How to Start an Affiliate Marketing Business

Interested in starting an affiliate marketing business? Many people have launched successful affiliate marketing businesses either to supplement their main income or as their primary business venture. However, while starting an affiliate marketing business is a viable income option, it is not suitable for everyone. Don’t be fooled by those that say affiliate marketing is a get rich quick scheme; as in most businesses it requires hard work, energy, effort and dedication to be successful.

Wondering how to start an affiliate marketing business? Find out the skills you need, important considerations to keep in mind and how to legally establish your business.

What Is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is when you sell someone else’s product or service to an audience that you’ve grown yourself, taking a cut of profit as your reward. A classic example of affiliate marketing is building an audience through a blog, then selling products to that audience via backlinks that attribute your blog as the starting point for the sale. Many businesses have existing affiliate programs that you can join, but you should also consider pitching businesses that don’t yet have an affiliate program if you think that business would be a good fit for your audience.

The amount of commission that you earn for generating a sale will be established in a company’s affiliate program documentation. Affiliate marketing schemes might also reward non-sale actions, such as free trial signups. When done right, affiliate marketing is a win-win-win arrangement where you earn commission, brands make sales and your audience learns about products that suit their interests.

It is proving to be big business. In the UK alone, the affiliate marketing industry is worth around $1.7 billion . One of the temptations of the affiliate marketing model is that it is often thought of as a passive income — allowing you to earn commission while you snooze or pursue other interests. In reality, you need to continually build and nurture your audience, as well as manage your affiliate programs, in order to earn substantial commission. Affiliate marketing will usually involve (but not be limited to) the following:

• Research into products, web traffic patterns and follower interests.
• Consistent engagement with the products and brand networks that you choose to endorse.
• Providing your readers and followers with engaging content that keeps them coming back to your website.
• The ability to drive traffic to your website through search marketing, social media marketing and other forms of digital marketing.

What Are the Advantages and Disadvantages of Starting an Affiliate Marketing Business?

Understanding the advantages and disadvantages of affiliate marketing will help you decide whether affiliate marketing is a good fit for your financial and business goals.

Advantages of Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is ideal for bloggers, coaches, information entrepreneurs and those who build and maintain their own digital properties, such as YouTube channels. Many affiliate marketers will run the business from their home, or from a coworking space, for the following reasons:

• Low setup costs: Normally you’d need just a laptop, a website and some spare time to get started, though the costs of running a blog can escalate if you’d like to increase the quality of your offering.
• No physical products: There is no need to create a product or service because you are choosing one that already exists. You don't have to stock or ship products.
• Flexibility: You can choose the hours that you work according to your needs, making it an excellent option for those with other time demands such as childcare. You can also run an affiliate program from anywhere with a stable internet connection, so you could set up cheaply in a location with low rental costs.
• Supplemental income: While “passive income” is in some ways a misnomer, you do have the potential to continue earning while not directly at your keyboard.

Disadvantages of Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing isn’t always as easy as you might think. Here are some of the common disadvantages and pitfalls of affiliate marketing:

• Setup time: You are unlikely to earn much while you are first building your audience, which can take weeks, months or even years.
• Lost payments: Affiliate hijacking, where you're not given credit for your referral, can occur. Some companies fail to pay their affiliate marketers.
• Lack of control: You have no control over the businesses' fulfilment of a given product or service. If you are recommending a product or service that you haven’t actually tested and it turns out to be a dud, you could lose credibility with your followers.
• Competition: Affiliate marketing is highly competitive, as companies don’t have much incentive to limit the number of people marketing their products. This means that the competition can be fierce and you have to strive to continually produce better content than your competitors.

How to Start an Affiliate Marketing Business

There are two main ways you can start an affiliate marketing business. You can add affiliate marketing as another string to your income bow on an existing business website you may have, or you can start from scratch with a new website and business brand.

Step One: Start by creating a blog where you can write about your chosen subject. This is where you will create your content, provide useful information and include your affiliate link for people to click on and purchase the product.

Step Two: Choose your products carefully and make sure that what you want to promote is of high quality and desirable to your niche audience. Choose a product that you would be happy to buy for yourself — if you wouldn’t be happy to buy this product, why would anyone else?

Step Three: Building up a successful business of any type, whether that be your own affiliate marketing business as a sideline or as your main source of income, will always be at risk if you don’t protect your business name. Unless you register your business name officially with Companies House there is no law against someone coming along and setting up the same business and trading under your name or a very similar one. Take a look at our digital package for protecting your company name.

Step Four: Once your affiliate marketing platform is in place, i.e your website, it’s time to start crafting authentic content that complements your niche. You can embed affiliate links within your posts or choose to promote affiliate links through images. It makes sense to use a mix of both methods to increase your chance of earning those valuable clicks.

Step Five: As we’ve tried to establish many times, affiliate marketing isn’t a “set-and-forget” activity, at least, not if you want to be successful. Most affiliate marketers will earn the lion’s share of their income through a handful of high-performing pages on their website. It’s important to refresh these pages and keep them relevant to your audience, as well as create new content that taps into current trends.

Ready to Form Your Affiliate Marketing Company?

If you are ready to start an affiliate marketing business, it’s time to form your company. You can form a limited company or go the sole-trader route. Deciding and completing your company formation can be the most challenging part of starting a business, but it’s crucial to your success.

Are you ready to start an affiliate marketing business? At Mint Formations , we help you form your limited company or self-employed business and take away all the stress that comes with starting a business. We’ll secure your brand name and get your company registered fast so that you can start doing what you love.

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