What is affiliate marketing?
Affiliate marketing is an online sales tactic that lets a product owner increase sales by allowing others targeting the same audience—“affiliates”—to earn a commission by recommending the product to others. At the same time, it makes it possible for affiliates to earn money on product sales without creating products of their own.Simply put, affiliate marketing involves referring a product or service by sharing it on a blog, social media platforms, or website. The affiliate earns a commission each time someone makes a purchase through the unique link associated with their recommendation. Done well, this performance-based opportunity can become an important part of your business by netting you a healthy income.
Affiliate marketing work
To participate in an affiliate marketing program, you’ll need to take these five simple steps:
(1) Find and join an affiliate program
(2) Choose which offers to promote
(3) Obtain a unique affiliate link for each offer
(4) Share those links on your blog, social media platforms, or website
(5) Collect a commission anytime someone uses your links to make a purchase
(6) Focus&Practise is highly essential in Affiliate marketing
(7) Product knowledge will be an added advantage
Commission rates vary dramatically, depending on the company and the offer. On the low end, you’ll earn about 5% of the sale but, with some arrangements, you can earn as much as 50%, usually when promoting a class or event. There are also affiliate marketing programs that provide a flat rate per sale instead of a percentage
Benefits of the affiliate marketing
Affiliate marketing offers several benefits to affiliates (i.e., you), one of which is its ease. Your side of the equation simply involves handling the “marketing” side of building and selling a product—educating customers. You don’t have to worry about the harder tasks, like developing, supporting, or fulfilling the offer.
Affiliate marketing is low risk. Since there’s no cost to join affiliate programs, you can start making money with an established affiliate product or service without any upfront investment. Affiliate marketing also can generate relatively passive income through commission—the ideal money-making scenario. Though initially you’ll have to invest time creating traffic sources, your affiliate links can continue to deliver a steady paycheck.
Finally, successful affiliate marketing
offers the potential to significantly scale your earnings without hiring extra
help. You can introduce new products to your current audience and build
campaigns for additional products while your existing work continues to
generate revenue in the background.
affiliate marketing is built on trust. While seemingly there are an endless number of products or services to promote, it’s best to only highlight those you personally use or would recommend. Even when a product interests you or fits within an existing hobby, becoming a great marketer for that product takes a lot of work.
How to find affiliate programs
If you’re wondering how to get your feet wet in affiliate marketing, you’ve got a few options. Not every company offers affiliate programs—some businesses manage their own affiliate programs while others use an affiliate network.
An easy way to find affiliate programs is to visit an affiliate marketplace or platform. Browse your niche to find top performing affiliate platforms.
some of the most popular:
(a)
AffiliateNetwork (b)
AvantLink (c)
CJ by Conversant (d)
ClickBank: not adviceable for India
(e) FlexOffers (f) LinkConnector (g) RevenueWire (h) ShareASale
Another option is to visit the websites
of the products and services you use and like to see if they have an affiliate
program. Large companies often have programs they promote on their site, such
as Amazon Associates or the Shopify Affiliate Program.
You also can take a more direct
approach. Reach out to the owner of a great product you come across and see if
they offer an affiliate marketing program. If they don’t, they might be happy
to set up an arrangement with you, such as offering you a special coupon code
to share with your followers. The best deals often are found when you’re the
first to inquire and have a relevant distribution channel, such as approaching
the seller of a new fitness product if you’re a health and wellness blogger.
Choosing your first affiliate program
As you brainstorm products or browse through affiliate platforms, the most important criteria to keep in mind is that the product should be aligned with your audience, or the audience you hope to build. Ask yourself, is it something your target audience would find valuable? Does it fit with your area of expertise?
A food blogger probably wouldn’t promote beauty products, for example. A wide range of other products would make more sense, such as cookware, meal kits, gourmet ingredients, or even aprons.
Also make sure the product or service you’re promoting is a fit for the platform you’re promoting it on. For example, home decor and clothing are well suited to image-heavy platforms like Instagram.However, if you’re promoting more in-depth purchases, like software, your review may convert better on longer-form platforms, like a blog or YouTube.
Creating a plan to promote your
affiliate offer. Tomorrow learn to create Blogs.
