How affiliate SEO works
You publish content that ranks for buying-stage queries — reviews, comparisons, best-of lists, alternatives to a product — and link to a merchant with a tracking code. If the visitor buys within the tracking window, you earn a commission. There is no stock, no support and no delivery; the whole business is attention converted into referrals.
Two rules govern how those links must be handled. Commercial links should be marked with a rel attribute of sponsored or nofollow, so search engines know money is involved and do not treat them as editorial endorsement. And the relationship has to be disclosed to the reader in plain language, near the top, not buried in a footer — in several markets that is a legal requirement, not a courtesy.
Why affiliate SEO matters
For a publisher it turns an audience into revenue without building a product. For a merchant it is a sales channel paid only on results. And for anyone selling anything, affiliate pages are part of the competitive landscape: the comparison article ranking above your product page is often the page that decides the sale.
From Nepal it has a further attraction — the merchants, the buyers and the payouts can all sit abroad, so the earnings are not limited by the size of the local market. That also means the payment and tax arrangements need proper thought before you start, rather than after the first payout.
Where affiliate SEO goes wrong
The most damaging mistake is writing about products you have never used. Google’s guidance on reviews asks for evidence of first-hand experience — your own photographs, measurements, comparisons, the trade-offs a spec sheet does not mention. Pages assembled from other people’s reviews are exactly the thin, mass-produced content search engines have been steadily removing.
The second is hiding the commercial relationship, or writing rankings that follow commission rates rather than merit. Readers notice, and it destroys the only asset the site has.
The third is concentration risk. A site built on one merchant, one programme or one type of query can lose most of its income overnight when commission rates change, a programme closes, or a core update reshuffles the results. None of those events is under your control.
How to act on it
Choose a narrow subject you can genuinely speak about, and buy or borrow what you write about so the page contains something no one else can copy. Disclose clearly, mark every commercial link with the right rel attribute, and keep the recommendation honest even when a lower-paying product is the better one.
Then reduce your exposure: several programmes rather than one, an email list you own, and a mix of query types. It is worth understanding the mechanics from the merchant’s side too, which is where affiliate and referral marketing as a channel comes in, and worth knowing why thin content is the specific failure mode this model attracts.