What is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is the process of earning a commission by promoting some company’s (or other people’s) products or services. There are three parties involved in the affiliate marketing process. They are : Publisher, Customer and Merchant. See the figure given below:

In a affiliate marketing model these three parties are interconnected. A merchant (the business who sells the product or service) may have different products or services for sale to earn profits. The publisher becomes the business partner or affiliate partner by applying and accepting the terms and conditions of the merchant. The publisher promotes the products and services through their own publishing platforms. When the customers finds the products and make purchases, the publishers get commissions.

So, in the affiliate marketing process, if you are a publisher and every time if you generate a sale out of the merchant’s products or services you have promoted, you will get paid a commission.

Why Affiliate Marketing is Important for you?

There are different reasons why affiliate marketing important for you. The main reason would be the one who would like to become financially independent without joining a govt or private job.

Steps to Get Involved in Affiliate Marketing

There are mainly 5 steps involved in the whole affiliate marketing process.

List of Some Affiliate Programs

I am presenting a list of 25 most popular affiliate programs that I personally accessed and studied.

1. Agoda
2. Airbnb
3. Amazon Associates
4. AWeber
5. Bluehost
6. Booking
7. CJ Affiliate
8. Clickbank
9. Coursera
10. eBay
11. Fiverr
12. GetResponse
13. GreenGeeks
14. Hostgator
15. HubSpot
16. SEMRush
17. ShareASale
18. Shopify
19. Siteground
20. Skillshare
21. Teachable
22. TripAdvisor
23. Udemy
24. Wix
25. WP Engine

Out of the above mentioned affiliate programs, for a beginner you can start experimenting with Amazon’s Affiliate Program. Here are the details.

Amazon’s Affiliate Program

Amazon’s affiliate program is known as “Amazon Associates”. If you want to join the affiliate program of the world’s largest eCommerce company, then visit the Amazon site and go to the bottom of the page. Click “Become an Affiliate” or visit this link “https://affiliate-program.amazon.in/”. Choose your country where you reside. you will be directed to the page as shown below:

Joining Amazon’s Affiliate Marketing Program

Joining the Program is only 3 steps process. They are:

1. You need to sign up;
2. You need to find the products and recommend to the users through your blog or website; and
3. Start earning.