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A 16-year-old can get started with affiliate marketing by creating content, however, either by taking pictures of images of interest, writing stories, recording scenes or footage of events of interest, and storing them in an organized method to create an audience.

What is marketing?

Marketing is the conceptualization of an idea of a product or service, bringing together materials and resources to produce this product or service, then creating procedures to make people use the product and pay for it.

Companies that will birth the new product are formed and will create jobs. These jobs will include production, promotion, and selling. All the in-betweens of running an organization are not left out. 

What is affiliate marketing?

Affiliate marketing is the process that allows a third party to get involved in the promotion of a company’s product or service and are paid a commission for their involvement.

In affiliate marketing, unlike the traditional use of sales teams, technology is highly leveraged. The sales teams are resourced and trained by the company to deliver on sales targets. 

The affiliate marketer owns their resources and creates their channels. While the sales team get both fixed salary and commission, the affiliate marketer gets only commissions.

However, the affiliate marketer is not bound to just a company but can use their channels (websites, youtube channels, Whatsapp, Instagram, etc.) to sell much more products and services to many more people.

Little wonder how affiliate marketers are wealthier and more resourceful.

How do I start affiliate marketing?

Affiliate marketing is research-dependent. You will always be learning and updating on so many topics. So start with:

1. Search for a product to sell. You need to know where to find what to sell. That brings up choosing a network. Networks are an online marketplace where producers come to seek advertisers or promoters, also known as affiliates.
2. Choose your niche. A niche is a product category. Pick one you’re passionate about if you need fast results. You stick to only one during your learning process when you start getting results.
3. Join an affiliate program. The practice is to apply to join a program and wait for the approval. You will be appraised based on your answers to their questionnaire and your website or channel for promoting your affiliate link.
4. Create valuable content. Make contents that solve challenges or are entertaining. Your content should deliver value, however, to be relevant. It is in your content that you embed your affiliate link.
5. Drive traffic to your website, YouTube channel, etc. (your affiliate site). Use social media, email marketing, SEO, etc., to send traffic to your affiliate site. 
6. Share your content and get clicks for your affiliate links. The more clicks, the higher the chances of converting them to sales, and you earn a commission. Here is an example of how to use affiliate links in your content. If you buy any item on amazon using this link, I will be paid a commission by Amazon.

What affiliate programs can I start?

Some of the best affiliate programs to join:

• Amazon Affiliate program
• Grammarly Affiliate program
• Fiverr Affiliate Program
• Whogohost Affiliate program
• GetResponse Affiliate program
• ShareAsale Affiliate Program

Can I start Affiliate marketing for Free?

My answer is no! You can’t start affiliate marketing for free. Affiliate marketing requires computers and internet access, and they don’t come free.

However, there are basic costs that are required to start affiliate marketing. These are the cost of 

• buying a domain name
• building a WordPress website
• hosting your website
• training courses
• books
• internet access
• etc.

If you are willing to put in the effort, the return on investment in affiliate marketing is high.

I assume you already have a mobile phone with internet access.

Within that context, you can become an affiliate marketer with no money for a start. When you start making money, you then build your system.

Start by:

• Finding a niche
• Join a free affiliate program
• Choose a traffic source such as Quora, Facebook, Medium, etc
• Create content to build trust
• Share your content across your traffic source
• Answer questions on your source of the traffic to establish your authority over your knowledge of your niche
• Then share your link for clicks.

Conclusion:

To get started in affiliate marketing on a sound footing for the long term, assuming that you have chosen a niche you are passionate about, you need some of the following skills either now or in the immediate future:

1. Understand how to build WordPress website.

2. Get to have some graphic design skills.

3. Content creation skills, written or video.

Then start with your content creation and this should also include graphic content.

Write/create video, up to about 5 contents, build your website and include these contents as your posts.

Choose a network you will like to work with. They will need your website to qualify and approve your application. Approval come with the affiliate link which you now share using your content.