What is Affiliate Marketing?

What do we think of when we hear the word ‘marketing’? We get a plethora of pictures of products being put on a portal and with a person convincing us to have a look at them and if we like, buy them. 

Affiliate Marketing is no different. It's a way of both promotion of the product in the market as well as generation of a kind of passive income for those who do it. 

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate Marketing is the idea of a sale that the product owner uses to increase sales by allowing others connected to the same audience to target them against a monetary commission for each sale they will be able to make. 

 

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It allows affiliates to earn money on a product without creating it. This means you can hire people to promote your products and will pay them based on how well they have promoted their products.

In simpler words, affiliate marketing works as a referral recommendation, it is basically referring to service by sharing it on a website, blog or social media platform.

 

When someone opens it through a provided link, which is more of a unique link for the affiliate, they earn a commission on the sale made, this is a performance-based opportunity that is nowadays provided by several businesses but this can become a healthy source of alternative and passive income. 

 

Who is an Affiliate?

The term affiliate is used for a person who becomes associated with the company or companies to promote their products via its membership programs.

 

They promote the products using their website, blog, social media platform with a special referral code so they get their share of the revenue as the commission with each sale done through their link.
 

 

How to do Affiliate Marketing?

As we have now understood, affiliate marketing requires the ability to promote the products only, here is how to be an affiliate and start generating your passive income today. 

Initially, this procedure of marketing does not require any experience or any monetary investment. The understanding and functioning of the tactic become important although, so as an affiliate you can be able to target a specific audience.

Affiliate Marketing can be easily done keeping in mind these simple steps.

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Steps of Affiliate Marketing

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1. Find and join an affiliate program

Not every company offers affiliate programs—some businesses manage their own affiliate programs while others use an affiliate network, what one needs to do is choose from the options of affiliate programs available for us to join and which suits us the best. There are several websites that work to give out a list of current and ongoing affiliate programs.

 

 
Some of such websites include AvantLink, RevenueWire, and ShareASale 

 

2. Choose the products you want to promote 

This is a very important step as one can choose the products based on what suits you the best. For example, we can choose which products are the ones that can get the attention of the peers and the people we have to share it with. Also, it can be the products on which the company offers maximum commission. This needs to be done with the sided thought of who are you going to target as an affiliate and who will be your audience who will in turn buy it. 

 

3. Generate the referral link 

When you pick a product there must be a special and unique referral link that needs to be put on the places you promote the products on just to differentiate your promotion and products from any other affiliates the company may have. 

 

This link will not be used only to promote the product but as per the usage of the technology, this is also used to track and trace the sales made using this special link of yours. 

The referral link could be anything a link to a website, a coupon code that offers a discount, etc. 

 

4. Share the links on various platforms

Now that you have your own referral link or promotional link the next step is to put out this link on various social media platforms, blogs and websites where other people can see your link and can purchase the product via the link provided by you if they wish to. 

 

The most lucrative way to put the link is to put it with the relative content on the board as people wish to be aware of the product’s benefits  and the information about the same before buying it. This can sufficiently be done with the help of a suitable content and a catchy line if you are using it on social media with easy access to your link. 

 

For example, if you need to promote Dog food on your blog you can start it by writing a blog on the significance of good and nutritious dog food and can follow up by how this particular product which you have given to has all such nutritions and call people to try it for their pets using your link.
 

 

5. Collect the commission 

There is a fixed amount of rewards and the monetary amount you are liable to get on each sale done by you (your customized link) which is pre-mentioned. 

Commissions rates vary from company to company and product to product; they could be 5% of the sale or even 50% of the same too and not to mention that there are also some affiliate marketing programs that provide a flat rate per sale instead of a percentage. Don’t forget to collect that reward as a part of your passive income, as people buy the product using your referral link! 

 

Speaking of marketing read our blog on How AI in Digital Marketing. 

 

 

Examples of Affiliate Marketing

The Wirecutter:  Wirecutter is an affiliate and review website started by  Brian Lam for promoting gear and gadgets. It was acquired by the Newyork Times in 2016. It uses a page which tells the people about the list of top items categorically and with apt reviews.  It generates its affiliate commission from Amazon and BestBuy mainly. 

 

BuzzFeed: BuzzFeed is a media website that expanded its domain in its line of reviews and it allows people to post and also generate links to their content as a part of marketing and putting forward their ideas for the same and also this website sometimes puts forward an algorithm to give top picks at three different price points associating with various websites that offer affiliate programs.

Amazon Affiliate: Amazon associates is an affiliate program of the host website amazon. It’s free for people to become amazon affiliates by a simple sign up process which also asks how would you be able to direct the traffic on the website and get their unique referral link and then put them on display on various websites that offer themselves as an affiliate platform, like aforementioned, and generate incomes on each purchase made by the people using that specific link. 

 

Benefits of Affiliate Marketing

 

1.  Cost-Effective

Affiliate marketing is the only payable when an actual purchase happens, unless and until there is no conversion into a buyer the business is not really liable to pay anything to the affiliate, this makes it very cost-effective.

 

 

2. Reputation Building

This marketing strategy helps to boost the reputation of the brand or business and not just creates backlinks or hashtags across the same platforms to add to the brand’s reputation and image but in addition to that generates organic traffic to the main website. 

 

 

3. Increase in Reach
 

It helps in boosting the audience which means if the product is advertised to a totally different circle who might now have known your brand before might come across the article featuring your brand and with this procedure can get to know about your brand in particular. 

 

 

4. Low Risk 

For the affiliates this can serve as a low-risk money fetching option as the actual purchase will be only made after the successful payment but in the case that fails to happen there is not any need of indemnity for the same. There will be no risk involved of any loss. 

 

 

5. Easy Functioning
 

Also, affiliate marketing takes place completely online and with really simple tools and ways. All it takes is knowledge of the same (not to mention which is available on the internet), a good internet connection, and a pre-created platform to promote the products to be able to cause a purchase and pick your commission. 

 

 

6. Flexible  

The number of affiliates can vary from company to company and as well the choice of products is solely the decision of the affiliate which makes it very flexible and convenient as well. 

 
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Importance of Affiliate Marketing

 

Affiliate Marketing works on the grounds of online featuring of the brand to new audiences. In a time-space where everyone has an internet connection handy and the brands are facing so much competition from the fellow brands this kind of marketing can provide an edge to both and is a win-win situation for both. 

 

Apart from marketing and technical tools, this can be an available option to fetch reach to the brand even more and get the performance-based passive income for doing that from the comfort of one’s homes, making affiliate marketing more relatable and suitable in this scenario. 

Conclusion 

 

To conclude, it can be said that affiliate marketing is an outcome of a modern scenario and availability for the adequate tools for the same which are being used by the people to earn a passive income. 

 

This form of marketing has several advantages which make it convenient and widespread as there are various websites available to put it on and most importantly being an affiliate if absolutely free of cost for on websites.