How to Make Money From Affiliate Marketing in 2025

One of the easiest ways for bloggers and digital nomads to make money is through affiliate marketing.

They recommend specific products or services and receive a commission for each subsequent sale that is directly attributed to their recommendation.

When you're reading a blog post or an article or scrolling through your social media feeds, you may not realize how prevalent affiliate links can be. But once you learn to spot the tell-tale signs, you'll start to see them everywhere.

Affiliate relationships are increasing in popularity because they are mutually beneficial to both the blogger and the company. With little to no effort, bloggers generate a passive income, and companies benefit from increased sales.

What's more, affiliate links are quick and easy to set up and require little technical know-how.

What Are the Benefits of Affiliate Marketing?

The growth of e-commerce has meant that small and independent brands can easily compete against multinational corporations.

While they may not have the same buying power as larger retailers, smaller firms can quickly build relationships with brand ambassadors and customers to generate additional sales. By offering a financial incentive, bloggers and influencers can be enticed into reviewing and endorsing specific products to their audiences.

The accessibility of affiliate marketing is what makes it so popular. You do not need to have millions of followers to be influential.

Anyone can register themselves with an affiliate program and generate links to products they genuinely like and use. They can build their own website or share the links via their personal social media pages and receive a passive income stream.

In many circumstances, people use affiliate links to help fund their hobbies.

Let's take the sewing community as an example. Affiliate marketing is rife within this niche hobby, where many people will meet in online forums or social media groups to discuss their recommendations and suggestions.

Many sewists may sign up for affiliate programs to share pattern recommendations or fabric choices with their friends. By sharing details of their favorite patterns, fabrics or photos of items they have made, they can generate funds for new designs or materials.

Affiliate marketing is hugely popular because it's so quick and easy to do. There's little to no risk involved – after all, it doesn't cost anything to set up, and if it doesn't work, you haven't lost anything.

It's also self-generating. Once you've shared your affiliate link, you don’t need to do anything else. It will take care of itself without needing to monitor its performance.

Instead, you can sit back and watch the dollars roll in!

How Does Affiliate Marketing Work?

There are three distinct types of affiliate marketing. Let's look at each in turn to see how they differ.

Affiliate Network

These are third-party businesses. They easily connect businesses (merchants) with affiliate marketers. These networks will have data analytics that you can use to see which products are selling well.

You can use this information to inform your affiliate-marketing strategies. A popular example of an affiliate network is the Amazon Associates program.

This style of affiliate marketing is often used by bloggers who want to use affiliate links to recommend specific products that relate to their chosen niche.

For example, there are thousands of bloggers who write about home renovations. They may use affiliate networks to source and recommend products that they use within their renovation projects.

Affiliate Program

This is very similar to the affiliate network way of working. The merchant takes control of the program. They will typically provide an affiliate referral link to the marketer, who shares that link with their audience.

When a customer buys an item via that referral link, the marketer receives a small commission.

However, unlike affiliate networks, the merchant is in complete control of the whole process. They set the rules, the commission rates, and they also manage the entirety of the program. Affiliate programs are popular amongst hobbyists (like the sewing example discussed earlier).

Affiliate Partnership

This offers mutual benefits to both parties. Within an affiliate partnership arrangement, your affiliate program and another affiliate program will jointly agree to promote each other's services and products to your audiences.

Affiliate partnership relationships are a beneficial way to reach a broader (yet completely relevant) audience and improve your credibility.

Your audience will be confident that you are only working with partners that you trust, rather than taking affiliate earnings from anything or everything.

An example of an affiliate partnership is something such as a brand ambassadorship role, where you work with an influencer to promote your products, and your business actively promotes that ambassador.

Although it is quick and easy to jump straight into affiliate marketing schemes, it can be challenging to make a significant impact.

Successful people who earn good passive incomes through affiliate marketing take their time. They strategize, and they think carefully about how they can be seen as a trusted influencer. They also establish the best possible ways to continue to make as much money as possible for minimal effort.

Here are a few step-by-step pointers to help you get started.

Essential Tips to Help You Get Started With Affiliate Marketing in 2025

As an affiliate marketer, you rely on other people to act on your recommendations to supplement your income.

Therefore, you should always put integrity, honesty and trust at the heart of everything you do. Without the goodwill and positive feeling from your audience, you have nothing. Therefore, you must always consider your audience above all else.

Be Genuine

If you're working in the bloggersphere or have a significant social media presence, it's important to remember that your audience can turn on you just as quickly as they can build you up.

Your business (and your income) will rely on them trusting in what you say. If you do something that goes against what your audience stands for, they will soon hold you to account.

With this in mind, you need to be genuine in everything that you publish. Your affiliate links should be relevant, and they should be something that you are proud to endorse.

If somebody buys a product based on your say-so, but they have poor results, they will be more likely to think badly of you rather than the product manufacturer.

So, you should only ever recommend products and take a commission from items that you genuinely believe in.

It can be tempting to chase the dollars and fill your website full of affiliate links to enhance your income. But if that starts to affect the quality of your content, your audience will simply move elsewhere and follow someone else.

Include Disclosures

It is also wise to include affiliate disclosures within your content. If you are making money from a product, that should be made clear to your audience to make an informed decision.

The inclusion of your disclaimer will not only improve your credibility amongst your audience, but it is also a legal requirement. The Federal Trade Commission regulates affiliate marketing.

The regulation ensures that all product endorsements are transparent and differentiate between paid and unpaid content. Therefore, your disclaimers should be conspicuous on your website.

You may wish to have a dedicated page explaining your approach and have a prepared statement that you include on all web pages that feature affiliated links.

Make Sure Your Links Are Relevant

Don't go overboard with affiliate links. It can be tempting to litter your site with them. After all, the more you have, the more money you can earn.

But the reality is that less is more. As we've already mentioned, your audience will be coming to you because they want to hear what you have to say. If they feel that they are only there to be sold to by a salesperson, they will quickly lose interest.

You may find that it's more beneficial to have fewer affiliate links to higher-priced, big-ticket items than lots of links to low pay points. The result may still be the same – the net income from your affiliate marketing may be similar, but you'll regain the trust and advocacy of your audience with fewer, more relevant links.

Know Where to Put Your Links

A few strategies can help you determine where to place your affiliate links to help you make money.

As a general rule, you should include your relevant links near the top of your article. As with any copy, you cannot guarantee that your audience will continue reading to the end. Therefore, you want to have all relevant information near the top of the page, where it is more likely to be seen.

Make Your Content Work Harder

You also want to use your content carefully. If you are referring to a specific product, what search terms are commonly used with that item?

With affiliate marketing, it's not just about using your SEO to direct people to your site. It's about being able to maximize opportunities for people searching for specific products. Thanks to keyword searches and content optimization plans, you can successfully insert relevant keywords into your posts, which will aid your visibility and help you to generate organic traffic.

Get the Experts In

A final tip is to outsource to the experts. Some of the top affiliate marketers make thousands of dollars through a passive income because the very best people manage them. They rely on experts to handle their SEO. They outsource content to copywriters to cope with a high-paced publishing schedule. And they rely on social media teams to keep all channels up to date.

They may even hire a specific affiliate marketing expert to manage any affiliate partnerships or research new opportunities. As you start to make money from affiliate marketing, you should reinvest some of that income into your business.

Think carefully about how you plan to grow and what you want to achieve. With more help, you can scale up your brand and make more money while working fewer hours.

It Is Possible to Make Money, but It Is Hard Work

Earning money from affiliate marketing is one thing. Earning an income from affiliate marketing is very different.

Some people may only make a few cents or a few dollars from their affiliate marketing links. Others may earn enough money that they don’t have to do anything else.

The difference between those who make money and those who earn an income is that the latter have treated their affiliate marketing strategies as a business. They've understood that it takes time and dedication. They've focused on building a brand, and they have found a community they can tap into.

Affiliate marketing is an excellent option for those who have a vision and focus on what they want to do. It's not something that requires any specific skills or qualifications.

In that respect, it's accessible to all. But effective affiliate marketing involves an understanding of what today's fickle audiences are looking for. With new bloggers and YouTube stars emerging every day, there is no guarantee that audiences will remain loyal.

We are currently in the 'boom' phase of affiliate marketing.

As a relatively new income stream, it's almost impossible to know how audiences may change in the future. Therefore, it's difficult to predict trends and understand whether this is a long-term income stream or whether this could naturally peter out in the next few years.

As a short-term income stream, affiliate marketing can be extremely profitable. However, any marketers will need to consider their longevity and strategize how they plan to remain successful.

Final Thoughts

It is possible to make money from affiliate marketing, but it takes time and dedication to turn it into an income stream.

Knowing your audience and being able to deliver content that they engage with and find useful is a key first step. Learn about SEO techniques to drive them to your online platform and hopefully they will click on your affiliate links and start to earn you a commission.