Remember this amazing quote by Warren Buffett? "If you don’t find a way to make money while you sleep, you will work until you die."

One of the ideas many successful entrepreneurs talk about is the concept of Passive income. Many entrepreneurs building an online business or marketers who want to monetize their website begin with Affiliate Marketing to generate income. Affiliate marketing is one of the most popular ways to generate passive income, and its popularity continues to grow.

Currently, there are many businesses that offer their affiliate program. So if you want to start as an affiliate marketer, you have many opportunities to choose from.

In this article, you will find every essential thing about affiliate marketing. What is affiliate marketing? How does it work? How to get started as an affiliate marketer? How to earn income from it? And much more. Let’s get started.

According to Wikipedia, "Affiliate marketing is a type of performance-based marketing in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought by the affiliate's own marketing efforts."

In basic terms, Affiliate marketing is a business module where a business with products or services to sell pays an affiliate marketer some commission whenever he refers new customers to buy the products of the business. By doing this, the business gets new customers, Affiliates get the commission, and the customers get to know a business they didn’t know earlier. Thus, affiliate marketing is beneficial to everyone involved in it.

There are mainly four parties involved in the affiliate marketing;

But in many conditions, you don’t need a network to join the affiliate program. Many businesses offer their own affiliate program and directly stay in contact with the affiliates.

The business or merchants typically creates or provides the products or services. They offer a commission to affiliates who have followers or an audience.

The business can be a company like AccuWeb Hosting, which offers commission to every affiliate who is able to convert their visitors into customers. However, sometimes the business may not be a creator of the product. For example, Amazon associates.

An affiliate network works as a link between some Businesses and their Affiliates. In some cases, having an affiliate network is not necessary but some businesses choose to join an affiliate network for a layer of trust.

Some examples are ShareASale, Awin, ClickBank, etc.

Affiliates can be individuals or companies; they are mainly bloggers or content creators. They help promote the products of the business with the help of different marketing platforms such as YouTube, Social media, or a Website.

They can use some strategies like SEO, paid ads, or email marketing to attract more visitors.

Customers are the visitors or audience of the affiliate. They are the one who makes the conversion like purchase, filling up a lead form, etc. to get the affiliates to earn the commission from the business.

For instance, you own a blogging website where you write reviews about different products you have used. You are generating traffic of 10,000 per month. You signup for an affiliate program that creates the products related to your blog. By signing up, you will get your affiliate links from that program, which you place into your article. While reading your article, some visitors are ready to purchase it and clicks on your affiliate links. They will be redirected to the business's website, and when they purchase the product from there, you will get the commission.

These are some basic steps to start affiliate marketing.

Here are some platforms where you can promote affiliate links.