All About Affiliate Marketing

by Becca | Sep 19, 2025 | Affiliate Programs

What Is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is offering and promoting a product or service that is being sold by someone else while you make a commission from the sale. Sounds simple enough, right? There are absolutely tons of affiliate programs out there. No matter what niche you’re in or what interests you or your audience has, you can find affiliate programs out there and make money by earning commissions. Are you on the fence about whether affiliate marketing is legit? Let me throw some research at you…

The Affiliate Marketing industry is expected to grow to $6.8 billion over the next five years.

Nearly 90% of advertisers said that affiliate programs were “important” or “very important” to their overall marketing strategy.

The majority of publishers revealed that affiliate partnerships drove more than 20% of annual revenue.

U.S. Affiliate Marketing spends nearly $5 billion. That is twice the economy of Belize.

UK Affiliate Marketing drives approximately 1% of the country’s total GDP (more than the industry of agriculture).

40% of marketing professionals quote affiliate marketing as their most desired skill.

Over 80% of brands utilize affiliate marketing.

16% of all online orders are generated through Affiliate Marketing.

Why should I become an affiliate marketer?

The absolute brilliant thing about affiliate marketing is the fact that you don’t need a product or business of your own to start making money. You simply need an audience. Whether that’s through social media, your email list, your website, or other forms of marketing and outreach. As long as you have an audience, you can start making money from affiliate marketing.

What if I don’t have an audience?

You certainly don’t need an audience to get started. There are plenty of ways to get your links and promotion material in front of loads of people cheap or even free. Here is a list of popular methods to use in order to get in front of an audience: Social Media: It’s free to post on social media, but you’re unlikely going to make any sales or commissions posting to your friends and family. Start interacting in groups within your niche and drop in your affiliate link when it’s useful to someone in the group (this works for forums as well). This is a free option and will take a lot of time and effort to gain traction. But certainly worth doing. Alternatively, if you have a bit of money to invest, reach out to facebook group owners in your niche to inquire about purchasing the group. It’s quite possible you may end up with a great deal and an instant audience to promote to. Additionally, sites like SocialTradia.com sell Instagram account in specific niches. You could have a following of 10,000+ for only a few hundred dollars. Tip: Inquire about accounts in your niche with high engagement and an audience that is mostly in your target country. Solo Ads: If you don’t have an email list of your own to promote to, one amazing method of promoting your affiliate links is to simply get featured in someone else’s email list! Udimi is the best site I’ve found for this. Sign up for free and find an email marketer with a list in the niche you’re looking for. Send them a message to ask for any tips or what they prefer, and give it a go! It’s a great way to get your efforts off the ground. Done right and you’ll make a big ROI. Start a blog: Another option is to start a website of your own. You can create a large website featuring many articles beneficial to your niche, or use a great landing page builder to create amazing landing pages to run ads to. Note: The HBA Funnel Builder, our #1 affiliate program, is a great landing page builder option. Before you start promoting your links, let’s take a quick look at a few guidelines to live by when it comes to affiliate marketing…

Affiliate Marketing Code of Ethics

#1: Make sure honesty comes before commissions This is your audience that you’re recommending a product or service to. Don’t try to scam them. The more they know, like, and trust you, the more commissions you will earn in the end. And even if you aren’t promoting to your audience, being honest and authentic WILL build an audience of your own. Never put commissions above honesty. Hopefully you valued that guideline before my having told you. 🙂 You want your audience to trust you. So any time you recommend a product, especially when the time comes to sell your own, you will have the trust of a large group of people, ready to buy, any time you’re ready to send an email. #2: There are other people online promoting the same product There are obviously other people online that are affiliate marketers. So you can bet there will be others promoting the same product that you want to promote. While your niche audience may not be receiving the same recommendation, it’s still good practice to give your audience an incentive or bonus for taking your advice on a product. Especially when you know they’ll thank you for it. Here are a few ways you can incentivize an affiliate product to your audience:

Include a quick-start PDF guide for the product or service that you’re promoting. Or perhaps a few instructional videos.
Offer and insist that your audience ask questions. Perhaps offer a live Q&A webinar about the product. People who ask questions are interested in making a purchase and they’re highly likely to buy.
Offer personal support after their purchase. Let your audience know that you have their back if they have any questions or problems they might have to ease their fears or worries.

#3: Let your audience know your personal experience with the product It’s not enough to just recommend a product. Your audience will need to know why you are making the recommendation. The best way to reach your audience is to share your personal experience with the product or service you are recommending. How did it help you? What did it do for you? What do you like about it? Even let them know what disadvantages it may have. Honesty goes a long way and your audience will appreciate it. This is also a great way to tell your audience what they can expect. Perhaps even make a video! You could even share the video on YouTube which could attract even more potential buyers. #4: Focus on one product or service at a time Don’t bombard your audience with multiple affiliate products per email or message. Even if you find several great products or services that you’re excited to share, make sure to spread those offers out over time. Focus one email or message solely on one recommendation. If you fill an email full of different options and descriptions about various affiliate products, your audience will simply get lost and will likely not appreciate an email or message filled with products you want them to spend their hard-earned money on. However, offering multiple products and services does have its place. For instance, a resources page on your website is a great way to share the tools and resources that you use or have used to do what you do. That can be extremely helpful and valuable to someone who is in the same niche and is just starting. Another obvious use for offering multiple products at once is adding affiliate products to your store on your own website. An example might simply be to sell books on your website from Amazon. While you won’t make a huge commission selling books, every little bit helps, and if they are books that have helped you in your life or career, your audience might appreciate your insight and recommendations. #5: Think outside the box People and companies that offer affiliate products want you to succeed. And often times they’ll go out of their way to help you do just that. If you find an affiliate product or service that you want to promote, contact that business. Tell them about your interest in their product or service and ask them for a special offer or promotion to entice your audience. They may be willing to offer your audience a bonus that is only for your audience, special pricing just for you, or to host a webinar for your audience while you get the commissions. ConvertKit and Kajabi are great example and well known for hosting amazing webinars for their affiliates absolutely FREE! And the commission goes to you for anyone who signs up during the webinar! And they usually don’t require an extremely high attendance in order to agree. It’s brilliant. They may say no, but it certainly never hurts to ask. But, the bigger your audience and the more they trust you, the more willing affiliate companies will be to go out of their way to help you succeed! Now let’s move on to what makes affiliate marketing one of the best and most popular methods of extra income there is.

What Is An Affiliate Program And Is It Right For You?

Put simply, an affiliate program is a system that businesses put in place to allow affiliate marketers to earn commissions by promoting their products and/or services. Amazon has certainly the most well-known affiliate program. Anyone can join their “Associates Program“, as they call it, promote products across Amazon, and earn a commission.

How do Affiliate Programs work?

Affiliate programs are simply a way for a business to promote their products and/or services. Spending money on advertising is common for any business, but they can’t reach everyone. So rather than relying solely on advertising, businesses are willing to give part of their profits to affiliates for advertising or spreading the word about their products or services for them! It’s a win all around. People like you and I are who make affiliate programs possible. And it also gives us opportunities that were never possible before! Rather than creating our own products or services, we can make a living… and earn large amounts of money… simply by promoting other businesses products and services and getting rewarded for it.

Free affiliate programs vs paid affiliate programs

I often meet people who are only interested in affiliate programs and opportunities that are free. I certainly understand and relate to that. When I started out as an affiliate marketer, I was struggling to make ends meet. Investing any money into my online side hustle was painful, risky, and scary. But there’s almost always a trade-off and it’s worth understanding this up front. The benefits of free affiliate programs are obvious… they’re free! But there is typically one major downsides to them… Almost all free affiliate programs offer very small commissions. And the smaller the commissions are, the harder you have to work to generate enough traffic and commissions to make a good income. For instance, Amazon’s commission rates are typically between 1% – 6% depending on the category. So unless you already have a website that is generating a large amount of traffic, it’s not quick or easy to benefit from being an Amazon affiliate. There are exceptions to this, especially with online courses or info products, but they are typically very niche-specific. This can certainly be a very good thing, but may not apply to you based on your business or the business and niche you want to start. If you are starting out and need help finding products for your niche, let me know. I’ll be happy to help! Alternatively, paid affiliate programs are only available to you if you purchase or join the product or service yourself. This is beneficial for two reasons: 1. It ensures that you know and use the product. 2. It makes it easier for you to make commissions. They also typically have very large commission rates, making it much easier to succeed and achieve financial freedom. Once I started realizing this, I was able to take my affiliate marketing to another level and it’s made such a huge difference in my life! When I considered the cost and investment of a paid affiliate marketing program, I compared it how much it would cost if I were to start my own local business. Imagine how much it would cost to start a business in your home town… buying or leasing office space, hiring employees, creating your products or services, and the countless other expenses every month… imagine that! Once I found a paid affiliate program that was worth joining, there is no comparison. So if you do find an affiliate program that might seem right for you and your niche or business, then it’s worth investing in yourself. Dive in and do what it takes to start making your money back as soon as you can to make it worth it! Now let’s move on to what makes affiliate marketing one of the best and most popular methods of extra income there is…

What Are Recurring Affiliate Programs?

A recurring affiliate program is like any other affiliate program, but the product or service that is sold is subscription based and you make money from that sale each month or each year from that recurring subscription.

I can’t recommend or stress more how valuable these types of programs are to your affiliate marketing efforts.

Rather than making a commission one time from an affiliate sale, you could make recurring income from one sale each and every month.

To put this in perspective:

Let’s say you signed up to sell a normal affiliate product for $125 and make an 80% commission from each sale equalling $100 commission per sale.

You are then able to sell that to 10 people. You’ve just made $1000 from 10 sales!

Not bad, right?

Now to make that much again, you’ll need to find 10 more buyers the next month. And so on.

But with a recurring affiliate product in the exact same scenario… You make $1000 EVERY MONTH from those 10 sales!

And if you find 10 more buyers the next month?

You don’t just make $1000 more dollars… you are now making $2000… EVERY SINGLE MONTH…

Keep scaling that and you are ridiculously set! (This
scenario, by the way, is the Home Business Academy’s affiliate program… yes, it’s unreal)

Now that you know how important it is, you can see why these programs make up my best of list.

What Is Passive Income?

Passive income is defined by Wikipedia as “income resulting from cash flow received on a regular basis, requiring minimal to no effort by the recipient to maintain it.”

However, in every scenario, passive income is earned through the work that is initially put in. And most likely, the work that is put in to maintain or grow it.

“We don’t have to trade our time for money one to one. Instead, we invest our time upfront, creating valuable products and experiences for people, and we reap the benefits of that time invested later.”
Pat Flynn

This quote from Pat Flynn in Forbes is a great summation of what separates passive income from what we are all typically used to… a job.

Passive income is typically the goal of any and every online entrepreneur. It is the ideal solution for maintaining and sustaining a freedom lifestyle.

Entrepreneur.com states that passive income “has long been the holy grail for entrepreneurs looking to free up their time, untethering the cord of daily duties and responsibilities from the potential to generate healthy monthly revenues.”

Why is passive income so important?

Passive income is so important simply because of the freedom and flexibility that it can provide. And is why so many people seek to obtain it. A regular income is typically obtained by working a regular job, also known as “active income.” Which is typically forty hours a week for a full-time job. This, of course, is more than a respectable way to earn an income. However, when it’s a job or career that doesn’t bring a person any joy or fulfillment, it can be difficult for someone to maintain day in and day out. The real reason why passive income is so important to so many people is that if enough work can be done initially, and enough passive income can be generated each month, it can allow for a completely different lifestyle. A lifestyle of your choosing. If you could obtain enough money each month that would at least replace your full-time job, what would you do with your time? Where would you go? What difference would you make in the lives of those you love? What difference would you make in the world? These are some of the questions people can answer and realize when they generate passive income!

Top 3 passive income benefits

#1: Make money while you sleep This is a common phrase used to attract people to a passive income opportunity. When you generate income passively, you can literally be doing anything at all while earning money – whether you’re sleeping, on holiday, or spending time with your family. #2: Make money without working Passive income is just that – income earned passively. You don’t have to do anything to continually earn that money. However, you can’t make any money without work. Passive income is no exception. The biggest difference is that the work you put in to generate passive income is mostly done initially. Once you set up the platform that is best for you, it will take less effort to keep the money coming in. Quite likely, you will need to put in some time to keep maintaining a passive income or grow the amount that comes in each month, but how much you work, when, and where is completely up to you. #3: You decide how you want to make passive income There are loads of ways to generate passive income. This means you can decide what is best for you based on your interests and passions. More on this below.

Is passive income right for me?

This is a fairly important question to ask yourself before pursuing passive income. Sure, anyone would want money coming in while they slept or travelled or retired early… but it might not be for everyone. There is a secureness and simplicity in getting paid for the hours you work. Typically, in order to generate a passive income, it takes many hours of work for no money until you have finally put the necessary pieces in place for the money to start coming in. It’s a bit of a risk to give up your time and invest in yourself and your future. So before you take the leap, be sure you have the right mindset! Pat Flynn, perhaps the best teacher of successfully implementing multiple passive income streams online, shared some of his top tips before getting started:

Tip #1 – Before you begin, ask yourself, “Am I doing this just for the money?” Being able to generate passive income largely depends on your audience, and if they detect that you care more about making money than serving them, you won’t succeed. “Whenever I’ve seen people do something just for the money, they’ve failed because their intentions aren’t driving them in the right direction. It should always be about helping people and about the passion of making others feel better. The byproduct of doing that is generating money,”

Tip #2 – Be prepared to put in serious time upfront. “I don’t believe the overnight success exists. There’s a lot of hard work and time involved beforehand,” say Flynn. Angry Birds may have seemed like an overnight success but it was the 52nd game that Rovio created. Flynn says it took him a year or year and a half to build audiences for his most successful sites.

Tip #3 – Banish the thought that once you’ve created the product, you can sit back and buff your nails. “There is no such thing as 100% passive income,” says Flynn. “Even with real estate you still have to manage your properties, or even with the stock market, which is potentially passive income, you still have to manage your portfolio. With online business, there is no such thing as 100% passive income — and this is coming from a guy with a blog called SmartPassiveIncome.com. The definition of passive income is ‘building these businesses of automation,’ but in order to keep them automated and keep that trust going with your audience on top of that, you do have to keep it up every once in a while — so a lot of time upfront and a little time after. But there is alway time involved.”

Passive Income Can Change Your Life

You can definitely see the benefits and the power of passive income – and how incredible and life-changing it can be. And that’s the point of this list. I’ve been involved with affiliate marketing since the mid-90’s as a teenager when Amazon only sold books! I put this list together to share what I’ve found with you… the very best affiliate programs that you can start using today to maximize your efforts and find the success you dream of.

Where To Find Great Affiliate Marketing Training

There is an enormous amount of information across the web that go into detail about affiliate marketing – from Udemy courses, LinkedIn Learning, YouTube video after YouTube video, and loads of websites going into detail about this topic. But, I thought about this a bit and my own journey in affiliate marketing and decided to change my recommendation here. If you know me or explored the about page here at the Home Business Blog, you’ll know it took me a long, long time to get where I am. I tried so many different thing, different websites, different programs and platforms, and I spent a TON of money on courses to learn any and everything I could. Seriously, my bookmarks going to all of the training courses I own is obsurb! Haha. So, I didn’t want to send you down that path with my training recommendations. Because, honestly, if you’re just starting out online, trying to make money, and looking for training, the best advice I could give you is to change your mindset from feeling like you need training and turning that into feeling like you need to get started right now. Find something you want to do and follow the steps it takes to get there. Worry about the training and education later after you have a bit of money coming in and a bit more freedom to spend your time wisely. Right now, there’s nothing more important than starting to bring in money to help you, right? I know this too well, because training never made me any money! I should have made a decision and focused on that to make money, then let the money dictate my next decisions. With all of that said, I have two recommendations for you: 1. Take our quiz to tell us a bit more about you, where you are with your business, and what you want to do, and we will personally reply to you with our best advise. We won’t be trying to convince you to join anything you don’t want to or try to sell something to you. We are in this business to make a difference and help you to succeed. So hop in the quiz with this link and let’s make it happen! 2. Download this free Escape Plan book and join the HBA Funnel Builder. Not only does this book give you tons of great information on how to succeed online, but it introduces you to the HBA Funnel Builder and how to turn that into an all-in-one business. And all you need to do is follow the step-by-step instructions to do it. It gives you the resources, the funnels, the steps, the marketing information you need, etc. These are my best recommendations that I can give you today if you’re looking for affiliate marketing training, if you’re just getting started, or you’re in a situation where you need to make money online and are struggling. I was in that position for such a long time and that has led me here – to help you today!

What Next?

I’ve given you a lot of information about affiliate programs, passive income, and simply the best affiliate programs out there this year. Out of all of the programs I’ve listed here, the Home Business Academy has made the biggest difference in my life, by far. And now, with their Funnel Builder, they’ve secured the title of the best affiliate program for the second year in a row. I highly recommend giving them a go. They are worth your time and effort. And could very well change your life. But remember, passive income doesn’t mean it doesn’t take work. Only you can decide to change your life and do what it takes. If you need motivation, start listening to Gary V, dive into the mindset training within the Home Business Academy, and remember what Deadpool loves to say… “Maximum Effort!” 🙂 If you’re new to affiliate marketing and/or have questions about any of the programs or information given in this guide, let me know. I’ll be very happy to help answer any questions you may have and hopefully be a part of your success. Thank you!

My Challenge To You

Becca @ The Home Business Challenge No more wasting time learning – let’s start doing! My name is Becca and I’m your new digital BFF! 🙂 Let’s crush our side hustles together!

Becca

Author

Thanks so much for reading! It means a lot to me. I’ve been going round and round for years with this online business and side hustle stuff. And after countless courses and trainings and rabbit holes (all wastes of time), I am thrilled to be in a position to help others like you succeed online. Feel free to reach out and let me know if I can help you succeed online!

the Home Business Challenge <3