What Is Affiliate Marketing And How To Make A Living From It In India

What is affiliate marketing?

“a marketing arrangement by which an online retailer pays commission to an external website for traffic or sales generated from its referrals.”

Have you seen the below text anywhere on a website you recently visited?

“most of my earnings are from affiliate marketing, direct ad sales, and sponsored posts”

or like this, a link to the Affiliate disclosure page.

If you see anything like this on the webpage, the owner of that website gets paid for referral traffic which he sents to a retailer or a product or service selling website.

No its not complete yet!

Not the traffic, but the referred user has to buy that product or service within a predetermined time frame, then only it becomes a qualified sale.

Therefore, for each qualified sales, the retailer or product owner pays a percentage of those sales to the referring site.

I have several affiliate websites in several Niche Market that make decent money for me and my company.

It all began from a search; like I used to say to my students, it is all begun from a simple search “how to make money online” you tried it right?

You can find a lot of helpful articles on this topic, and I followed those tips and find out how to do it right.

Some techniques work for some time and it fades away so fast due to improvements in search algorithms. Therefore you need to figure out how the users search and find a piece of information.

Now I have my own ways to do it right.

I will share all my experiences here with you.

You can expect that kind of articles here in this blog in the coming weeks.

I made my first dollar using an AdSense website years back in 2009.

But AdSense was not my cup of coffee…

Why pick a grain of sand when a truckload of it lying by the beach?

So I decided to try my luck in affiliate marketing and it worked! (the story I will tell you later). Now let me tell you what is affiliate marketing how you can start with it.

I know the new bees reading this have a lot of questions in your mind, no worries.

Shoot them all to me via the comment section below, I will answer all your doubts here.

How can you make money from home?

I come across a lot of these kinds of questions every day, and the answer is yes. You can make money from the comfort of your home.

• Start a blog and do affiliate marketing
• Start a YouTube channel
• Take online surveys and share your opinion
• Freelance writing
• Medical coding and billing
• Virtual assistant
• Graphic designer
• Social media and paid advertising management
• Online transcription work
• Online data entry
• Online tutoring
• Language instructor
• Online translation services
• Launch an online course
• Start a home daycare
• Start a doggy daycare
• Sell Your artwork
• Sell stock photos
• Become a voice-over artist
• Become a personal trainer
• Become a yoga instructor
• Prep meal for others
• Become a business or life coach

There is a ton of it.

And now comes the best part

Ask yourself; do any of the above do make you money while you asleep?

Some of them will do like the first two, right? most of them don’t.

Whereas, if you do affiliate marketing with a niche authority website is going to be on top of the list that definitely makes you succeed.

That is why I choose it and I recommend affiliate marketing to people who wish to make passive income while in sleep.

Can you make money with affiliate marketing?

Yes, you can make money, good money to cover your expenses and make a good living out of it and enjoy the Digital Nomad’s lifestyle (hopefully everyone’s dream).

But, here comes the challenges, You can experience the sweetness of success in affiliate marketing if you have the patience and willingness to work smart and have a lot of time to spend in early stages of the development.

Affiliate marketing is the process by which an affiliate earns a commission for marketing another person’s or company’s products. As an affiliate, you simply search for a product you enjoy or love as part of a hobby or just for the general love of the product.

If you use a product to solve one of your problems, then promote that product and earn a piece of the profit from each sale you make. Simple right?

Not that simple as it sounds!

But if you are determined and passionate enough, YOU CAN.

Do you have to pay to be an affiliate?

No not at all, 99% of affiliate marketing exists on this planet is free to join. But most of them have some criteria that you must comply in order to apply and get accepted for that affiliate program.

• Some demand a huge following in your social media accounts.
• Some demand a website with decent monthly traffic.

In both the case you need to work a lot harder. Is there any way around?

Let me guess, you too think the same?

Yes, there is.

You can make some instant traffic to the website, by doing proper keyword research and write quality content that drives targeted traffic to your blog website.

Can you be an affiliate without a website?

Yes, you can be an affiliate marketer without a website. If you have social media accounts or profiles with good followers or subscribers or views ie you are an influencer, then you can be an affiliate marketer.

In that case, you do not need a website. But if you have a website you can get a log of targeted organic search traffic, unique opportunity!

Get a domain, host and make a website and start affiliate marketing now.

don’t worry I will give you a detailed step by step guide to do it.

How you can become an affiliate marketer?

There are a number of ways you can make money using affiliate marketing.

You can do affiliate marketing via

• Your youtube channel
• Your social media accounts
• Your website or blog

For each above platform, has its merits and demerits.

If you have good followers and subscribers you can try youtube and social media channels. (But remember you need to be consistent in uploading videos at regular intervals that is important)

But the most desirable affiliate marketing channel is through a mobile-friendly blog or website. when combined with social media and youtube its efficiency doubles.

Here am going to discuss affiliate marketing via website or blog

Here is how to start affiliate marketing on your blog or website

1. Select a Niche Market and drill down to select a sub-niche first.
2. Research to see is there any product or service you can promote in the selected sub-niche.
3. Identify the competition in that niche; is it easy to outrank the competitor websites or is there any room for you to grow?
4. Create a website or blog on that selected niche.
5. Do proper keyword research, identify the problems users face in your niche, create quality targeted content in the form of how-to articles, tutorials, review posts, industry expert interviews.
6. Search, find and apply affiliate programs for the products you want to write or review.
7. Analyze and track the traffic and explore new opportunities.
8. Make use of tools and SaaS utilities to make your life easier.
9. Scale and expand to new sub-niches
10. Upgrade the hosting and tools from time to time.
11. Rinse and repeat the process.

1. Select a niche market

There are literally tens of thousands of profitable niche exists. Every niche is profitable if you make proper use of it.

Niche research is a vast topic of its own, but I will explain a little bit here.

PET is a top-level niche and CAT, DOG, BIRD, etc are sub niches.

You can select any top-level or sub niches. Its always better to use a sub or even micro-niches like in BIRDS, there is a bird called Budgerigar, you can select that particular bird niche and start building a niche blog around Budgerigar bird.

Most common affiliate product niches come under the following categories:

• A physical product niche
• A service niche
• An information product niche

Make your selection of niche market from:

• Get inspiration from your hobby
• Find inspiration from the products or service you regularly use which has an affiliate program on offer
• The third option is the go for high competition top level niches and drill down to its depth (Top-level: SHOES and sub niche like: running shoes for flat feet)

You’re most likely to enjoy building an affiliate site in a niche you already enjoy, which makes your hobbies a good place to start. For example, I love fishing so I might consider building an affiliate blog promoting fishing tackles and lures and other accessories.

The great thing about using a hobby or product you use for your niche is your existing familiarity with the topic.

This means you’ll spend less time doing research, which makes the writing process less stressful and easy.

Which geographical area to target?

USA, UK, Australia, Canada, India? which one is best for you.

Let’s find it.

As of now, the highest paying affiliates are US geo market-based.

But slowly it is shifting to the Indian market, as the Indian internet users predicted at 666.4 million by 2023. that means by 2023 almost 47 to 50 percent of the Indian population will be internet users and accessing the internet using their mobiles most of the time.

Be ready to tap into that 50% of mobile internet users, who search for niche products and services and search online to find a solution to their pain in life or to find a product to solve a problem.

Start producing content for them, and bring in the traffic and then monetize the traffic.

Are you a Doer?

Then following are the action steps and action resources for you to finish in this module.

2. Research the niche to see is there any profitable opportunity exist or not

First, you need to identify the product or service within a niche to do affiliate marketing.

So, how do you identify the niche opportunity?

Do a simple google search to see if there are any ads showing for your selected niche if so; it is a profitable niche.

Do a google search;

<niche> forum

Go and explore the forums and look for recent discussion going on that niche, on what kind of topic people actively participating in on those forums?

Look for the forum posts which discuss any problems users have or need a solution on your selected niche.

The next step,

Look for any product or service related to that niche available online.

Like amazon products or service for sale etc.. if you found, then search for is there any affiliate marketing opportunity exists for that product or service.

Do you able to find good products that you could recommend to your prospects? at the same time is it profitable enough? what the commission the product sellers give to its affiliates?

To find that, do another search;

<niche> or <product> or <service> affiliate or affiliate program

Or search in information product affiliate program sites like clickbank, udemy etc..

By repeating the steps above, you might have selected a hand full of niches and the next step is to check the competition for that specific niches you selected in SERP. (have questions? ask in the comment section below)

3. Identify the competition in the niche market

If there is no competition, there is no place to grow and there is no market to sell. If there is a market there will be competition.

It is up to you to identify the best profitable and less competitive niche and market affiliate products and services to the prospects who want a solution for their burning problems.

What is this so-called competition?

This is for newbies. When we say there is high competition, there are other marketers or websites targetting the same keywords to attain high top ranking in SERP and to attract traffic to their money page.

If so many say 50+ website pages competing for the exact same top level keyword and the websites rank on SERP have higher domain authority then the competition is extremely high.

So how to break the competition?

There are free and paid tools available to check the niche competition.

Never forget this! even if your chosen niche is competitive you can drill down to bottom sub-niches and build a successful affiliate marketing business.

Even if your sub-niche is competitive no need to worry. You need to add content on the website in the form of blog posts where you target specific topics in your sub-niche so the competition is so minimal or there are chances of no one targetting those long-tail keywords.

A lot of new google algorithm updates come to your rescue here. Like BERT, EAT and the users’ intention itself.

See, for Eg. your top level niche is SPEAKER and sub niche is BLUETOOTH SPEAKER

Then you need to create a website in the name of Bluetooth speaker advice or guide or reviews something like this (steps to do that can be found here)

And in the post and article section, you need to write articles that target the users who are searching for product reviews and they search for the best products that match their needs.

What is the problem here a user needs a bluetooth speaker for the outdoor party so let us use the user persona and identify his or her intent.

Like, “best outdoor bluetooth speakers for party” or something like “best outdoor bluetooth speakers with radio” or “which bluetooth speaker is best under 1000”

Now we identified the intent and the next step is to build some targeted content.

You can rank those blog posts high in SERPs and get targeted web traffic, the traffic may be low but the traffic and visitors you about to receive would be worth and will convert well.

This is how you can tap into the high competition niche and succeed.

4. Create an affiliate marketing website or blog on the selected niche

So far you learned how to:

• Select a niche market
• Identify is there any product or service exist to market
• Identify the competition in the niche market

I hope you understood the above steps; if you have any doubt I will answer it if you comment it below. Moving to next.

Now, Step 4: Create a niche website. (always build affiliate website in WordPress)

This is where so many people confused about… I have a detailed section for this with all your FAQ answered.

Do you know? 99% of the affiliate websites that exist in this world run on the WordPress platform? yes, it is.

If you follow steps carefully, you can build a perfect affiliate website of your own. or if it is difficult for you to do so, I can help. We have a dedicated team to build an affiliate website for you.

But you need to get trained to do everything right. We have a short course on affiliate marketing to help you with it.

Here is what you need to get started:

• I recommend a reliable startup WebHost like Hostinger or Bluehost or WPEngine is more than enough to get started (In the growth stage you can migrate the website to more advanced hosts like Siteground or Kinsta or SSD VPS server by Hostinger – my choice )
• Get a domain from Name Cheap or GoDaddy (do not get one from the web hosting provider there is a reason behind it)
• Now its time to get a theme for the affiliate website. I hope you heard about Genesis framework the number one WordPress theme and framework to design and launch your affiliate marketing website with lots of SEO capabilities and clean code. or ElegantThemes Divi or SEO themes from ThemeForest. You can use any free theme that comes with WordPress installation as a next option, but i do not recommend it.
• Get these valuable must-have WordPress plugins for the smooth functioning of your affiliate website.

Now here are some optional things you need (but recommended)

• Get quality Image and graphics from Photodune from $1 (don’t take images from Google you’ll end up in legal complications)
• Get your graphics designed from freelance designers at Fiverr for as little as $5.
• Build your email list and be in constant contact with your readers via – Mailchimp.
• Use the number one email capture tool on the market – OptinMonster, so you can grow your list fast.

5. Do keyword research and create content for affiliate website

After you set up the domain and web hosting you are ready to start with content development and basic SEO(search engine optimization) for the website.

Do proper keyword research, identify the problems users face in your niche, create quality targeted content in the form of:

• How-to articles
• Tutorials
• Product or service reviews
• Industry expert interviews

I will teach you how to do content writing, content marketing, on-page SEO, off-page SEO, etc for your affiliate marketing website.

As a beginner, it is better not to overdo or over concerned about these.

You just need to give what your prospects need. Fulfill your searcher’s intent.

Produce content in a way that answers your searcher’s needs. That’s it.

6. Find affiliate programs in your niche

Do you know, affiliate programs are the best option to monetize your website.

Use content marketing techniques to develop traffic to the website and then monetize it with related affiliate programs.

How to find affiliate programs to promote?

You can search and find things right?

Then do a google search like:

<niche> affiliate program

You can find a lot of niche related affiliate programs and apply to join the programs, they will approve the application if your website complies with their program policies.

You must wait until you generate enough traffic to the website before you apply for any affiliate program. It will increase your chances of getting accepted to their program.

Approved or rejected? now what?

If you got approved, then login to the affiliate dashboard of the program, say amazon affiliate, you can copy the unique trackable affiliate links and insert it as contextual links or as banners that can attract your visitors.

Most of the affiliate programs will have analytics to track your link performances.

In case you got rejected, see what was the reason to get rejected and make changes and reapply.

Most of the time the reason to get rejected would be inappropriate content or not having enough traffic to the website.

You can fix those and reapply.

7. Analyze the traffic and explore new opportunities

Suppose you are writing good content and you are not getting what you are expecting there is something wrong with your planning.

To see what went wrong, you need to analyze what’s happening on your website.

To do so, you need to install Google Analytics tracking code to the website.

The first thing to do is configure Google Analytics for your website.

Google analytics platform helps you to get data like for what keywords you are getting traffic and who are searching and on which page the users landing on your website, what is their age, their sex and from which part of the city etc.

If you can analyze those reports you can plan and make changes accordingly.

You can produce new content to attract those lovely people who want to solve their burning problems, give them those solutions, help them and they will reward you with the purchase.

Do not wait…..

8. Make use of tools and SaaS utilities to make your life easier

SaaS tools make your journey so easy.

The major tools and utilities you can implement in affiliate marketing are:

• Google Keyword Planner – Explore your keywords
• Hubspot’s Blog Topic Generator – Self-explanatory generate the blog topics
• Grammarly – Great writing assistant tool for your blog
• Canva – Design what you want banners, infographics, social images whatever
• AWeber or MailChimp – For your email marketing start with free MailChimp
• Buffer – Saves time in managing your social media posts
• and many more paid tools… will introduce it later.

9. Expand to new sub-niches

Never stop exploring.

Find new profitable niches, it will find you once you got the expertise in producing quality content and in the process of the keyword research process, you will find new sub niches.

Save it for later use. Make new sub niche websites or include those as separate categories on your website and produce new content for those.

Expand and scale from time to time.

10. Upgrade the hosting and tools from time to time

Move on to this step when you achieved about 2500+ daily website visitors. The existing hosting may not handle those traffic any more.

Therefore its time to upgrade to a VPS server or managed web hosting like Kinsta. (You can check out their performance).

As the web traffic increases, along with hosting, you need to invest more in automation tools t make your affiliate digital nomad life a lot easier.

11. Rinse and repeat the process 1 to 10

Never stop once you got to level where you get enough satisfying traffic and revenue.

If you stop producing quality content your traffic will decline over time and come to a halt as your competitors and new players produce relevant stories as time goes by.

So never ever stop producing new content for the affiliate website.

As I said earlier do expand to new niches too.

Conclusion On; What is affiliate marketing and how you can make a living from it

However, do keep in mind affiliate sites aren’t a way to make money overnight.

Regardless of your niche, you’re unlikely to see significant income until you have plenty of quality content.

Therefore, make good care in niche selection.

Create great content, write blog posts that answer your prospect’s queries.

Track and expand.

If you have anything to ask comment below. I will help you.