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Affiliate marketing is one of the coolest ways to make money online. What else could be more soothing than earning cool cash just for promoting other people’s products? You don’t need any products or services of your own, and you’re not concerned about order handling. Just generate sales and get your commission!
And from the point of view of a growing business, affiliate marketing is one of the fastest ways to grow into a big brand. By launching an affiliate program, you’re practically hiring more-than-countable brand ambassadors who will gladly market your products or services enthusiastically. Of course, they’d be getting paid generously for that. And on top of that, you’d get tons of backlinks to your online store without losing extra cash or sweat. This alone is a huge advantage.
All of the above explain why affiliate marketing is a lucrative business model that won’t fizzle out anytime soon.
What are the Best Affiliate Marketing Books to read?
Whether you intend to become an affiliate marketer or you want to launch and run an affiliate program for your own business, one of the easiest ways to grab how everything works is to get a good book on the subject. There are loads of free resources on affiliate marketing all over the web. True that! But most of them contain outdated, misleading, or incomplete information that could prompt you to fall into avoidable mistakes.
Best Affiliate Marketing Books: Our Top 5 Picks
Here are 5 of the most detailed and well-researched books that provide quality information on affiliate marketing.
1. Affiliate Marketing: Launch a Six Figure Business with Clickbank Products, Affiliate Links, Amazon Affiliate Program, and Internet Marketing
This is one of the most detailed beginner-friendly books on affiliate marketing. In fact, the author left out no single part that any affiliate marketer needs to understand, especially when starting out. The book explains the meaning of affiliate marketing as well as related basic terms and concepts. It also explores the history of affiliate marketing, giving a brief account that won’t get you bored.
More importantly, the book details how to start an affiliate marketing business, shedding light on important topics like niche selection and analysis, deciding what to write, how long your content should be, the various affiliate programs and networks you can work with, and the commissions offered.
Other important topics covered in the book include affiliate site promotion for traffic, conversion optimization, content strategy, search engine optimization, and lots more.
Whether you’re just starting out as an affiliate marketer, or you’re already into the business but are looking to learn some additional helpful stuff, you won’t go wrong with this book.
- Authors: Noah Gray, Michael Fox
- Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
- Current edition: December 2017
- Pages: 266
2. Affiliate Marketing: The Beginner’s Step By Step Guide To Making Money Online With Affiliate Marketing
If you’re looking for a short, yet detailed beginner’s guide to affiliate marketing, this book is a good option to consider. In 60 short pages, the author covered everything you need to know about the business of affiliate marketing.
After starting with a detailed definition of affiliate marketing, the book explains the benefits of affiliate marketing as well as common mistakes made by beginner affiliate marketers. Then it goes on to explain the fundamentals of affiliate marketing and how to get started with this model on online business.
From this book, you’d also learn how to choose the right affiliate programs and networks to work with, how to set up your affiliate site and generate traffic to it. And most importantly, the book explains how to strategically promote affiliate offers and make a decent monthly income doing just that.
Note this: just as the title of the book suggests, the book is written specifically for beginners who are just starting out with affiliate marketing. Experienced affiliates will find it too basic.
- Author: Kevin Ulaner
- Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
- Current edition: August 2017
- Pages: 60
3. Quick Start Guide to Affiliate Marketing: Answers to the Questions You Should Be Asking
If you’re a stickler for books written in interactive question-and-answer formats, then you’d love this book. As its name implies, the book provides detailed answers to the various questions beginners ask about affiliate marketing.
Expectably, the book starts by answering the most basic questions on affiliate marketing, such as questions on the definition of affiliate marketing, an affiliate’s earning potential, what affiliates get paid for, how to get started, the requirements for starting out, affiliate programs and networks, and so on. It also answers questions on affiliate marketing-related terms such as cookies, locking period, and so on.
Still through its question and answer pattern, the book explains the most profitable niches, most popular types of affiliate websites, how to choose the right affiliate program and promotional tools (banners, etc.), the importance of blogging in affiliate marketing, content management systems such as WordPress, email marketing, and other important concepts you need to understand as an affiliate marketer.
While affiliate marketers with moderate experience can benefit from the book, it is written with beginners in mind.
- Author: Evgenii “Geno” Prussakov
- Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
- Current edition: March 2014
- Pages: 84
4. Performance Partnerships: The Checkered Past, Changing Present & Exciting Future of Affiliate Marketing
Now, get this clearly: This book won’t teach you how to get started as an affiliate marketer. Rather it contains an in-depth analysis of the affiliate marketing industry as well as its importance and effectiveness as a form of digital marketing. It also contains recommendations on how affiliate marketing can be used to enhance business growth and development.
Written by a market leader in the affiliate marketing industry, the book clarifies the differences between affiliate marketing and performance marketing. It also breaks down the history of affiliate marketing into three generations between 1996 and 2017. And it wraps up with an analysis of future projections on the affiliate marketing industry.
This book is ideal for affiliate marketers and digital marketing experts who already have or want to develop an analytical mind, or those who want to know everything about whatever they dip their feet into.
- Author: Robert Glazer
- Publisher: Linocrest Publishing
- Current edition: May 2017
- Pages: 288
5. Affiliate Program Management: An Hour a Day
As stated earlier, running an affiliate program is one of the tactics for fast business growth. And it’s no surprise that virtually all retailers that make the Internet Top 500 Retailers list run affiliate programs. So, small business owners looking to grow their businesses should consider starting their own affiliate programs.
This book explains how to effectively develop, launch, and manage a successful affiliate program using the popular “An Hour a Day” format. It explains how to go about the various steps involved, such as choosing the right payment model, recruiting affiliates, conducting market research, crafting the right communications, and lots more.
If you’re looking to learn how to get started as an affiliate marketer and make money as on, this book isn’t for you. Rather, it’s for those who want to master an easy, do-it-yourself approach to starting and running an affiliate program for their small business.
- Authors: Evgenii “Geno” Prussakov
- Publisher: Sybex
- Current edition: First edition (April 2011)
- Pages: 464
