13 min read
When talking about the results of blending business with technologies, you will probably mention affiliate marketing near the top of the list. This is one of the newer frontiers in marketing that is out doing the traditional and cumbersome ways of product promotion. This article addresses the tips, steps, strategies, and questions frequently asked about affiliate marketing.
What is Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is a model that enables a special kind of business relationship between brand firms and individuals or companies, also referred to as affiliates, partners, or publishers. This business relationship aims at generating commission to the affiliate when marketing the employer’s products and services. To explicitly answer what is affiliate marketing, we also need to understand other words used to refer to affiliate marketing – framework, process, channel, platform, etc.
Affiliate marketing also tracks and measures the performance of sales made on the products involved in an efficient, scalable, and cost-effective way. The affiliate simply takes in a product that they like, promotes it through marketing, which later leads to a sale, and gets a piece of profit from each sale made.
This form of marketing is used to rapidly drive sales and generate revenue via online platforms and is superior to traditional marketing. It creates mutual benefits for both marketers and brand businesses.
Below is an infographic that explains exactly how affiliate marketing works.
(lurn.com)
Who Are The Key Stakeholders in Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing works by delegating the responsibilities of product marketing to different parties. The leading players in this affiliate marketing program are outlined below:
- Brands (Advertisers or Sellers)
These are the companies or organizations that sell the products or services to the consumers. These companies include retailers, direct-to-consumer, subscription services, financial services, e-commerce organizations, business-to-business firms, etc. Their role is to produce products or render the services being offered.
- Affiliates (Publishers or Partners)
These are individuals or organizations that partner with the branding company. They include social media personalities, bloggers, website owners, mobile apps, app-to-app marketing platforms, coupons and reward websites, shopping websites, etc.
- Affiliate Networks
These are the stakeholders responsible for tracking, paying, and reporting to affiliates. They also measure and scale the performance of sales made by the affiliates. Other roles provided by this stakeholder include providing a network of affiliates and also offer affiliates programs for brand businesses to choose from.
(Shout Me Loud)
- Agencies
These are bodies that oversee the operations of affiliate marketing. They work hand in hand with brand businesses, affiliates, affiliate networks, and customers to ensure a healthy relationship among them.
- Customers
This is the targeted audience that affiliates market and sell its products to. They include individuals or organizations desiring to benefit from the products and services being offered by the brand and presented to them by the marketers.
Did you know? a staggering 81% of brands rely on affiliate sales. (Mediakix)
How Does Affiliate Marketing Work?
The specific channels and detailed processes involved in this form of marketing can be confusing and hard to comprehend, especially when viewing it as an outsider. Affiliate marketing is a complex meshwork of partnerships built on transparency. It is not a one-off transaction, as many would think.
This type of marketing aims at creating a win-win situation for all parties involved, including affiliate marketing companies. It works by the distribution of responsibilities of product promotion and creation across parties required. It aims at promoting the abilities of parties for a more effective marketing strategy. At the end of the marketing process, it provides contributors with a share of the profits.
- A branding business offers a product to be marketed and chooses an affiliate marketer to work with.
- The affiliate marketer promotes the brand’s product or services on the platform agreed upon or chosen by the brand.
- The consumer, on visiting the online platform (affiliate’s site) hosting the advert for the product), clicks on it and generates a cookie which is stored in the consumer’s browser.
- The cookie stored in the consumer’s browser then helps the affiliate network to track the consumer’s progress in the affiliate’s website and links this data to the brand’s business.
- The consumer is then redirected to the brand’s business for more information leading to a purchase of the product.
- Finally, the affiliate network pays out the agreed-upon commission to the affiliate.
Did you know? Web hosting sites, such as Bluehost have some of the best affiliate programs available. (Hosting Tribunal)
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Guide on how to start affiliate marketing
Affiliate marketing is a relatively easy career to start. Making money through affiliate marketing is possible without necessarily having a website, blog, or products. You also don’t need to have any experience per se, just the willingness to learn continuously and most importantly, taking aggressive action and remaining persistent. If you are bold enough to take action, then affiliate marketing is a surefire recipe for your financial success and freedom.
(Affiliate marketing anchor text, Neil Patel)
How to Start Affiliate Marketing For Free
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Select an appropriate Affiliate Network
There are hundreds, probably thousands, of affiliate networks that exist on the internet. To find them, you only need to perform a simple Google search. However, the best affiliate marketing companies are those with which you resonate. Most of these networks will allow you to join for free, so you only have to select one, join for free, and start the process of making money. You might want to do a bit of research before joining any of those networks, including carefully reading their terms and conditions.
Amazon, for instance, is a reputable affiliate network that supports affiliate marketing for beginners, providing open opportunities for prospective affiliate marketers. Most affiliate marketing experts recommend starting your career at Amazon before turning to other affiliate networks. Some affiliate programs cost fortunes and are not necessarily a great way to start. They only appeal to those with an enormous wealth of experience since they have a deeper understanding of how affiliate marketing works. It’s not worth the risks for a beginner.
Amazon makes it easy for new affiliates to copy links, including a site stripe at the top of the page for easy access.
(Wealthy Affiliate)
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Conduct market research
As an affiliate marketer, you aim at minting as much money as possible from affiliate marketing platforms in a short time. Thus, you will have to think and act strategically to achieve success.
Conduct needs assessment for your preferred niche.
Affiliate marketing for beginners 2021 emphasizes on market research to generate knowledge that is useful in a specific market needs assessment. Then, you will have to identify and select a highly profitable niche that will give you substantial returns. A profitable niche possesses wide product variety, a large number of product sellers, and accessible and identifiable customers.
Focus more on delivering value to customers
Affiliate marketers should focus more on customer value than on their returns. Therefore, be sure to select a product that you relate with intimately so you can bring out the best of value to customers in your niche. Niche building is usually the step preceding any form of online advertising because there needs to be context to what you’re promoting.
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Create a selling platform
Social media accounts
Affiliate marketing involves creating free social media accounts such as Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and Pinterest. Newbies only have to decide which ones to use. Uploading relevant content in the form of images, affiliate links, and text is free. Alternatively, you may opt for paid advertising on these free accounts, which can be very lucrative if approached correctly. For a significant majority, email marketing is how to start affiliate marketing for free. It pertains to the preparation of email lists and marketing familiar and highly profitable products.
Here is an example of a facebook post promoting a book with an affiliate link.
(Post Affiliate Pro)
Websites and Blogs
Affiliate marketing for beginners 2021 also allows newbies to create selling platforms such as websites and blogs that are extremely viable for beginners.
Some things to keep in mind when starting websites/blogs
Worth noting is the increasing number of bloggers globally. The internet contains millions of websites, some of which belong to affiliate marketers. Therefore, when creating an affiliate platform, one must have relevant information about their specific niche, research attractive topics, and understand the various techniques of driving traffic. A relevant example would be search engine optimization to enhance the reach of your web content through search engines. It is more affordable than search engine marketing, another affiliate marketing technique that involves increasing audience reach through paid advertising on your website.
Tips for improving blog/website effectiveness
You might want to create a personal website with a creditable service provider that offers hosting services for free as a starting point. Luckily, creating sites doesn’t require coding skills these days. As you get smarter in affiliate marketing, you may decide to build your custom site or purchase a domain for a ready-made website. Get a reliable and affordable host to reduce the costs of advertising as much as possible. Try to improve the user experience of the site to avoid sending away hard-earned traffic by customizing your site using various themes, font styles, and content formatting to enhance readability. For accurate niche targeting, develop relevant, exciting, and readable content in the form of text and images.
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Start Advertising and Selling
Build familiarity with your products
Since you are just starting, try working with one or two products first. Later into your career, you may confidently increase the number and complexity of niches. To build integrity in your affiliate marketing career, show your audience that you’re familiar with the products you would like to sell. Let them not get the impression that you are just trying to make a sale. Try to build rapport by buying the product for your use since prospective buyers like to purchase products with which you resonate. That product will form the starting point of your affiliate promotions. A perfect way to justify familiarity is through posting honest product reviews, tutorials, and comparisons on all your platforms.
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Begin advertising low commission products
Alongside familiarity, remember to prioritize products that pay low commissions as a way of building your affiliate marketing skills. An excellent example of low commission products is video games that target specific consumers. When you get better at online selling, practice diversification by joining other affiliate networks. Then, you may begin selling highly profitable products such as e-books, audiobooks, and a variety of other products.
– Build and drive traffic to your products
The beauty of affiliate marketing is the possibility of earning a lot of revenue without having to work tirelessly every day. However, you have to create a system that will enable you to enjoy such a lifestyle. This is achieved by generating traffic to your preferred products, which is one of the main aspects of affiliate marketing. If you don’t have a website, you may use your social media accounts to reach your audience. Paid advertising also works great on social media platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, and Pinterest. It is often more effective than free advertising.
Since driving traffic is your main task, you will need to get people to view and buy your product. Most affiliate marketing companies will allow you to create affiliate links that you will use to market their products. Of importance is to learn how to make these links appealing to your audience through link shortening.
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Upgrade your Advertising Efforts
Track progress
Over time, you will grow into an excellent affiliate marketer. Part of your proficiency will involve tracking progress and paying for advertisement campaigns. It allows affiliates to obtain viable insights concerning what to sell or not based on product performance in specific niches. It is more like trial and error because product performance is highly uncertain due to market complexity.
(Affiliate marketing funnel, Funnel Secrets)
Conduct paid advertising
Your acquired proficiency will give you the confidence to take your affiliate marketing career to the next level by paying for advertisements. However, campaigns may fail especially if a product is in the wrong niche. Otherwise, the returns generated from paid ads are remarkably high. Luckily, advertisement performance on adverts can also be tracked and will provide relevant information for effective decision making. When advertising efforts are undoubtedly useful, affiliate marketing success becomes a reality.
Did you know? 94% of affiliate marketers use more than just one affiliate network. (Rakuten)
How Do Affiliate Marketers Get Paid?
Having understood the dynamics of how this type of marketing works, let us dive straight into knowing how affiliate marketers get paid. The consumer need not always buy the product according to the above-outlined processes. The affiliate network program recognizes the affiliate’s contributions to the sale and pays them.
Here are a few ways:
● Pay Per Click
This is the easiest method of all. It involves the affiliate convincing the customer to visit the brand’s website. Once a customer is successfully redirected to the website, the affiliate network will automatically cash in funds to the affiliate’s account.
● Pay Per Lead
An affiliate is paid after the successful conversion of a lead. The affiliate here is tasked with persuading a customer to visit the brand’s website and ultimately finish the desired activities. These activities include signing up for a product trial, notification subscriptions, or downloading files or software.
● Pay Per Sale
If the strategies of the affiliate results in the consumer finally purchasing the product, the affiliate is paid a commission equivalent to this transaction. In simpler terms, payment is made only after the customer purchases the product.
Affiliate Marketing Strategies to Employ
- Find and recommend products that you are incredibly familiar with: Customers rely much on information provided by marketers to make a purchasing decision. Out of this, trust is built for future transactions. If you provide shallow details on the knowledge of a particular product, the chances are that you will lose the confidence of that specific customer. The more helpful you will be, the more your customers will refer others to your website.
- Market products from as many brands as possible: Introducing variety gives your customers many products to choose from. In addition, you also get a chance to compare the commissions, conversion rates, and, finally, the payments offered by the different brands.
- Keep a keen eye on and optimize your conversion rate: It is easier to increase conversion rates instead of wasting time building domain authority through referrals with blogging and guest posts to increase web traffic. This can be done through the optimization of the landing page and testing the calls-to-action.
- Focus on the sources of your affiliate traffic: These sources include organic, paid, referrals, display, email campaigns, or direct traffic. It is important to understand the demographics of your target audience, which is essential because they form the main source of your web traffic. This allows the customization of marketing parameters to suit the specific audience. The target demographic that is visiting your website will need to be reached in ways that they can associate.
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Affiliate marketing sites have created channels through which many marketers have taken control of their income. This is achieved by mainly focusing on performance-based revenue generation. Success in this form of marketing, however, relies on the level of skill and effort needed to deliver positive results.
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