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There are two sides: those who sell and those who buy. Every side is in need of the other.
Affiliate marketing can help you become the one who connects them. By promoting products to relevant audiences, you earn commission when that promotion leads to a specific result.
If that sounds good to you, here are a few steps between finding an affiliate program and starting to earn from it. These include:
– Finding the right products to promote
– Creating content or ad campaigns around those products
– Optimizing them for the best possible return
All this can seem like a ton of information to absorb, but trust us, affiliate marketing is an exciting industry to get into. We’ve been in the game for over seven years and know what we are talking about.
So let’s go over how affiliate marketing works, what it takes to start earning, and which mistakes to avoid along the way.
In essence, affiliate marketing is the process of promoting another company’s product and earning a commission when someone takes a specific action after following your link.
Requirements for the action can be different. These can be a purchase, a subscription to a channel or service, an app install, or another defined conversion. As you get rewarded for such actions, you’ll need to track your results. If you work with an affiliate network, this is mostly their job to track conversions and reward you accordingly (more on that later). Still, it’s a good idea to use your own tracker just to double-check that you’re not being scammed.
At its core, the affiliate marketing process would look something like this:
1. A business creates an offer: the product, the rewarded action (conversion), the payout, plus allowed countries and devices.
2. You opt for the offer and get yourself a personal affiliate link.
3. Then, you find a suitable source of traffic and design a marketing funnel to send traffic to the company through your link.
4. Your audience follows the link and performs the required action.
5. The tracking system detects the conversion and adds the payout to your account.
Personal links help businesses to track the source and activity of incoming traffic and pay you respectfully for your work.
The “extended family” of affiliate marketing involves six participants: brands, advertisers, publishers, affiliate networks, ad networks, and users. However, brands and users are the beginning and end points of the process. Main roles are played by advertisers, publishers, affiliate networks, and ad networks.
Let’s make a clarification here first: Depending on who you ask, affiliates can be both advertisers and publishers. Ad networks treat affiliates as advertisers, while affiliate networks treat them as publishers. Since we’re an ad network, we’ll refer to affiliates as advertisers because they come to us with an offer they want to promote using our traffic sources.
So, advertisers (affiliates) look for traffic sources from publishers, in our case, website owners. Advertisers pay for access, and in return they get money either from paying users directly or from product owners as commissions.
There are product owners who need traffic and are ready to pay for it. There are affiliates, or advertisers, who intermediate the flow of traffic. And the third main party is the publisher, or in our case, the website owner.
Publishers have a website, platform, app, or some other medium frequented by ordinary users. These users might be a perfect fit for some ads, so advertisers want to reach them. This creates an opportunity for publishers to monetize their websites.
So at the end of the day, there are two main streams: traffic and money. Traffic goes from publishers to advertisers, while money goes the other way: product owners → affiliates → website owners.
Affiliate networks are intermediaries between product owners and affiliates. They treat them as “advertisers” and “publishers,” respectively, so don’t get lost (especially in relation to ad networks).
Affiliate networks serve as large libraries of offers. They standardize offers, provide consistent payments to affiliates, and support promotion through assigned personal managers. Let’s not forget that it makes it easier for affiliates to find the offers in the first place.
Product owners, on the other hand, get measurable results and avoid wasting their marketing budgets down the drain.
Ad networks are another intermediary, but this time sitting in between affiliates and website owners. RollerAds is an example of this intermediary (or at least used to be): Affiliates bring in offers, so they are our advertisers; website owners provide ad space, so they are our publishers.
This kind of network handles the process in between, including targeting, ad delivery, and payments. Ad networks also monitor the quality of traffic, provide quality-of-life tools, and support diverse ad formats and their respective creatives to capture all kinds of users.
Another thing to know about ad networks is that they tend to specialize. Some might work with just mainstream offers (like RollerAds), while others accept 18+ products. The range of supported ad formats also differs.
Now we’ve said RollerAds used to be an ad network; why is that? Because we’re a full-cycle platform now, combining the functions of an affiliate network, an ad network, and even more. Basically, it’s a one-stop solution, something the industry hasn’t fully adopted yet.
Source: RollerAds blog
Affiliates work just like any other entrepreneur. They invest money and buy traffic to show users. If they make more money on conversions than they spend on the traffic, they earn profit. The chart below shows the entire process, from choosing an offer to earning a profit.
Source: RollerAds blog
For example, in one of our campaigns, we took a browser installation offer from the RollerAds offer catalog and promoted it using OnClick traffic on desktop in Brazil for 15 days.
Ad spend: $439.02
Revenue: $755
Profit: $315.98
ROI: 71.97%
It’s just an example of one positive result on RollerAds. We had an offer, a country, one format, and dedication to the cause. We monitored the campaign daily and adjusted traffic according to the numbers. Those results are not guaranteed, and a different strategy could have produced a different result, but the shape of the work is roughly the same across every campaign.
As a beginner, always be ready for your first numbers to be negative. Don't think of it as wasted money; think of it as crucial information for further scaling.
If you have your own website with an audience, you can monetize the traffic that you receive daily. You can provide ad space on your page to the ad network that fills it with relevant ads. Your users will see and interact with ads, and you make money.
Some websites take time to build up revenue, while others can start generating it much sooner. It depends on various factors, such as your audience’s GEO, the size and quality of your audience, and the monetization type and strategy you choose.
Here is the case study of one of the publishers working with RollerAds. The publisher owns a network of 1,000+ news websites that serve a French audience and reach more than 60 million users each month. They launched Push notification monetization across their websites in January 2024. These were the results:
January: $4,000
February: $18,500
March: $31,000
April: $57,000
From May onward: around 50,000–60,000 per month
You can see clear profit growth. As profit grew, subscribers rose from 26,800 after the first month to 760,000 by April. These numbers affect profits as Push monetization builds on the subscriber base. It means that the more subscribers you have, the more monetization opportunities you get.
Sure, in this example, the publisher was a big shot, much larger than the average website owner. Smaller websites can use the same methods, just at a different scale.
For a more in-depth discussion of publisher monetization, see our website monetization guide.
So you decided to start affiliate marketing. If you are here, we would assume that you have no experience. Easy does it; do not start with multiple GEOs, formats, or affiliate programs at once.
First, think about the products you want to advertise. There are many different verticals, but these are some of them: Software & Utilities, VPNs, Browser extensions, eCommerce, Finance, and Surveys.
As a starting point, RollerAds account managers would often recommend Software & Utilities. A fairly broad vertical with plenty of familiar products and subniches, from VPNs and antivirus software to PDF readers. We recommend you choose one or two verticals and learn how to handle them in different scenarios. Switching every few days makes the data much harder to read.
Next, you are ready to start working with the brand’s affiliate program face-to-face, or you can use an affiliate network that keeps all offers, statistics, and payouts in one place.
When choosing an affiliate network, pay attention to the payment schedule, minimum payout requirements, and available payout methods. Try to balance payout, your budget, and traffic.
When comparing affiliate networks, look at the variety of offers they provide and the filtering options available, such as GEO, device, vertical, payout, and other relevant criteria.
Before comparing individual offers, make sure the network has a solid selection that matches the type of traffic you plan to work with.
The offer page tells you lots of information. Accepted GEOs, payout, allowed devices and OS, types of traffic, desirable actions for conversions, and so on. And, of course, all the restrictions that go with it.
Remember to check and match your planned traffic to the offer’s requirements. A desktop-only offer won’t make you any good if you focus on mobile traffic. It’s an easy mistake to make but usually an expensive one.
Now, when you have an offer, think about how to bring users to it. An ad network can give you access to a large pool of users across different GEOs, devices, and traffic formats if you plan to buy traffic.
Notice that different traffic sources work differently with different offers. Push notifications reach users who have agreed to receive such messages. OnClick delivers a full-page ad through a pop-style interaction. Direct Click brings together several high-intent traffic channels, from deliberate clicks on links placed on publisher websites to domain redirects. Since these channels work differently, your choice of traffic source and format should be based on the offer rather than treated as a separate decision.
At this stage, it’s also important to look at available GEOs, traffic volumes, targeting options, bidding models, and costs. Choose a setup that matches the offer and provides enough traffic for meaningful testing, then scale once you know what works.
If you have an audience already, you just need to create the content that leads users to the offer. It can be anything, such as a review, comparison, article, or social post. The only thing you need is to be honest with your viewers and build up their trust. You can also buy traffic via an affiliate network. There, you need to set up the campaign—your creatives, targeting options, bids, budget, and landing page.
One or two creatives are rarely enough for a proper test, so prepare several variations from the start. Compare their performance to identify what converts best, and introduce fresh versions when the results begin to decline.
At the same time, don’t focus on quantity alone. Each creative should clearly communicate the value of the product or offer and be optimized for the devices you’re targeting.
You need to track that attribution occurs properly after every conversion you have. Affiliates often use postback tracking with paid traffic to send conversion data from the affiliate network or tracker back to the traffic source. Tracking links and IDs can also help with attribution when using traffic you already have access to, such as social media or your own audience.
We recommend setting up your tracking (3rd-party one) before putting a serious budget into a campaign. Without the proper tracking system, it will be harder to see which parts of the campaign generated conversions.
Affiliate marketing is largely about analyzing campaign results. Performance can be split into small aspects. These are traffic zones, creatives, GEO, device, OS, bid, and conversion data.
This information helps you determine whether a poor campaign has hidden potential or whether a successful-looking one will fizzle out soon. Ultimately, this helps you identify the real cause before you make your next move.
By redirecting your budget from poor performers to promising ones, you optimize your campaign. Usually, you can remove weak zones, adjust bids for stronger-performing traffic, pause tired creatives, and limit how often people see them.
The big question is when to scale and how to choose the right thing to scale. As always, easy does it. Try increasing your budget in increments and make one major adjustment at a time. Imagine you need to test different aspects, let's say GEO, OS, bid strategy, and creatives. If you rev it all up and it suddenly booms, you won’t understand what the real cause was and what was just unnecessary spending.
Speaking of GEO, we’ve recently compiled the best-performing combinations of GEOs, ad formats, and verticals—check them out to make an informed decision about where to start your tests.
Source: RollerAds blog
Many ad networks are on the market, so it can be hard to choose. Beforehand, you should ask yourself about your goals. Here are simple questions that can help you to find the best choice:
One more important consideration: How many separate platforms do I need to effectively manage all aspects of my advertising workflow?
If you have a hard time answering the question above or you don’t plan on using separate platforms, we have some great news for you. RollerAds has evolved into a full-cycle advertising platform where a single account gives you access to the core parts of the workflow: picking offers, launching campaigns, and generating revenue from traffic on your own websites. That means you don't have to control separate platforms, jumping from one to another. The offer catalog within RollerAds currently contains over 300 offers—including in-house deals and offers from other providers.
You can launch RollerAds offers directly on RollerAds traffic from the offer page. The system will fill the relevant campaign fields. Here is the full breakdown in our recent article about our built-in affiliate network.
Making mistakes is fine and absolutely necessary, as they are part of the process. It's best to be aware and avoid them, since every mistake can cost you money. Most come down to small decisions made during setup. The points below are partially based on an interview with RollerAds account managers Kate and Mary.
Every offer comes with its own requirements and restrictions. Before launching a campaign, check the allowed GEOs, devices, operating systems, traffic types, and conversion flow. It’s also worth going through the offer yourself from a user’s perspective. This gives you a better understanding of the entire journey and can reveal important details that aren’t immediately obvious from the offer description.
It's important to match the product you’re advertising to the traffic you are targeting. No matter how good your ad is, it is worthless if it doesn't align with your traffic and your audience's needs. For example, it is pretty much useless to ask mobile users to install browser extensions, since they usually require a desktop. The same idea applies to any offer limited by device, OS, or a specific user flow.
Conversion tracking gives you the data you need to understand what’s working and make informed decisions about your campaigns. As RollerAds account manager Kate puts it, “Without it, you’re flying blind; you can’t measure performance, optimize campaigns, or scale.”
RollerAds account managers recommend keeping individual campaign tests as focused as possible. When you test too many variables at once, it becomes difficult to understand what is driving the results. A better approach is to start with a limited setup, such as one GEO and one OS, and expand once you have enough data to make informed decisions.
That said, broader tests are still possible. When trying a new ad network, a Run-on-Network test can help you identify which GEOs, devices, formats, or other segments show potential. The key is to define what you want to learn before launching the test.
Ideally, each test should answer a specific question. If you change several elements at once, it becomes much harder to determine which factor affected performance. Use broad tests to identify opportunities, then narrow your setup to isolate, optimize, and scale what works.
The easiest solution to that is to test with the right bidding model. The problem is to find the right one. Set the bid too low, and it will limit the traffic; set it too high, and it will burn your budget before you can get any results.
SmartCPC and SmartCPM automate bidding in different ways, while CPA Goal optimizes toward a target cost per action.
We have a detailed comparison between CPC, SmartCPC, and CPA Goal if you’d like to see how these bid models work in practice.
No one likes poorly made content. Low-quality visuals, poorly written copy, or creatives that don’t align with the offer can flop before your campaign can prove itself. Another common mistake is launching with just one or two creatives and leaving them as is.
Instead, create several variations and rotate them regularly, replacing weaker or outdated versions with new ones. This gives you more opportunities to identify what resonates with your audience. Make sure each creative is also suited to the target device and consistent with the user journey that follows the click.
Rome wasn't built in a day. The same goes for your campaign won't tell you much on the first day. Paid campaigns need enough data to identify trends, while publisher monetization may build over time as the monetizable audience grows.
If your first results aren’t as good as you expected, don't worry; wait a bit and gather more data.
Some people forget that they are not alone in this journey. You don’t need to blindly test everything. Account managers have experience analyzing campaigns across many different markets, offers, and bidding setups. They can look through your campaign and give you some feedback or even direct tips on how to improve your performance.
Even with all of the information and insights, you cannot move forward without testing. Although, we still recommend you ask for help in order to avoid wasting money.
How much can you make with affiliate marketing?
As much as you want; it depends on how much time and effort you’re willing to invest. Making money from affiliate marketing depends on a plethora of factors:
Your skill level when it comes to optimizing a campaign
Can you start affiliate marketing with no experience?
Yes. One of the simplest ways to get started is to keep your setup focused: choose one or two verticals, start with a single GEO and traffic format, and make sure everything is tracked from day one. Once you have enough data to understand what’s working, you can gradually introduce more variables and explore new opportunities.
Do you need a website to start affiliate marketing?
No. Your own website is just one way to generate affiliate marketing traffic, and it isn’t required. If you don’t have an audience of your own, you can buy traffic through an advertising network or use other traffic sources.
The trade-off is that paid traffic typically requires a budget for testing and optimization, while building an owned audience takes more time but can reduce your long-term reliance on paid traffic.
At its core, affiliate marketing works like this: a company pays for a specific action, the affiliate sends traffic to the offer, motivates users to take action, and a tracking system records the conversion so the right affiliate gets the commission.
The difficult part is figuring out which factors are actually driving the results. An offer’s performance can be influenced by any combination of the offer itself, traffic source, GEO, creative, tracking setup, bid or cost, and optimization. That’s why affiliate marketing is largely about testing these variables and identifying which changes truly impact performance.
If you’re starting with little or no experience, keep your first setup simple enough that you can clearly interpret the data. Pick a niche, choose a relevant offer, set up tracking correctly, and test one variable at a time before you start scaling.
RollerAds brings many of the tools you need to launch your first campaign together in one account, including offers, paid traffic, website monetization options, tracking tools, and access to account managers and support. If you’re ready to start testing, create an account with RollerAds, and if you need help, our support team will be happy to guide you.
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