How to Get Started with Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is a great way to make money with your website, whether you have your own business or you just write a blog for fun. You can include the affiliate links for related products, and you get a small payout every time someone clicks on that link and buys the product or service being promoted. Think of it like being on commission for sales, except you don't have to actively be doing any selling. You can just plug the right links into your content and wait for the money to roll in.

Affiliate links can be for just about any product out there. You sign up as an affiliate, and you get a link with a special tracking code. Companies use that code to know where their sales are coming from and who to credit with the commission. Say you have a financial consulting company. You can include an affiliate link in one of your posts for a piece of budgeting software. Or say you have a blog. You can include links to a variety of affiliate products, depending on the topic of the post.

There are so many companies with affiliate programs and so many affiliate products, including from major retailers like Amazon, that it is easy to find the products you want to promote. You can make a lot of money with affiliate marketing if you know what you're doing. Here are a few tips for how to get started and be successful: