Everything you need to know about affiliate marketing

Few questions to help you understand what to do with affiliate marketing and how to go about it
How do I get started with affiliate marketing if I am a complete newbie?
start out by joining some of the internet communities and reading the blogs. I think it's a great idea to give you a head start. Additionally, on many of the blogs they have some "Getting started with affiliate marketing" type guides that can really help you to start your make money online journey.

Do I need to spend money (e.g., PPC, paid advertising, etc) to make money with affiliate marketing?

There is always going to be at least a minimal investment needed. You'll need a website, domain, etc. You don't have to pay for traffic but it's the FASTEST way to begin to earn a living online. I would recommend starting out paying for PPC traffic and just setting your daily budget to whatever the affiliate commission is. Let's say you earn $20 bucks per lead for an offer. Set your daily budget to $20 and see if you get anything.

Suppose I already have a website or blog with decent traffic. How can I use affiliate marketing to monetize my site?

First, you really need to know your demographic. Who visits your website? Then using that information go to your affiliate manager and ask them what particular offers might be working well for this demographic. For example, if your site primarily caters to 35-50 year old women, weight loss offers might be and offer you want to try.

4. Do you start by choosing an offer, and then building a website/email list/PPC campaign around it, or the other way around (i.e., first build a website or email list and then try to find suitable offers)?

actually find the market first. What I mean by this is that I find where there are high volumes of traffic and try to cater to their needs. That way I know the traffic is there, it's just a matter of finding out what will convert profitably for that particular area (or demographic).

What is affiliate scrubbing/shaving, and what do you think about it?
Scrubbing is when an advertiser (not the network) scrubs out bad leads and you do not get paid for them. This is very common and happens on a majority of the advertiser pages. This could be as simple as scrubbing someone from another country when the advertiser is only asking for US based leads or as complicated as the lead having bogus information such as a fake email address (e.g., 129023i190i@fakemail.com).

Shaving is different. Shaving is when an affiliate network shaves leads from your leads. So maybe one in 100 of your leads does not get counted. The network still gets paid from the advertiser for this but you will never see anything. There are times when shaving is intentional (and some networks have been proven to shave) and sometimes when it is unintentional. Either way, it can be prevented by simply split testing the offer across multiple affiliate networks if possible.

Always remember that you should not accuse anyone of shaving unless you have a statistically significant number of leads to prove it. If you only have 10 leads per day on average and one day you have 5, it doesn't mean the advertiser is shaving. It could mean a lot of things.


There's a lot more to be talked about regarding affiliate marketing if you would like to read more let me know