This article is a step-by-step guide that will help you understand what affiliate marketing is and how you could start earning money with it. Below, we will tell you where to start, give an overview of the main stages of a publisher's workflow, and provide links to detailed articles and video tutorials related to each topic.
If you are completely new to Admitad and don't know anything about affiliate marketing in general, we recommend you to start with reading this article: "What Is Admitad? The Basics".
Useful links:
- Help Center for publishers — articles and guidelines about different aspects of working with Admitad, FAQ.
- Admitad Academy — tutorials for publishers, ideas for generating more income, business cases, interviews with successful publishers.
- Admitad YouTube channel — more of the same for those who prefer visual information.
Ready, steady, go!
Step 1. Decide where you want to place your ads
In other words, choose your ad space.
It might either be a space that already exists (e.g., you already have a group on Facebook that you would like to monetize), or a completely new one (e.g, you are going to create a Telegram channel). Another way is not to create any new spaces and earn money through traffic arbitrage instead: to place contextual or targeted adverts.
Useful materials:
What can serve as an ad space?
TOP 10 business models: comparing and making an informed choice
Affiliate Marketing for Dummies: Where to Start?
Step 2. Think about the advertising methods you are going to use
The essence of affiliate marketing is advertising goods and services and placing affiliate links that lead to those goods and services on your ad space.
If the user clicks on such a link and buys something on the advertiser's website (anything, not necessarily the product that you were advertising), you will get a reward (commission)—a fixed amount or percentage of the order amount.
There are a lot of different advertising formats you could use: from banners to native advertising. You need to think about which of these formats would be the best for your ad space. Are you going to write articles or film video reviews of goods and services? Share discount codes with your audience? Write posts with product selections for different life situations and include affiliate links in those posts? Collect your readers' emails and send them newsletters with adverts?
Explore different business models:
Admitad Academy—Business models
Step 3. Register in Admitad as a publisher
Useful materials:
How to sign up for Admitad as a publisher
Step 4. Add an ad space
After you created an account, add the platform you chose in Step 1 as an ad space. It has to be done so you can join affiliate programs of our advertisers and get access to their affiliate links and other advertising tools.
Useful materials:
How to add an ad space?
Step 5. Join an affiliate program
When you are joining a program, you inform the advertiser that you would like to cooperate with them.
To see all the affiliate programs available in Admitad, go to Admitad Store.
A few recommendations:
- In the beginning, we recommend that you only join those affiliate programs that don't require moderation. In this case, you won't have to wait for the advertiser to process your request, you will be able to start earning money straight away.
- Choose those programs that are relevant to the topic of your ad space. It will make it easier for you to integrate adverts with your main content, and the audience's attitude towards them will be more positive. For example, if you own a forum about gardening, it will make sense to promote an online store that sells products from the House & Garden category.
- If your ad space does not have a specific topic (for instance, if you do contextual advertising), select the programs that belong to the category you understand well.
- Don't try and join all possible programs in one go. It will make it difficult for you to concentrate and achieve good results. In the beginning, it is better to stick to 1–3 programs and only work on them.
Useful materials:
How to choose an affiliate program?
How to join an affiliate program?
Affiliate programs for beginners
How to earn on online games programs?
How to promote travel affiliate programs
What to watch:
How to join an affiliate program
Affiliate program parameters. How to evaluate a program before joining it
Step 6. Select the right advertising tools
In the Step 2 paragraph, we have already talked about what formats you can use to place adverts on your ad space. Now, it's time to discuss the tools that will help you to do that.
Tools provided by Admitad
| Tool | Description | What ad spaces it's suitable for |
|
Admitad Extension Admitad Bot Deeplink |
Quick generation of affiliate links | All |
| Coupons and promo codes | Coupons and discount codes provided by advertisers | Social media groups Telegram channels YouTube channels Email newsletters Blogs Other content projects |
| Moneylink | Automatic replacement of direct links by affiliate ones |
Forums |
| Product feeds | A file that contains detailed information about all the advertiser's products | Affiliate stores Price comparison sites |
| personal promo codes | Same as regular promo codes, but without affiliate links. These promo codes can be shared offline. |
If you are planning to place several affiliate links on one ad space, we recommend that you add a SubID parameter to each of them. That will help you to tell one link from another in the reports.
Useful materials:
How to use creatives?
Step 7. Place ads on your ad space
Example 1
You have a YouTube channel on which you teach people how to make cakes. You decided it's about time to start monetizing it and are going to add affiliate links to the video descriptions; those links would lead to baking equipment and ingredients that are used in the videos.
You have already added this YouTube channel as an ad space and joined AliExpress and Ikea affiliate programs. Now you need to:
- Mention in the videos that the links to the necessary equipment and ingredients can be found in the description.
- Find relevant products on AliExpress and Ikea websites.
- Copy links to those products and turn them into affiliate ones using the Deeplink generator.
- Insert the affiliate links into video descriptions. Add a few words about the products to make it clear for the users where each link leads.
Example 2
You have a Telegram channel where you share discounts on sneakers of various brands. Add this channel as an ad space, join Nike and Adidas programs. Next steps:
- Go to the Coupons & Deals section and search for appealing offers in those programs.
- Find a deal offered by Adidas: 50% off when buying 2 items or more. Copy the affiliate link that leads to this deal.
- Use the Shortlink tool to shorten the link and make it look better.
- Write a post for your channel that would contain an attractive headline, terms of the deal, and the affiliate link.
Useful video:
How to earn with Admitad. Affiliate marketing for beginners
Step 8. Analyze the results
A few hours after you published the post, log into your Admitad account and go to Reports. Check if any clicks and target actions have been registered yet.
If yes—well done! That means you have defined the interests of your audience correctly, selected relevant products or services and managed to promote them in an attractive and efficient way.
If no clicks and/or actions have been registered, have a look at this article: "Why do I see no user clicks or actions in my reports?"—there, we talked about possible reasons and ways to change that.
To have a better understanding of which goods and services promoted on your ad space are more attractive for your users, and to stay aware of the dynamics in your clicks and actions statistics (whether they grow or drop), it is important to check the reports on a regular basis. Based on this data, you will be able to understand what could be improved in your work, and in what direction you should move.
Useful materials:
Admitad reports
Why does the statistics on my analytics service differ from yours?
Step 9. Wait for the advertiser to confirm your actions
When an action has just been registered in the system, it appears in the reports under the On hold status. The expected commission amount for this action will appear in the Balance section on the main page.
The action has to be processed by the advertiser to confirm that it was indeed performed and that no program rules have been violated. If it is so, the advertiser will approve the action.
Useful materials:
After the user performed an action, how soon will I get paid?
Why has an advertiser declined my actions?
Step 10. Withdraw your earnings from Admitad
To withdraw your earnings for confirmed actions, transfer your funds to Admitad Earnings Wallet, a special payout service for Admitad partners.
For that, go to Fund withdrawal and send an amount you need to Earnings Wallet.
After that, you'll be able to withdraw your month from Earnings Wallet in any way. Just follow these instructions.
Useful materials:
How to withdraw funds from Admitad
What is Admitad Earnings Wallet?
Methods for withdrawing funds from Admitad Earnings Wallet: conditions and characteristics
How to add a withdrawal method in Admitad Earnings Wallet
