What is affiliate marketing?
Affiliate marketing involves an affiliate signing up to an affiliate program offered by an advertiser to promote and sell their products on a commission-based payment model. The publisher promotes our products or services using our unique link, which sends traffic to the website. If the lead generated, purchases the product, the affiliate, or the one who published it is paid a percentage from the sale. From a business perspective, we can think we are paying people only after successful sales are made.
The risk for a business to use affiliate marketing is extremely low and the reward is high. We only need to pay affiliates when a customer converts, not when they drive people to our website.
How affiliate marketing works:
1. Affiliate is assigned a tracking URL:
This is to track which affiliates we have are driving our traffic.
2. Affiliate markets our company:
Affiliates can promote our products through different ways: paid traffic (like Google Ads), YouTube video of the product, and link to it with the affiliate URL, emails, blog posts, reviewing products, etc. The possibilities are countless. When we sign up affiliates, we can also limit how they promote it.
3. Customers or leads are acquired:
This is when the visitor purchases the product or signs up for our newsletter.
4. Affiliate receives a commission:
When the affiliate drives us a customer or lead, we pay them out.
Types of Affiliate Programs:
Bloggers/influencers:
If there are bloggers or social media influencers in our industry who engage with our ideal market regularly, we can consider partnering with them. Ideally, this would result in our target audience taking a look at our website, and if they like the products we offer and make a purchase, it is a win for both the parties.
Review sites:
It can be Youtube or other sites, where we can ask them to review our products or ask them to use our product links to suggest their viewers. By targeting the right target audience, we can reach a wide range of audiences directing to our site who can be potential customers.
Apart from having our email marketing, it will be helpful to find similar affiliates who promote our kind of products. So, reaching out to them to add our links to their email marketing, will be huge leverage and in turn, can boost our sales.
Advantages and Things to do:
As a retailer, we can pick who we want to work with. If we have an affiliate program, affiliates can apply to come onboard our affiliate program, providing us with the opportunity to handpick those who can be the best ambassadors for our brand and products.
If we pick the right affiliate who promotes mostly to our niche, we can leverage it and attract potential customers and turn them into sales. Affiliate marketing offers a flexible approach that is cost-effective, easy to manage and has a positive impact on businesses and brands as a whole.
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is when an online retailer pays you a commission for traffic or sales generated from your referrals. In other words, affiliate marketing is promoting other company’s products and you get a commission when someone buys through your affiliate link. You act as a salesperson for the company as an affiliate and help in company’s product sale and the company rewards you for the sale. Simply put, affiliate marketing involves referring a product or service by sharing it on a blog, social media platforms, or website. The highlight of affiliate marketing is you can promote n number of company’s products and earn rewards for every sale of different company’s products.
How to make money through affiliate marketing?
- Choose your niche and create a Website or blog
WordPress can help you to create a blog or website without much complications. Before choosing your niche, certain factors have to be considered.
- Think about the things you are passionate about,
- Can this topic attract readers/audience?
- and finally this niche could bring money?
- Choose affiliate products to promote
Choose products fit your niche and relate the content. Joining an affiliate network will help to find affiliate products. Affiliate networks are businesses that connect merchants and affiliate marketers so both can earn more money. Affiliate marketers use affiliate networks to make better product selections to promote on their site. Some popular affiliate networks are:
- Use an affiliate management plugin. There are so many plugins available, find the best one and start using it.
- Create quality content to promote affiliate links.
Keep in mind that some affiliate networks require you to have a lot of content, site traffic, and monthly views before they will accept you as an affiliate partner. Make quality content creation as your first priority. You should have around 5 quality pieces of content with more scheduled for later. There are many types of content you can create, but the 2 most popular are blogs and videos. For best results always place your affiliate link early in your content. For blogs, within the 25%of the post and for videos, within the first minute of the recording. Because most of the audience won’t read or watch entire piece of content.
- Start reviewing products and services. Focus on reviewing products and services that fall within your niche. Then, leveraging the rapport you have created with your audience and your stance as an expert, tell your readers why they would benefit from purchasing the product or service you are promoting. Almost anything sold online can be reviewed if there is an affiliate program you can review physical products, digital software, or even services booked online, like ridesharing or travel resort booking.
- Stay focus with current trends. There is serious competition in the affiliate marketing sphere. You’ll want to make sure you stay on top of any new trends to ensure you remain competitive. Additionally, you’ll likely be able to benefit from at least a few of the new marketing techniques that are constantly being created.
How do affiliate marketers get paid?
- Pay per Sale
A more complex system, pay per lead affiliate programs compensates the affiliate based on the conversion of leads. The affiliate must persuade the consumer to visit the merchant’s website and complete the desired action — whether it’s filling out a contact form, signing up for a trial of a product, subscribing to a newsletter, or downloading software or files.
2. Pay per Click
This program focuses on incentivizing the affiliate to redirect consumers from their marketing platform to the merchant’s website. This means the affiliate must engage the consumer to the extent that they will move from the affiliate’s site to the merchant’s site. The affiliate is paid based on the increase in web traffic.
Common types of Affiliate Marketing Channels
- Influencers
An influencer is an individual who holds the power to impact the purchasing decisions of a large segment of the population. This person is in a great position to benefit from affiliate marketing. They already boast an impressive following, so it’s easy for them to direct consumers to the seller’s products through social media posts, blogs, and other interactions with their followers. The influencers then receive a share of the profits they helped to create.
2. Bloggers
With the ability to rank organically in search engine queries, bloggers excel at increasing a seller’s conversions. The blogger samples the product or service and then writes a comprehensive review that promotes the brand in a compelling way, driving traffic back to the seller’s site.
3. Paid search focused microsites
Developing and monetising microsites can also garner a serious amount of sales. These sites are advertised within a partner site or on the sponsored listings of a search engine. They are distinct and separate from the organisations main site. By offering more focused, relevant content to a specific audience, microsites lead to increased conversions due to their simple and straightforward call to action.