Beginner's Guide to Affiliate Marketing in 2025

Affiliate marketing is now worth more than $17 billion in 2023.

The estimates show it will grow to about $27.78 billion by 2027.

This industry makes enormous amounts of money, and it continues to escalate every year. No wonder everyone wants a piece of it.

This guide to affiliate marketing covers everything you need to know about how it works and how to start a career in it.

You will learn how much money you can earn as an affiliate and the most common payout methods. Lastly, we will cover how affiliate marketing will change in the next few years, so pull your seat closer.

What is affiliate marketing?

Affiliate marketing is a performance-based marketing where individuals promote a company’s products or services and earn a commission for each sale, lead, or click generated through their unique links.

Affiliates, often bloggers or social media influencers, use various channels to reach customers and earn passive income.

Affiliate marketing involves different models like pay-per-sale, pay-per-lead, and pay-per-click.

Success in affiliate marketing requires a solid strategy, quality content, and trust-building.

Programs such as Amazon Associates and lemlist affiliate program exemplify B2C and B2B affiliate marketing.

Affiliate marketing offers different types, including unattached, related, and involved affiliate marketing. Each varies in personal engagement and connection with the product or audience.

Moreover, each has a different earning potential. Unattached affiliates typically earn much less than involved affiliate partners.

Generally, unattached affiliates rely on paid advertising without a personal brand. Related affiliates promote products within their niche. Involved affiliates always use and genuinely endorse the products, building high trust with their audience.

It’s important to highlight that involved affiliates earn the highest income of all affiliate promoters.

Read our guide to find which one of the affiliate marketing types is the right one for your business.

Having said that, doing an affiliate marketing isn’t as easy as it may look. It requires significant time, effort, and dedication to build authority and become successful.

Overall, affiliate marketing is considered a legitimate and low-risk business model.

How does affiliate marketing work?

Affiliate marketing works by partnering individuals with businesses to promote their products or services using unique referral links.

Affiliates sign up for a program and receive these special links to share on websites, blogs, social media, or other platforms.

When someone clicks an affiliate’s link and makes a purchase or subscribes to a service, the action is tracked.

How long it’s tracked depends on each affiliate program’s cookie duration, which can usually last from 30 days to 90 or even 120 days.

Generally, the longer the cookie window you have to track the conversions, the better the affiliate program is.

The affiliate earns a commission based on these sales or subscriptions. Payments are usually made after a verification period to ensure that the transactions are legitimate.

This model allows affiliates to make money by promoting products without having to create or manage them directly.

Where to start with affiliate marketing?

If you wonder how to start with affiliate marketing, there’s a step-by-step process you want to follow.

To get started in affiliate marketing, you must choose a niche you are passionate about, develop a strategic plan, and understand your audience‘s needs and concerns.

Learn more about the proven affiliate marketing strategies that work and that you can use right now.

Tools and platforms like blogs, social media, or email marketing are essential for promoting affiliate links effectively.

Payments typically go through affiliate program dashboards, and earnings are tracked based on the chosen commission model.

Success in affiliate marketing relies on building trust, providing value, and staying compliant with relevant regulations and program terms.

To become a successful affiliate partner, you must join the right affiliate program, find your niche, grow your audience, and create affiliate marketing content that stands out.

Don’t forget that it takes months, and even years, to generate sizeable income with affiliate marketing. To shorten the time it takes you to make money with affiliate marketing, check our list of 10 best affiliate programs for beginners.

Affiliate Marketing Examples

The best affiliate marketing examples are:

If you look closer at the most successful affiliate marketing examples, such as Wirecutter, Skyscanner, and NerdWallet, you will see they all have something in common.

We compiled their success strategies into the list below.

This is what the best affiliate marketing websites and platforms do:

Build trust through quality content, research, and user-centric services.
Use expert and unbiased product and service reviews.
Target a specific strong niche and combine multiple related niches.
Maintain full transparency about affiliate partnerships.
Focus on authenticity and authority building as their long-term goal.
Share practical and engaging advice and recommendations.
Buying and testing all the products firsthand.
Have a deep understanding of their audience and its concerns.
Have been active for many years and sometimes decades.
Use multiple platforms to promote their affiliate links.
Integrate their affiliate promos naturally in their content.
Don’t force or push their affiliate links.
Rely on personal experiences.
Disclose their affiliate partnerships.
Use testimonials from their readers and fellow users.
Focus on delivering value to their followers.
Look for cross-selling opportunities.

Learn more about the best affiliate marketing strategies proven to work in 2025.

Affiliate Marketing: Pros and Cons

While affiliate marketing is a mutually beneficial business model for companies and their affiliates, you must know its main benefits and disadvantages. Ensure you understand this well before starting your career as an affiliate partner.

5 Pros of Affiliate Marketing

Low Start-Up Costs: You don’t need to create or manage your own products. Initial costs are mainly setting up a website and acquiring marketing tools, which are relatively cheap.
Low Maintenance Costs: Ongoing expenses are minimal. You don’t deal with manufacturing, inventory, or customer service.
Reduced Financial Risks: The low upfront investment means less risk of losing large amounts of money. You pay for marketing actions only after generating sales.
Potential for Constant High Income: This is especially true for SaaS affiliate programs that receive recurring commissions every month, quarter, or even the lifetime.
Work Flexibility: You can work from anywhere with an internet connection and set your schedule. Choose products and niches that interest you.
High Return on Investment (ROI): Costs incur only when actions like sales or leads are completed. This ensures efficient spending and the capability to scale income without proportionally increasing costs.

5 Cons of Affiliate Marketing

High Competition: The affiliate marketing field is very competitive, especially for newcomers trying to gain traction.
Dependency on Merchants: Your income depends on merchants’ performance. If they change policies or product quality decreases, it affects your earnings and reputation.
Income Instability: Earnings can be unpredictable and fluctuate with market trends and consumer behavior. It takes time to build a stable income. B2B affiliates typically have more stable income than the B2C affiliates that promote one-time purchases of consumer goods.
Compliance and Regulatory Concerns: Affiliates must adhere to rules and disclosure requirements. Non-compliance could result in penalties or removal from programs. Plus, non-disclosed affiliate partnerships damage your reputation and trust, which is crucial in a successful affiliate business.
Limited Control Over Offers: Affiliates have no control over product pricing, quality, or availability. Changes in the merchant’s policies can directly impact earnings. In that sense, promoting SaaS products is much safer since the software is stored on the cloud, and there’s no risk that it will run out or get out of stock. Moreover, SaaS is constantly upgraded and tends to have customer support that does everything to make their clients happy and satisfied. This, in turn, translates to less churn and more sales.

Is Affiliate Marketing legit?

Affiliate marketing is legal and ethical if you follow country-specific laws and regulations, such as the U.S. Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) guidelines.

Clear disclosure of affiliate partnerships is essential to avoid being considered unlawful, but that doesn’t mean scams don’t exist.

Pay-to-join programs or fake affiliate gurus who make unrealistic promises are popular affiliate scams.

As an affiliate, you must be cautious of fraudulent activities and join reputable programs.

Many people wonder if affiliate marketing is a pyramid scheme, so we suggest reading this article about the industry’s most common myths.

How do you get paid as an affiliate partner?

Here’s a straightforward process on how affiliate partners get paid:

Join an Affiliate Program: First, you sign up for a SaaS affiliate program. These programs are free to join and provide a unique referral link.
Promote the Product: You share your referral link on websites, blogs, social media, or other platforms. This link tracks the traffic and sales you generate.
Customer Actions: When someone clicks your referral link, they are directed to the SaaS product’s website. If they purchase or subscribe to the service, the link tracks this action.
Commission Structure:
There are two main commission models in affiliate marketing: recurring commissions and one-time commissions.
- Recurring commissions: Unlike traditional programs, which pay you once per sale, SaaS affiliate programs often pay recurring commissions. You earn money regularly (monthly or quarterly) as long as the customer remains subscribed. For example, if you refer someone to a SaaS tool, you earn a percentage of their subscription fee every month or quarter.
- One-time commissions: In the one-time commission model, affiliates receive a commission for every sale they refer to the merchant, but only once for each sale. If the customer makes repeat purchases or subscribes to a service, the affiliate doesn’t earn further commissions beyond the initial sale. One-time commissions are used for products or services that are not subscription-based and have a single purchase point. Some SaaS programs might offer a one-time payment for each new sign-up or first purchase.
Verification Period: Payments are usually verified after a specific period, often 30 days, to confirm that the sale is legitimate and not refunded.
Payment Method: Once verified, commissions are paid using various methods, such as PayPal, Stripe, or bank transfers. Each program specifies its own minimum payout threshold, such as $10 or $100.

Example of a SaaS Affiliate Payment Process

To show how exactly you get paid as an affiliate partner, we use lemlist affiliate program as an example:

Sign Up: You join the lemlist affiliate program and get your unique referral link.
Promote: Share your link on your blog, social media, or newsletters.
Customer Purchase: Someone uses your link, signs up for lemlist, and subscribes.
Commission Creation: Earn 25% of their monthly subscription fee for up to a year.
Commission Validation: Commissions are verified 30 days after being made to account for our refund policy.
Payment Received: You will receive payment through PayPal, Stripe, or bank transfer the following month.

Let’s take a real-life example.

In practice, that’s how much you can expect to earn as a lemlist affiliate partner in different scenarios:

If a newly referred client subscribes to the lemlist Email Starter, you get $9.75 as a lemlist affiliate.

If a newly referred client subscribes to the lemlist Email Pro, you get $17.25 as a lemlist affiliate.

If a newly referred client subscribes to the lemlist Multichannel Expert, you get $24.75 as a lemlist affiliate.

If a newly referred client subscribes to the lemlist Outreach Scale, you get $39.75 as a lemlist affiliate.

How much money do affiliates earn?

Affiliate marketers’ monthly income varies significantly by niche, with finance ($9,296) and SaaS and technology ($7,418) among the highest earners (Outbrain).

The lowest-earning niches include arts and crafts ($1,041) and pets ($920).

According to Authority Hacker, the typical affiliate marketer has 2.8 years of experience, and those earning over $10k per month are more likely to network and attend conferences.

How will affiliate marketing change in 2025?

One of the main upcoming trends in affiliate marketing is the 15% decline in flat-rate commissions by 2025. Revenue-sharing payment models will become the main affiliate payout, according to Growth Collective.

Until recently, the most popular affiliate areas were health, wealth, and relationships, but that’s changing. In 2025, it’s estimated that almost a third of affiliate marketers will transfer to less saturated affiliate niches.

Another interesting thing is that brand-to-brand affiliate partnerships are getting more popular, too.

Many companies are exploring collaborations with other brands (usually non-competitors), joining their affiliate resources to drive even greater reach.

Key Takeaways

Affiliate marketing is a $17 billion industry, set to reach $27.78 billion by 2027. Affiliates promote products using unique links and earn commissions.

Affiliate marketing types, such as unattached, related, and involved, differ in your engagement levels and the potential earnings you can get.

Success as an affiliate requires choosing the right niche, understanding your audience, employing long-term promotion strategies, and creating excellent affiliate marketing content.

Low financial risk and high rewards exist, but affiliate marketing is not a short-term win. To make it into a sustainable career with more than $10,000 yearly income, you must devote years of constant work.

Choose reputable affiliate programs and avoid scams like pay-to-join schemes.

Payments are usually made after verification through methods like PayPal or bank transfers.

The industry is evolving, trending towards revenue-sharing models and less saturated niches. Brand-to-brand partnerships are also becoming more popular.