Disclosure: We are reader-supported. If you buy through links on our site, we may earn a small commission. Learn more.
The world of affiliate marketing is one that has grown exponentially in the past few years. It is constantly changing and evolving throughout the years.
For many, it's become a way to make money from home or work on their own terms. For others, it's a career path they take seriously and dedicate themselves to for years at a time.
But how are you going to stay up to date with the latest trends happening in this field?
Reading books is still one of the best ways to generate new ideas and learn different strategies and a great, low-cost way to start your affiliate marketing journey.
There's plenty of information available on the internet about this topic including blog posts, videos, and ebooks; but not all worth your time. We have compiled a list of the best affiliate marketing books that you should read if you're serious about making money online with affiliate marketing. Side note: for the complete guide, here's a list of 41 affiliate marketing books if you want to go even deeper.
Best Affiliate Marketing Books
In this post, you'll get to know all the best affiliate marketing books available, but if you're looking for the quick TL;DR, the table below should get you there faster:
Best Affiliate Marketing Books | ||
|---|---|---|
Book Title | Best For | Where To Get It |
DotCom Secrets | All Around Marketing | |
Expert Secrets | Audience Building | |
Traffic Secrets | Traffic Strategies | |
Affiliate Marketing Secrets | Broad Overview | |
Affiliate Marketing | Quick reads | |
Quick Start Guide To Affiliate Marketing | Beginners | |
Affiliate Program Management | Program Managers | |
Affiliate Marketing: Start A Six Figure Business | ClickBank | |
From Nothing | Zero Experience | |
Performance Partnerships | B2Bs | |
The Ultimate Guide To Adwords | Learning Google Ads | |
SEO 2021 | learning Affiliate SEO | |
More of a visual learner and looking for a video course, instead? Check out our list of the best affiliate marketing courses.
1) DotCom Secrets, Best All Around Affiliate Marketing Book
DotCom Secrets (2nd edition) is not like other "how-to" books about internet marketing... and strictly speaking, is NOT an affiliate marketing book. Instead, it’s a complete guide to building and launching a profitable business online using direct response marketing principles.
DotCom Secrets will help you learn how to get exponentially more traffic to your affiliate marketing website and funnels by helping you understand the psychology of web users, and how to build a powerful brand for yourself as well.
It is a foundational read on how to make the most of online traffic, sales, and leads, which is why it gets the top spot in this list of the best affiliate marketing books.
The author is Russell Brunson, a well-known name in the online marketing world. He is also the founder of Clickfunnels which helps entrepreneurs and online marketers design sales funnels easily by just drag and drop.
What Will You Learn?
Dotcom Secrets is divided into 5 different sections that will guide you to the whole marketing process step by step.
These are some of the highlights:
- How to find your dream customers (so you can send them to your affiliate website).
- How to build a great funnel (so you can get more affiliate sales).
- What are different types of online traffic?
- How to capture someone's attention so powerfully they can't help but buy from you.
Besides that, each section contains secret methods that will help you communicate with your audience according to what stage of the buyers funnel they are in. Russell also shares his successes and failures throughout the years, and as an experienced affiliate marketer, he has a lot to offer beginner affiliates.
He has taken affiliate marketing from a narrow field focused on search engine optimization (SEO) to an expansive discipline that encompasses everything from email marketing, blogging, social media, and video marketing campaigns.
This book helps you avoid all the pitfalls and tells you exactly how to create a successful marketing campaign that grows your affiliate business rapidly.
Pros & Cons
Pros
Cons
2) Expert Secrets, Best For Personal Brand Building
The next on our list is "Expert Secrets," the second book by Russell Brunson in his Secrets Trilogy.
Expert Secrets will take you on a journey to discovering how the experts do it, why they are so successful, and what makes them unique from all others in their field.
This book is a mix between autobiographical writing and an educational guide to help people who want to be successful in their field. It also has some personal stuff that will help you become a life expert.
What Will You Learn?
The book contains 22 chapters and is divided into 5 different sections full of expert secrets, all of which can help you build a profitable affiliate marketing business.
These are some of the highlights:
- Why do businesses take a market by storm?
- How to craft a perfect message for your audience.
- How to convince an ideal audience to believe in you.
- How to use a genuine approach to sales.
- How to be an authority in your industry so that people will follow you.
- What's the ideal audience of this book?
The ideal audience for this book is people who sell information-related products such as coaching, ebooks, consultation, and courses, etc., as well as affiliates and personal brand building entrepreneurs.
Pros & Cons
Pros
Cons
3) Traffic Secrets, Best For Online Traffic Strategies
The third on our list is Traffic Secrets, the third book in the Secrets Trilogy by Russell Brunson. This book is about the secrets to drive more traffic on your website and funnels.
How Russell describes this book:
“This book shows the simple process that we have used to get TENS OF MILLIONS of people to come to our sites every month.”
This is a strong statement that sums up the value of this book and why it's worth reading for digital marketers and affiliates to drive insane amounts of traffic on their landing pages and increase brand awareness for their offers.
This book concludes Russell’s epic trilogy of books:
- Dotcom Secrets describe sales funnels.
- Expert Secrets helps you build a raving audience for your offers.
- Traffic Secrets is all about generating traffic to your funnels.
What Will You Learn?
The book consists of 352 pages with different modules for driving traffic to your funnels.
These are some of the highlights:
- Master the art of running Google Ads.
- How to do email marketing like a pro.
- Find out long-tail keywords to target.
- How to drive more traffic from Google aka SEO.
- How Retargeting can be useful
Pros & Cons
Pros
Cons
4) Affiliate Marketing Secrets, By Chandler Wright
This book is specifically about affiliate marketing and was written by an affiliate marketing expert, Chandler Wright. At number 4 on our list of the best affiliate marketing books, you can’t go wrong.
The book is an extensive guide, will give you a strong affiliate marketing foundation, and explains thoroughly why affiliate marketing is one of the best business models.
The most interesting thing about Affiliate Marketing Secrets is that: It provides an easy to follow step by step blueprint on how to get started with affiliate marketing.
What Will You Learn?
The book has 136 pages of mind-blowing information on affiliate marketing.
These are some of the highlights:
- Gives you a roadmap to follow so that you can start affiliate marketing quickly and easily.
- Different affiliate programs to join and how to find a profitable niche.
- How to start earning from $0 - $10K a month.
- Share all of the best strategies, techniques, tips & tricks that successful affiliate marketers use to grow passive income.
Pros & Cons
Pros
Cons
5) Affiliate Marketing, By Mark Smith
Affiliate Marketing: Proven Step by Step Guide to Make Passive Income with Affiliate Marketing was published in 2018 by Mark Smith, an affiliate marketer who has been in the industry for more than 12 years.
The book is widely known as one of the best affiliate marketing books and has already sold tens of thousands of copies worldwide.
What Will You learn?
It comes with only 70 pages and straightforward information to make passive income as fast as possible.
These are some of the highlights:
- Mark Smith reveals how there are two routes you can take to generate passive income by using affiliate marketing.
- The number of case studies offers practical examples of how you can create an online business with affiliate marketing by using these two methods.
- The author has also used his personal experiences to provide valuable guidance for readers.
The book is also very well organized with each chapter focusing on a specific aspect of affiliate marketing like how to correctly manage your online identity, which channels are best for affiliates, and so on.
Pros & Cons
Pros
Cons
6) Quick Start Guide to Affiliate Marketing: Answers to the Questions You Should Be Asking
Evgenii Prussakov is the author of this book and was originally published in 2014. It focuses on providing concise information on how readers can generate passive income through affiliate marketing and answers all questions that they may have about this type of business model.
It has been widely praised for being easy to read while still covering all relevant topics in this niche area, which is why it’s made it on our list of the best affiliate marketing books at number 6.
What's inside this book?
The book has 84 pages and answers 60 questions to give you a solid foundation for building a successful affiliate marketing business.
These are some of the highlights:
- How to avoid the most common mistakes that are often made in affiliate marketing.
- How to find profitable offers for your business, what factors do you need to take into account when creating an online identity, and how much traffic should you be generating through your content?
Pros & Cons
Pros
Cons
7) Affiliate Program Management: An Hour a Day by Evgenii Prussakov
These days the top online retailers have an affiliate program and it's a great way to increase your sales and revenue. The author focuses on providing readers with tips and strategies that will help them build up their own affiliate program and provides some helpful hints and tips on how to get started.
What's inside this book?
The ideal audience for this book is business owners and merchants because it's about launching your affiliate network and providing affiliate marketers great offers so that they keep promoting your products and services.
These are some of the highlights:
- How to develop, maintain and launch a profitable affiliate marketing program.
- Detailed guidance with a real-world and task-based approach
Pros & Cons
Pros
Cons
8) Affiliate marketing: Start a Six-Figure Business with Clickbank Products
Noah Gray is the author and It was published in December 2017. A highly recommended book if you want to scale affiliate marketing and reach 6 figure income just by promoting products and offers from ClickBank and other affiliate networks.
What's inside this book?
The book has 266 pages that will help you achieve the greatest goals and milestones in your journey.
These are some of the highlights:
Noah Gary's book covers affiliate marketing basics, Clickbank products, setting up an affiliate account, and start crushing it. He also talks about how he made $100k in 5 months through print-on-demand work.
Pros & Cons
Pros
Cons
9) From Nothing: Everything You Need To Profit From Affiliate Marketing, by Ian Pribyl
Ian Pribyl is an individual who had real work experience as both a successful affiliate and a successful internet business.
This book is aimed at newbies, and is written in a practical, no-nonsense way for new affiliate marketers.
What's inside this book?
It's published in 2019 and has 358 pages about everything you need to profit from online marketing (Blogging, Affiliate, Ecommerce, etc).
These are some of the highlights:
- Building an affiliate website with WordPress.
- How to do keyword research.
- How to improve the visibility of your website with social media platforms, and other strategies.
- It also covers other topics such as E-commerce and other ways to make money on the internet using less than $100.
Pros & Cons
Pros
Cons
10) Performance Partnerships by Robert Glazer
What's inside this book?
Robert Glazer does a fantastic job of describing affiliate marketing for any entrepreneur and thought leader to help them understand how affiliate marketing can change a company's marketing efforts.
Pros & Cons
Pros
Cons
11) The Ultimate Guide to Google AdWords: How to Access 100 Million People
The mastermind behind this book is Perry Marshall where he teaches the art of using Google Ads to grow your business without losing money. There are some affiliate marketing programs and networks that allow you to pay for their keywords and trademarks, and PPC can be a lucrative affiliate marketing strategy if done right.
This is a comprehensive guide that can help you learn about the ins and outs of Google Ads, and since PPC is a massive strategy in the affiliate marketing world, this excellent book has made it on to our list of the best affiliate marketing books (however, we've added it to the bottom of the list here, since it's not strictly speaking about affiliate marketing).
What's inside this book?
Perry himself is a real Guru in Google Ads and the book doesn't disappoint. It has everything you need to succeed in Google Ads marketing and how to promote affiliate offers and what it takes for an advertiser to be successful.
These are some of the highlights:
- How to write killer copy for your Ads.
- Build a list of the right keywords.
- How to increase conversions and sales and build awesome sales pages.
- Use Google Display Network to boost your traffic.
- Rank your Ads on Google's top positions
- How to maintain high quality scores for your Ads.
- What are the mistakes that other advertisers make and how to avoid them?
Remember these are just highlights, Perry shares tons of other aspects and useful topics in detail to streamline ads and build an online presence on a mass level.
Pros & Cons
Pros
Cons
12) SEO 2022, by Adam Clarke
Another book that made it onto our list, but isn't directly about affiliate marketing, is SEO 2021 (recently updated for 2022).
SEO 2022 is the latest and updated version of the same book that was published in 2016 by Adam Clarke.
Search Engine Optimization is essential for every single business today because search engines are the most used platform by people to find products, services and relevant information.
If you want to enhance your affiliate marketing efforts then ignoring SEO is a big mistake. Every successful affiliate marketer is familiar with the power of SEO and organic traffic, but few master it.
What's inside this book?
This is a pretty well organized and clean book that provides you a thorough guide on SEO such as (types, strategies, new trends etc).
These are some of the highlights:
- Basics of SEO.
- Latest Google Algorithm Updates and how to save your website from getting penalized by Google.
- How to rank local businesses.
- How to find money keywords for your affiliate site.
- How to get mentioned on mainstream websites.
- Ninja link building techniques.
- SEO advice you shouldn't be paying attention to.
- Pay Per Click advertising.
Pros & Cons
Pros
Cons
Final Thoughts - Which Is The Best Affiliate Marketing Book?
The best affiliate marketing books available today are all three books from Russell Brunson, an outstanding trilogy (Dotcom Secrets, Expert Secrets, Traffic Secrets) that will give you the strongest internet marketing foundation possible.
Whether you are a business owner, multi-million dollar agency owner, thought leader, entrepreneur, affiliate marketer, or anyone who wants to grasp knowledge on marketing... then you can’t go wrong with the Secrets Trilogy.
All 3 books are worth reading, you should read them one by one to utilize them with full potential. Although expert marketers are going to have a great advantage here, it doesn't mean that a beginner can't learn from it. As we mentioned earlier these books are a gold mine for anyone who wants to learn the art of building online businesses.
You can also try other books that we have mentioned here if you’re looking for specific material (SEO, or PPC, for example). These are some of the best and we're sure they'll be yours too when you pick them up. This list should be enough for you to get started on turning your dream into reality.
