How To Find Affiliate Links (A Step By Step Guide)

As affiliate marketing is becoming more popular, people are curious about how affiliate links can be found. I am going to be showing exactly how to do that.

In 2019, the affiliate marketing industry was worth just 12 billion dollars. Today, in less than two years, it is already worth 16 billion dollars. That’s an extra 4 billion dollars! In less than 2 years!!!

Last year, online marketplace, ClickBank, made 250 million dollars just by earning about 7 per cent commission per sale for connecting vendors to affiliates on their platform.

And with multinational corporations like Alibaba, Amazon and Jumia coming into the game, there is no limit to the amount of money you can make if you know your onions.

The good thing is, like any other form of digital age business, affiliate marketing does not require a university degree to make you become a millionaire. You only need to understand the game, be patient and persistent. Over time, you will start hitting high-income levels.

I, therefore, dedicate this article to showing you all you need to know about your affiliate link.

Most newbie affiliate marketers do not even know that they are supposed to choose their links carefully. All the money you can ever hope to make from affiliate marketing depends solely on your link.

In this article, you will learn:

• What you should know before getting into affiliate marketing (all experienced affiliate marketers know this)

• What you must know before choosing your links (you may not have heard of this before)

• Top online marketplaces that are best for you to get links from (sites that will surely pay you if you earn)

• How to generate your link from a marketplace

• How to make your link look clickable 

• And how to make money using your link.

This article was specifically designed to help newbies, who are just getting started with affiliate marketing, but, if you are already a pro, no knowledge is a waste.

Also, a section of this article has been designed specifically for those who want to get into affiliate marketing. You will find all the lessons here useful to you in your affiliate marketing career.

So, let’s get started.

The truth about affiliate marketing

Here, I will be opening your eyes to the raw truth about affiliate marketing. This is what you should know before getting into affiliate marketing that people won’t tell you.

Affiliate marketing is the easiest and hardest way to make money online. Making money through it is very easy, yet most people find it very difficult to make money through it.

The fact is, if you are not ready to go through the whole process, you may not make any money from it.

This process includes choosing your niche, choosing the right marketplace, picking the right product and building a complete sales funnel. 

So, let’s start by defining these terms.

What is a niche?

A collection of specific types of products is called a niche. For instance, in a niche like the health niche, you will find products like, an ebook on how to lose weight, health supplements products that can make you last in bed, etc. But, all products in the health niche are health-related products.

We also have other niches like the beauty niche, household furniture niche, financial niche, etc

What is a marketplace?

A marketplace is any platform from which you can pick physical or digital products to sell. It is from a marketplace that you generate your link.

Top affiliate marketplaces include ClickBank, JV zoo, Amazon, warrior plus, etc. 

How to pick the right product

Having decided upon the niche from which you wish to sell other people’s products, it becomes relatively easy for you to pick a good product. Pick a high-selling product from your niche. It improves your chances of getting more sales. And, as a rule of thumb, never pick a product outside your niche to sell, except you have plans to change niches.

Why you should have a sales funnel

A sales funnel simply means all the steps that your customers have to go through before buying from you.

A simple sales funnel consists of an ad, a landing page, an opt-in page and a sales page. 

The ad takes them to the landing page. From there, they move to the opt-in page, where you get their contact details. Only after that are they permitted to go to your sales page where you hope to sell to them.

Yes, it may sound counterintuitive that your customers have to go through a whole long process just to buy your product. But, the fact is, having a sales funnel increases your chances of making sales.

It takes hard work to make money in any business venture, and that includes affiliate marketing. If you have ever thought about becoming an affiliate marketer, then you have to be ready to go through the whole process.

We designed this article to help you understand everything you need to know about affiliate links. Therefore, let’s get started.

Before you choose your links, consider this:

Affiliate marketing is all about links. It involves going to a marketplace, generating a link, and getting people to click on that link to buy the product you are selling.

Your link is everything. It represents your product. It takes people back to the marketplace. If the right set of people click on it, you make money. If the wrong set of people click on it, no sales. And no money.

The first thing you must consider before generating a link is the site you are working with. Who are they? Do they pay affiliates? Are they scammers? Read this article to the end, to get a great list of sites you can make money from.

Secondly, you must consider the product. The only reason why you are generating a link is that you want to sell a product. If the product is bad, you won’t make any money.

Lastly, after generating your link, paste it on another website and see if it is working first, before trying to use it for your marketing purposes.

Amazon, AliExpress, JV zoo, etc also make mistakes. Also, sometimes, in the process of copying our links, we delete some characters. The link, therefore, becomes disabled. So, always click on your links yourself to see if it is working.

The simple instructions above may save you a lot of money. Who knows?!!

The best places to get links from (Top online marketplaces)

A marketplace is simply a place where you can get products to sell for others. There are two types of marketplaces. These include, 

• The physical products marketplace
• The digital products marketplace

We shall take a look at both types of marketplaces so that you can know the one that’s best for you.

The Physical Products Marketplace:

This is simply an affiliate marketing marketplace that sells physical products. 

Top physical products marketplaces include Amazon, AliExpress, Alibaba, Jumia, etc.

In these marketplaces, you can find products like furniture, clothes, shoes, household items, electronics etc.

Many e-commerce companies, both large and small, are now open to having affiliate marketers to help them sell. That means it will keep getting easier to sell physical products as an affiliate as time goes on.

Before you get into physical products marketing, you must know that it is not as lucrative as digital products marketing. That’s because physical products require large production costs. Therefore, your commission may just be around 10 to 20 per cent of your total sales.

But, it doesn’t require a whole lot of hard work like digital products marketing. You can easily refer people to things they already make use of, and they’ll buy.

So, if you want to sell physical products as an affiliate, you may consider generating links for any products of your choice, from any of the marketplaces listed above.

The Digital Products Marketplace:

This is where the creme de la creme of affiliate marketing operates. It is much more lucrative than physical product marketing.

Here, you can sell a product for 100 dollars and get 70 dollars as a commission. Yes, I mean a whopping 70 percent commission. That’s because, digital products require no production, shipping, or handling costs. They are just ebooks and videos and software that add value to people. Therefore, your possibility of making a lot of money here is very high.

Top digital products marketing marketplaces include Clickbank, JV zoo, and WarriorPlus. There are a lot of other digital product marketplaces apart from these three. We still have sites like the CJ affiliate program, Bluehost affiliates, etc. 

Any of the above-mentioned sites are likely to give you links to great digital products to sell.

But, you must note that digital product marketing is harder than selling physical products. Therefore, if you are not ready to go through the whole hassle of building a sales funnel, writing ads copies, sales copies, landing pages and emails, then choose the easiest route.

As you move on in this article, you shall learn how to sell both physical and digital products.

How to generate your link

Every online marketplace wants to have as many affiliates as possible. That’s because, the more products their affiliates sell, the more money they make.

So, if you have ever worried about how you can get your links from your preferred marketplace, then worry no more. These online sales companies have made link generation as easy as possible.

So, how can I get my link?

If you want to sign up with an online company, sign up as an affiliate. For instance, Amazon’s affiliate accounts are different from their normal accounts. You can not get a link to sell an affiliate product using a normal account.

After getting your affiliate account, search for products on their website. When you find a good product (on your affiliate account), just click on it. You will receive instructions immediately on how to get the link to that product. Follow those instructions to generate your link, then copy the link and use it for your marketing purposes.

And just to note, there is a little but very important thing that all experienced affiliate marketers do to make their links look good.

If you are a pro, there is a high chance you already know what I’m talking about. But if you are still a newbie, then read on.

How to make your link look clickable

People hate long ugly links. 

But, most affiliate marketing links are usually very long. Some take as long as three lines.

90% of links that we generate from marketplaces are ugly.

Top marketing experts have now found a way around ugly links. They use what is called, a link shortener. I’ve been using link shorteners for a while now, and they’re very useful.

A good example of a link shortener is bitly (bit.ly)

On this website, there is a space provided where you can paste links. When you paste your link in that space and click on shorten, the site will provide you with a short and beautiful link that you can now copy and use for your marketing purposes.

If you have read to this point, I believe that you must have learnt a lot about links. But, here’s one last thing you must learn.

How to make money using your link

Let’s get the facts right!

This is affiliate marketing and you’re in this business to make money. Beautiful links, great niches and the finest marketplaces mean nothing to you if they don’t end up making you money.

Therefore, you are expected to know how to make money by pasting your links in the right places.

If you are into physical products marketing, you may not want to go through the hassle of building a sales funnel. You can easily find products related to your blog (if you’re a blogger), generate their links, and paste them in the relevant places.

You can also use social media. For instance, if you want to sell a weight loss product, you can go to a weight loss group on Facebook and paste the link. You can write something like, “this product helped 35 people to lose 75 pounds in three weeks. Check it out here” and paste your link.

But, if you are into digital product marketing, you must go through the whole hard work to make any sales. You must be ready to build sales funnels, do email marketing, etc.

Conclusion 

Finally, if you want to go into affiliate marketing, learning how to find affiliate links and all, I will advise you to sell digital products.

All top affiliate marketing experts prefer it. So, you have to prefer it too.

Best Paid Traffic Sources For Affiliate Marketing (They Made Me $5000+)