---
title: 'The Only Affiliate Marketing Tutorial You Need: Step-by-Step for Beginners'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=Gj4Zx6Vj7ko'
video_id: 'Gj4Zx6Vj7ko'
date: 2026-08-04
duration_sec: 1789
---

# The Only Affiliate Marketing Tutorial You Need: Step-by-Step for Beginners

> Source: [The Only Affiliate Marketing Tutorial You Need: Step-by-Step for Beginners](https://youtube.com/watch?v=Gj4Zx6Vj7ko)

## Summary

This video is a comprehensive, step-by-step guide to starting a profitable affiliate marketing business from scratch. The creator, who claims to have made millions through affiliate marketing, covers the business model, niche selection, affiliate programs, content creation, tools, and common mistakes. The tutorial is designed for beginners and emphasizes practical action over theory.

### Key Points

- **Introduction to Affiliate Marketing** [00:01] — Affiliate marketing is a way to make money online where a merchant pays a commission to an affiliate for driving sales or traffic. The affiliate creates content, places special tracked links, and earns a commission when a purchase is made within the cookie duration.
- **Benefits of Affiliate Marketing** [02:26] — Key benefits include no inventory or shipping, the ability to work from home, flexible hours, low startup cost (essentially $0), and scalable income potential. The creator mentions crossing seven figures and believes anyone can succeed with the right approach.
- **Choosing a Profitable Niche** [03:43] — Niche selection is crucial. The creator recommends using ChatGPT to brainstorm profitable niches, listing finance/investing, health/wellness, tech/gadgets, online education, business/personal development, and beauty/fashion as examples. It's important to choose a niche you're passionate about and that is specific but not too narrow.
- **Affiliate Programs and Platforms** [07:45] — Amazon Associates is a good starting point, with commission rates varying by category (e.g., 2.5% for PCs/electronics, 3% for toys/furniture, up to 20% for Amazon games). Other platforms include Impact, ShareASale, and Partnerize. The creator shows how to find brands and apply on Impact.
- **Getting Eyeballs: Website, Social Media, Email** [13:16] — The hardest part is getting traffic. The three main channels are a website (for SEO and email marketing), social media (YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest), and email marketing. The creator emphasizes quality over quantity: targeted views with intent are more valuable than generic viral views.
- **Setting Up Your Website with Hostinger** [17:22] — The creator recommends Hostinger for hosting, specifically the Business plan at $4/month, which allows up to 100 websites, includes a free domain and email, and has an Amazon Associates plugin. He walks through the setup process, recommending WordPress and templates like Astra and Elementor.
- **Creating Effective Content** [20:05] — Content should provide value and answer questions potential buyers have: pros, cons, pricing, personal experience, alternatives, use cases. Searchable content (SEO) is free traffic. For short-form video, the hook is critical; for YouTube, the thumbnail and value matter. Tools like ChatGPT, Descript, and Opus can help.
- **Common Mistakes to Avoid** [25:39] — Mistakes include promoting too many products at once, not building trust with the audience, using AI-generated content without personalization, and lacking consistency. The creator stresses that consistency is key to success.

### Conclusion

Affiliate marketing is a viable online business model that can be started with minimal cost. Success requires choosing a niche you care about, creating valuable content, driving targeted traffic, and being consistent. The creator encourages viewers to take action immediately and use the resources provided.

## Transcript

exactly how to start a profitable affiliate marketing business now I've about affiliate marketing making millions of dollars along the way and know seriously there are tons of other videos out there but this is the only
one that you need so what we'll do is we'll cover what the business model is niches that are actually profitable that you can still make money in how the pros actually create content efficiently the best tools to use signing up for
affiliate programs your website and way more forget your useless 1hour classes in school spend the hour here instead with me and you'll leave with the affiliate marketer this is the most up-to-date course on YouTube and I'm so
excited to share it with you for free so let's get started okay so let's first cover what affiliate marketing is from a very general standpoint it's basically a way of making money online and I personally know people that are making
year from affiliate marketing so it's very real there are tons of people making tons of money and luckily I know everything that they are doing all the share everything I know with you in this video now affiliate marketing itself
basically an arrangement when a merchant pays a commission to an affiliate for let's say I make a piece of content that reviews this particular camera lens I by going through the pros and cons my
content I place an affiliate link so when a customer or viewer or whatever clicks on that link and actually makes a purchase then I as the affiliate will get paid a commission by the merchant now in this case that particular
Merchant could be Amazon it could be B&H it could be Sony themselves it's really a win-win for everyone and so you as the affiliate are in charge of creating content getting eyeballs giving value to your audience and sending your traffic
to the merchant and if they make an order or buy something or subscribe to type of commission the way that this works is these affiliate links are tracked usually with cookies or some other type of Technology essentially
clicks on that link it's going to be a special link that tells the merchant traffic and then depending on the cooking length let's say 30 days is pretty standard if that person makes any purchase in those first 30 days it's
get that commission so essentially it's this pretty interesting interplay between Merchants Affiliates and customers and you as the affiliate are doing the marketing and driving traffic to the merchant so now that you know
what affiliate marketing is let's now talk about what the benefits are because it's in my opinion one of the best online businesses that you can start so yeah let's talk about some of the perks the first is that there is no inventory
and there's no shipping so you are not stocking all these items yourself you're essentially just acting as the middleman you don't need to build an actual physical business with a warehouse or a tech company with a really intricate
platform whatever what you're focusing on is just sending quality traffic to The Merchant of course this also means you can work from home so you don't need to go to work You Can Be Your Own Boss it can be extremely flexible work hours
and locations so yes you can travel while working there's a very very low startup cost essentially $0 and it has scalable income potential so yes you can figures you can make seven figures you can even make eight figures now
have not made eight figures with affiliate marketing but I have crossed like me can do this then absolutely you can do it yourself too I don't have anything super special about me or what I do I'm not the smartest person in the
world I don't have any extreme talents that give me a huge upper hand and so yeah I think literally anyone can be successful with affiliate marketing if to show you exactly how to do it in this video so now let's talk about picking
your Niche and this is extremely important this is basically the marketing business and the good but also sort of bad news is that you can create content and do affiliate marketing in any Niche so there are probably
thousands or hundreds of thousands of niches out there we can get very first step with affiliate marketing is is because this is going to determine
we target them now every time someone asks me what should my Niche be for depends and I know that's not the best answer but it is the truth and what we'll do is we'll cover some of the more profitable niches that are still doing
recommend doing is look through this list and see if anything in there is within your interest or your skills because the last thing we want to do is affiliate marketing for something that we do not care about this is going to
mean that it's way harder to become consistent and with failing marketing consistency is the most important thing most people fail at this business just because they don't do it for long enough they lose interest they don't see super
why your Niche is so important it has to be something that you yourself are going to take you through is actually chat GPT if you need help brainstorming this is a fantastic tool to have and so yeah I have chat GP pulled up right here
yet have it I just recommend getting it it's going to help you out with this with some of the other steps that we go through so let's do a prompt like this you're an affiliate marketer expert what are the 10 most profitable niches for
answers and I'm just going to sort of go through these because yes these are correct so one is finance and investing this is a very popular Niche it also be things like credit cards cryptocurrency savings accounts personal
this is because there is a lot of money in finance and investing when there's a profits then they can actually pay out bigger affiliate commissions to their great Niche to be in health and wellness is also a fantastic Niche you can
promote things like supplements weight loss programs Fitness food skincare high tech and gadgets this is also a great one so this could be things like software VPN Services web hosting SAS products even technology like laptops
the reason for this is because these things are usually expensive and even a small percentage of that really high sale can result in a pretty hefty commission there's also online education and e-learning there's business and
personal development Beauty and Fashion these are all great high-paying niches they're also quite Evergreen so if you create one piece of content you can actually live on your Channel or website
and that's when you really see the true beauty of marketing because it can be content that starts to rank and that one piece of content can make you money for years other tools you can use are things like Google Trends and answer the public
these are some great ways to do some market research on more specific niches because with a niche you want to go specific but you don't want to go super broad just is not going to get you the Right audience it's not going to give
you any Authority so I definitely don't recommend doing that on the other hand you don't want to go super super super Niche if there's only let's say 5,000 Niche then usually there's not going to
Niche you want something that's specific but not too too specific if that makes any sense and although a lot of these niches are competitive I'd say don't shy competitive if it is a niche and thing that you are really passionate about
so what I encourage you to do is take out a piece of paper if you haven't talked about already any of these niches that resonates with you maybe write that down Circle it do some more brain storing see if there are any sub niches
on do some market research on Google Trends and answer the public scope out some of your competitions so some other of the top ranking articles or videos or short form media whatever it is see what they are doing and see if it's something
that you yourself can do that for me is the best advice on choosing a niche okay affiliate programs so luckily there are many platforms I encourage you to sign up for as a beginner the first is going to be Amazon Associates this is
about any product that is sold on Amazon and receive a commission if your traffic actually buys the product so it's called Amazon Associates it's very easy to sign definitely want to make a website with hostinger we'll briefly cover that later
on this video the great thing is that hostinger has this Amazon Associates plug-in which allows you to display your Amazon products on your website really presentation on your website is going to greatly increase your traffic and
absolute must just to show you guys quickly what you can make on some of these products here you can see what the commission rate is on the right so for example let's say you're doing PCS or Electronics things like that that's 2.5%
televisions and digital video games that's 2% if you do things like toys or furniture or Home Improvement even pet stuff that is 3% and this goes all the way up to 20% for Amazon games so essentially what this means is let's say
you send traffic to Amazon and they buy a $11,000 PC that means that at 2.5% commission rate you're going to make $25 so you can start of see if you send a lot of people to Amazon to particular products even if a small percentage of
them actually buy something you can make a good amount of money and the great thing is that if you send them to Amazon with your affiliate link and they don't actually buy that exact product but they buy something else you're still going to
they buy there are also other tons of affiliate platforms I definitely recommend signing up for so these include impact radius share sale partner there's also going to be affiliate programs that are not on these affiliate
products you really like they might have an affiliate program but if it's not listed on any of these platforms then you can just go to Google search up That they have one that's hosted on their own but these affiliate platforms they are
the best place to just be able to find a ton of different brands and products one of my favorites is for sure impact and let me show you guys what this looks of my accounts and this is going to be your dashboard it's going to show a
snapshot of your earning ing of your clicks all that stuff and so as you can see for this particular account in the last week we had1 129 clicks one action $0 and payouts our conversion rate is 78% and we have an earnings per click of
$0 so probably not the best one to show you guys but just to keep things private you can see is if we come up here to Brands and then go to find Brands you'll companies that run their affiliate program through impact radius so for
example we have Target right here you can make 1 to 5% per sale you have Walmart 1 to 4% per sale and now if we scroll you can see there's tons and tons right here and sort by different categories you can sort by payout model
but for now let's just say I want to look at Target I'll click on this it's get some more information about what the commission rates are so if I come here to view terms it's going to pull this up this one's a little bit complicated but
for some other brands it's going to be a lot more simple if you want to apply for do is click on apply they might want some more information maybe fill out a they're going to go in and approve you manually so this is one of the brands
that I work with ssl.com once you get approved for a particular brand you can right here and it's going to give you your account so if I copy this and I
that link and buy something I will get a commission when looking for the best content for one is first you're going to want to promote only things that you yourself have used or have done extensive research on and can actually
first and foremost is the most important thing the next thing you probably want with commission rates there are different ways that Brands will pay you so there's the percentage way so let's say you make a sale of $100 and they pay
a 5% commission so in that case you're going to get $5 percentages also work for recurring Revenue so let's say you send traffic and they spend $30 per month on some type of software let's say the commission rate there is 10% that
means you're going to make $3 per month as long as that person is a customer sometimes it's limited to maybe 1 year so that's definitely something that you commission rates that are not percentage based so let's say you make a sale of
something and the commission you get is not tied to how much they're spending in this case it could be something like a flat rate so let's say someone buys a software or whatever and let's say the CPS or CPA cost per acquisition cost per
sale is a flat rate of let's say $50 in that case you're going to make $50 no yeah is there a better one not necessarily it's really going to depend on the product the service as well as the pricing the cookie duration is also
something that you should consider so some programs have longer cookie durations and some have shorter so the you know shortest I've seen is maybe 7 days but I've also seen cookie durations of up to 90 plus days meaning if they
click on your link and they don't make a purchase for 89 days and they finally still going to get credit and you will still get that commission so obviously the higher cookie duration the better I want to talk about this first because
starting out with affiliate marketing don't worry too much about what exact content about first that's going to come with time and you'll likely gradually add more and more Brands to your content and so this isn't too necessary to do
up for these affiliate programs and maybe create a spreadsheet so that you can accurately track all them okay so now let's talk about actually getting eyeballs on your content and how you can do this with basically $0 or very close
to it without doubt getting eyeballs on your content is the hardest thing when it's harder than actually creating the content and what really makes or breaks able to get those eyeballs now the great thing is that there are so many
viewers for your content know right later on in this video I will show you how to create effective content that actually ranks and does well on all that I quite good at that that is definitely a skill that I have yeah
that you're going to drive traffic to your links and actually making money the first is with a website so every affiliate marketing business is going to need to have some type of website and luckily there are many ways to build a
website for me I host all of my websites on hostinger it is my favorite way to affiliate marketing website whatever it is and like I mentioned earlier if you want to sell Amazon products they have such a cool Amazon plugin that really
makes making these articles with these called actions to your links look super website is going to actually have traffic is by ranking on search so this like Google or even as a place where you can send traffic from your social media
can build a great affiliate marketing website super fast for just a few doar that later on there's also going to be social media okay so social media means YouTube Instagram Tik Tok Pinterest there are tons of other different
platforms out there but these are going to be the main ones these are all free doesn't cost any money it's going to be a fantastic place to actually post your content by content this could be videos it could be reviews it could be care
pretty much anything and third is going to be email marketing I think not that many people talk about email marketing since it is boring and you can use tools like omnisend and yeah later on I'll show you exactly why building an email
list super early is very very crucial and you're going to want to do that in marketing website and really with the website with social media and with email marketing our whole goal is to get the right types of eyeballs right yes you
can get millions and millions of eyeballs on very generic content but that is not going to result in actual sales or conversions this is something figure out and that is just that the
quality of your views can fluctuate so much I would rather get a th000 very targeted views for people with a lot of intent than 100,000 or even maybe 500,000 views that are super generic with no intent because those are not
going to result in conversions and so yeah it's really not about the volume it's just about the right types of eyeballs and there is a lot we can do to optimize the amount of money we can make per view and there are thousands of
optimizations you can always do with funnels with the types of content you're that we'll talk about that later on this video but I just want to let you guys know get the right types of eyeballs because that is going to be such a big
we have that out of the way way I want you to actually set up some of your platforms besides your social media platforms like Instagram Tik Tok you focusing on a specific Niche you'll probably want to create your own
have tons of other tutorials on this channel that dive into more specific example if you want to do Pinterest affiliate marketing that's 100% possible and I'll have a link to a list of videos I've made down belows for you guys to
continue watching this video get a good grasp on affiliate marketing as a full know Pinterest or Tik Tok or whatever that's when you can watch a more guys to do right now is to actually just set up your website because this is such
it's going to allow you to do the email marketing component and it's going to allow you to actually create blogs and very valuable content that can rank on Google for a lot of people this is how they get the most high intent audience
so I have a special link for hosting her down below that's going to get you the that you'll find anywhere and also if you use code Charlie Chang at checkout discount just follow along with me right now it's super super fast you'll get to
you'll click Start now what you're going to do is pick one of these plans so for affiliate marketing I do recommend going with the business plan it's $4 a month this one plan you can actually create up to 100 different websites so even if
your first website doesn't work out too well you can do another one keep doing friends most of us have tons and tons of websites you also get a free domain free email bunch of free templates that make your website look super professional and
yes you can build a website using hostinger in just maybe 5 10 minutes they also have a ton of AI tools that allow you to create and write content hours of time yeah either of these should be okay I'm going to go with
business you're going to select your period so 1 month 12 months 24 months or month it's super super expensive definitely do at least 12 months but just know that the longer you do it's going to lock in this super low rate for
going to do is go to have a coupon code this is extremely important write down to give you a bigger discount click continue and then you're actually going payment information from there you're going to choose WordPress as your
marketing I do recommend going with WordPress yes there is a hosting or website builder that is even easier to use but for affiliate marketing you know SEO is extremely important and there are so many different plugins you can get
and so yeah that's why I recommend choosing the WordPress option from there on select your templates for example Astra maybe choose Elementor to be your tons of videos about this if you want to dive further but spend maybe one to two
hours actually creating the homepage of your websites populating with some you're going to actually have to start value to your audience now the whole point of our website is not going to be
to actually write articles that give our audience a ton of valuable information that saves them time because affiliate marketing only really works if you are giving your viewer some type of value in
your link they'll be happy to and that's when you can actually start monetizing marketing like I said with the hosting or business plan it does come with a ton write content so what you can do is combine that with chat gbt create
articles that you of course go in and change make it your own don't just copy not going to work definitely add your own spin on it and make it more custom going to really appreciate that so yeah down just get your website set up again
affiliate marketing business and my link to hostinger will be down below so I right so now let's talk about actually making the content all the secrets for making content that works that gets you in front of the right people now I
myself am not that great at making super viral content but that's totally okay because for my business type I do not need to get millions and millions of views from the right people when you're making content you also want to think
have if they want to buy this thing probably going to be the pros the cons the pricing it's going to be your own personal experience using the product or Alternatives you could talk about use cases you can talk about your advice and
service really yeah you can get extremely creative with what you talk is that you are there to serve your audience you're there to give them valuable information and as a result they will likely use your link now how
content well the great thing with searchable content is that it is free if keywords or phrases then these search engines like YouTube Google Pinterest Tik Tok they're going to send traffic to your content for free that's why I'm a
content for your affiliate marketing business if you get really good at this then there's going to be tons and tons of people coming to your websites or to so many people in the world it is so vast there's so many people trying to
people trying to look for reviews look for more information about different things look for top X things to buy for this even if you capture a small percentage of that traffic you can build an incredible business of course there
are some things that we can optimize to get more traffic that being SEO search engine optimization this allows you to get more organic traffic by ranking going to go into too much detail on SEO but there are different plugins you can
agency to help you rank for different things they'll help you with strategy learn this yourself in terms of social media strategies let's talk about short form media first I am a huge fan of short form media because it's a lot
easier to make and you can repost this video on Instagram real Tik Tok even Pinterest even YouTube shorts so by making one piece of content you're able to post it in essentially four different locations and that my friends is working
smarter not harder with short form the most important part of the video is going to be one the title that's for the search but also the hook so that's going video if you're making your video and you watch the first 2 or 3 seconds and
you're not like I want to watch the rest of it and that's not a good hook any video without a good hook is not going to perform well I guarantee it especially with the amount of short form media that is being posted every single
attention and that hook is how you something to reel them in and then for the rest of the video you want to have Fast Cuts you want to provide good information and you want that video to
if you can get a video to be more sharable then the algorithm is going to of content it's going to push it out more yes with short form media the not going to be as high quality as your
website or even YouTube but it still is traffic and what you can do is you know give them a piece of information tell them hey if you want more information YouTube video this can be a great way to get your other content discovered and
they can reach a lot of people and that can be a great way to initially build your audience with YouTube it's pretty similar right the hook is not as the thumbnail in this case is going to be more important as well as the value
of the information that you are giving in the video so I've probably made YouTube you sort of get used to talking on camera sort of like I'm doing right now but this is definitely a little bit harder not that many people are going to
camera by lighting microphone all that stuff but I will say your videos they don't need to look that professional as long as the information you're giving is good and valuable that is the most important thing so yes I see videos all
professionally made they're filmed with an iPhone but the value of the info is super super strong and that's why they rank that's why I think everyone should try making YouTube videos at some point I know it is hard but it can definitely
tools that you can use within your affiliate marketing business first is going to be chat GPT this is a great way to you know strategize to get information to create initial drafts of your content yeah there's so much stuff
extremely cheap and there's also a free plan so I think everyone should have it thing you need to have so we already covered this I just recommend hostinger host your website so that other people can come and you know see your content
going to need some type of camera it can be your phone you might want lighting or a microphone or a tripod and there's tons and tons of tools out there like descript submic Opus there are tons of these AI tools I can actually help you
going to save you a ton of time so I definitely recommend find these tools and actually utilize them I love using frame.io this is where I have all of my video collaboration I'll upload my videos there my editors will go in you
know download the media we can make revision comments directly on the video have especially if you're making videos I also recommend using things like management this is where you can have all the different projects you're
putting out the different videos I personally use clickup although I do think notion is just as good for most people if you're doing YouTube using extremely important these save me hundreds of hours per year and give me
help me rank there's also other AI tools like perplexity that do help with should be a good starting list for the tools that will help you with your affiliate marketing business okay so now let's talk about common mistakes that
most people make I see these mistakes over and over again so let's talk about many products all at once in different niches essentially this is like starting tons and tons of businesses all at the same time if you do that there's no
successful because your time and ttention is spread out way too thin so just focus on maybe one to three products at first build really good content around that you know make articles make videos do whatever else
do that you'll get better at it and you'll be able to Branch off work with sort of like the timeline that I reckon with another big mistake that people make is they don't build enough trust with their audience so if you yourself
cannot build a good personal brand or trust then think about it why would they actually listen to what you have to say and of course why would they use your really comes in by relating to your Audience by actually giving them good
information by actually helping them that's when you build that trust right yes it is hard for strangers to know fully trust you but if you help them out that trust they're going to be like okay I got something from this person I
should give them something as well I'll use their link another mistake I see is people that use chat gbt they just generate an article and copy and paste does not work these days without your
be subpar it might sound kind of weird and again guys it's about trust so you need to put your own personal touch onto your content another huge mistake is just lack of consistency so yes this is an exciting business model it is a cool
way of making online money but you need to do it consistently and most people they'll get bored of it stop what I will tell you is that there is zero chance that you will have a successful business of any kind if you are not consistent so
putting out content consistently writing articles consistently finding new brands making your content better okay right so obviously we covered a ton of could probably talk about this topic for at least a few more hours but I want to
make this video more concise for you I want you to actually take action on the a ton of information that's just going to overwhelm you and guys likely you'll build your business everything that you learn in this video is going to give you
a perfect Foundation but I guarantee you there's going to be a lot more to learn learn that as you do it so go out there literally take action on the steps that we talked about today you watching this video gives you like let's say a 500%
boost in success rate versus someone that does not have this type of that consistency you still need that drive and you still really just need making this video hopefully you guys learned some things things that you
didn't know before I pretty much just covered every single thing that I wish I it 100% would have made me a lot more successful a lot faster so hopefully take action you can see some success with affiliate marketing because I
really want you to all succeed in building your own business again if you have links to more resources for you guys and I'll have links to some of the I cannot stress this enough affiliate marketing is such a great online
can start with just a laptop and get started is in this video that you're watching right now I credit affiliate marketing for why I'm able to live the life I live being able to work from home
or while traveling and if this is the type of lifestyle that you want to have first step so please please try it you'll thank yourself later and driving point to get you started on your affiliate marketing business Journey if
really appreciate it if you gave this video a like if you share it with a videos like this on my channel and we cover things like building your own finance thank you so much for sticking with me for this long and I'll see you
with me for this long and I'll see you in the next video peace