accurate and still active.
Include multiple images of the product so your customer knows more about what they’re getting just by looking at your pin. They’ll feel more confident clicking on your pin and making the purchase!
Also make sure you use the exact affiliate link - do not turn it into a tiny URL or anything! It will look fishy to Pinterest and you may lose your account.

Have boards specifically for affiliate products.

Doing so has so many benefits for your Pinterest Business experience:

You have more opportunities to optimize SEO (to learn more, take a look at my course which will teach you all about this!)
You look more like a real person and build better trust with your audience. If you only have a few boards and pins that are only yours, you look scammy. (if you want to learn more about this I teach you all about it here!)
You can easily keep track of your pins! As I mentioned before, you want to keep track of your pins and make sure their links are still active and accurate. If you keep them in a related board, you can easily click through your pins and make sure everything is working properly.

Have a niche!!

Even with Pinterest affiliate marketing, you will see the best results if you have a related niche! You can’t sell to everyone, but you can sell to a target audience and build a loyal following that will want to buy more and more from you. You can learn more about this in my target audience post.
If you go overboard and create too many affiliate pins - you will lose trust and followers. You want to make sure your brand is consistent and you are including pins that are relevant and useful to your audience!

Create strong descriptions for your pins

This is yet another place to optimize SEO. Make sure your descriptions make sense but use as many keywords as possible to find more of the right people so you can make more purchases. I teach you more about this in this course!
Make sure you include your affiliate disclaimer here as well!!

Use a Pinterest scheduler like Tailwind

To help you look less spammy and save you loads of time each day, use a scheduler like Tailwind. You can spend a couple of hours one day making a bunch of pins and then schedule them to go out at different times. **Extra credit: you’ll want to make sure the times your pins go out are the times your audience is most active. This way you’ll get higher views and more clicks! I teach you more about this in this post.

Things to look out for with affiliate marketing

Before getting started with affiliate marketing, there are a few things you should know and look for.

You will need to submit applications with most if not all places - so far Amazon Associates is the only place I didn’t have to wait for application approval.

Things that will guarantee application approval:

A website or blog

If some places will let you use Pinterest - just make sure to include a link to your profile
Your website will also need content on it. Apply for affiliate programs after you have created at least 3 posts and your website looks like it’s been worked on for a while (it doesn't have to be perfect obviously - you just need to look like a real person)
You also need to own your website/domain with most places.

A high number of followers or traffic to your site/profile

Some places don’t require this like Amazon, Shareasale, Flexoffers, and more. Those places should be applied to as soon as your website has content - maybe after 1 post or 2 - then you can include those affiliate links in your posts!

*Extra credit: read the terms and conditions of the affiliate program to see what they require so you can fill out all the needed information the correct way!

Another thing to look out for when applying to affiliate programs are the following:

Look at the commission percentage

Is it worth your time and effort to promote their products? Don’t let small rates scare you if you have a lot of good experience with the product, or it is super relevant to your niche - that means you’ll get the most money even if its rate is lower than others.

Cookie duration

The cookie duration is how long the link will be active for people to make the sale - meaning they don’t have to click the link and make a purchase right away.
The cookie duration can last anywhere from 7 days - 90+ days. If you have a large enough audience - or consistent traffic to your site, then a 7-day cookie duration will work just fine!

Availability of marketing materials

Unless they have one product that has a higher commission rate and longer cookie duration, and you truly believe your audience will benefit from purchasing the product, then you should not apply to affiliate programs that don’t have many products to market. That is just your time wasted for only a possible few extra bucks.

Reputation of the merchant

Keep up with the reputation of places you want to do business with. If their reputation goes downhill, it could ruin your own reputation if you continue promoting their products.
For example, Jane.com ended up going out of business for a bad reputation. People found that their money was getting stolen and the trust with the business and customers declined horrendously. I’m not sure if they had an affiliate program but if you continued to promote their products in your post, then it would ruin your reputation!

Payment terms and methods

You’ll want to look into how you will get paid and how often. Some places won’t pay you until you have a specific balance. Other affiliate programs will only pay you with checks. If that doesn't bother you then go right ahead and apply!

Relevance to your niche

I want to reiterate that you should only apply for affiliate programs that have products related to your niche. Don’t waste your time applying to programs that are not related to your niche because you will not have a high ROI (return on investment)!!

Other important things to note:

Make sure you provide affiliate disclosures/disclaimers to follow FTC regulations. You may have noticed on my blog posts or other posts that people will have a little excerpt near the beginning of their post saying something like “Please note that this post includes affiliate links. This means if you click on the link and make a purchase I will receive a small commission at no additional cost to you! You can read more in my affiliate disclosure.” It is best practice to include the disclaimer at the beginning of your posts so everyone will see it.
If you are declined from an affiliate program, you can always try again! When I was first getting started with affiliate marketing, I applied to several places and was declined because I didn’t meet their requirements yet (mostly I didn’t have enough customers or traffic yet). But keep those places in mind and try again when you believe you do meet the requirements!

Whew, that is a lot of information about affiliate marketing, but if you are able to master it, you can start making more than $30k a MONTH!

If you want to learn more about ways to double your money with your blog, check out this course. I was able to double my income within half a year of implementing these changes to my blog and utilizing it to the fullest! You can sign up by clicking the button below!

I want to double my income!

Let me know in the comments below your thoughts about this post! Questions? Advice? Anything to add? I want to hear it!