Affiliate marketing is a revenue sharing partnership between a web merchant and one or more affiliates. The affiliate is paid a commission for referring clicks, leads or most often sales to the merchant.
Affiliate Marketing is a revenue sharing venture between a website owner and an online merchant. The website owner will place advertisements on his websites to either help sell the merchant's products or to send potential customers to the merchant's website, all in exchange for a share of the profits.
Affiliated companies are companies which are related to each other in some way. There are a number of ways in which companies can be related, ranging from formal arrangements, like interlocking directorates, to simply working in the same industry. Affiliated companies may work together on projects, provide special services for customers of their affiliates, and engage in other business activities in association with the companies they are related to
Being an affiliate marketer you won’t have to worry about creating your own product, e-commerce, product delivery, or even customer support since it is the merchant’s responsibility.
Qualities to possess to succeed in affiliate marketing
1. Affiliate Marketing Needs You To Be Patient
Too many Internet marketers lose out because they become impatient. You need to have a strong desire to succeed in affiliate marketing.
2. Affiliate Marketing Requires Hard Work
Starting out in affiliate marketing requires your time, dedication and hard work. I remember my sleepless nights, working shifts at my workplace and coming back home to continue on my sites. If you're just starting out, forget what the gurus tell you about working 2 hours per day the watching the money flow in.
3. Affiliate Marketing Needs You To Be Creative
The real key to being successful with affiliate marketing is to develop a good content based website and weave your affiliate links into all your content. You have to provide your prospects with good, quality content to keep them coming back to your site.
Ways to earn money through affiliate marketing
Pay Per Click — Every time a potential customer leaves the affiliate website by "clicking" on the link leading to the merchant's website, a certain amount of money is deposited in the affiliate's account. This amount can be pennies or dollars depending on the product and amount of the commission.
Pay Per Sale — Every time a sale is made as a result of advertising on the affiliate's website, a percentage, or commission, is deposited into the affiliate's account.
Pay Per Lead — Every time a potential client registers at the merchant's website as a result of the advertisement on the affiliate's account, a previously determined amount is deposited into the affiliate's account.
For many website owners, this is a great way to earn some extra money without actually having to "do" anything. All it involves is placing an ad on the affiliate's website. There's no selling or promotion of any kind. The affiliate can just sit back and wait for the profits to roll in.
The affiliate has to do thorough research on the merchant before agreeing to affiliation. To not do so can mean ending up with a merchant who refuses to pay commission fees or packs up his business and moves on without informing any of his affiliates. This is rare, however, and most merchants and affiliates have a pleasant and profitable business arrangement.
It's important to choose wisely. In some cases, an ad can be placed on an affiliate's website for months before a potential customer "clicks" or purchases something. If the commission is only pennies, this can lead to a frustrating relationship. Both the affiliate and the merchant are well advised to ensure the relationship will be mutually beneficial.
Becoming an Affiliate Marketer
As an affiliate marketer first thing you need to do is to go to a site like Commission Junction and sign up. Once you sign up, you can browse what kind of products they offer that you can promote, this is very important. Once you find something there to promote, you can add the code to your site. Try as much as possible to pick something that will be compatible with your website. Like, if your website is about early childhood education, you find an affiliate program that has do with things related to early childhood programm.
Your main goal as an affiliate marketer is to bring traffic to your partner merchant. By "traffic", we mean a number of people visiting a certain website.
There is no standard in traffic counts. Each merchant has their own desired traffic figures. As an affiliate marketer, always remember to pattern your strategies to your partner's objectives.
To generate your merchant's aspired number of traffic, develop contents in your website based on your market's interests and your merchant's profile. To do this, understand how your partner's business operates and understand what your consumers' behaviour are when online.
Get an affiliate program you want to promote, make a free website, write an article about what you are promoting and submit it. Back link your site on forums that are on the same subject as your website.
You need to make sure your affiliate link or banner is somewhere that will get people to notice it and make them want to click on it. This up to you/ try different location until you find one that works for you.
Once you have that set up the code on your website, you will have to promote the page to get people on the site. That is somewhat easy to do. The best and easy way to do it is to post in forums that is similar to your site and have you site in the signature. You can also write articles on sites with your link in the resource portion of the article.
Now you might be saying, "what if I don't have a website?" Well, that's fine also, just make a blog about a subject that you know about and go to Commission Junction to find an affiliate product to promote it.
Also if you don't want to start a blog, you can also use a signature in a forum if you post in the right forums. But that's sometimes is frowned upon. I have seen people do that before though. I'm not sure how much money you can make doing it this way, but you can always try it if that is what you want to do and you should start seeing some kind of money coming in. It will not make you rich but it will put smiles on your face.
While affiliate marketing can be incredibly lucrative it is important to know that affiliate marketing is not easy money. Most people who try it make very little as it relies upon numerous factors including:
traffic (high traffic helps a lot)
finding relevant products
finding quality products
building trust with your readers
having a readership who is in a ‘buying mood’
you being able to write good sales copy (and more)
However, as they always say there are two sides to a coin, the affiliate marketing program also has its advantages and disadvantages.
Advantages of Affiliate Marketing
•Affiliate marketing boosts sales and opens up new marketing channels.
•Merchants only have to pay their affiliates when a lead has been generated or there has been a sale, which is cost effective marketing.
•An affiliate marketer can still maintain his present work or business and have the affiliate marketing income to supplement his financial position. With a laptop and an internet connection, anybody can work almost anywhere even while enjoying a vacation.
•For clients, they do not have to drive all the way to the merchant's store or retailer to physically buy the product or engage the services of a service provider.
•Marketing allows smaller companies the chance to expose their products on websites that already have a great number of people looking at them. Affiliate sites also benefit from this type of marketing because they receive a commission for every sale they make for their website.
•It does not require a sizeable investment on the part of the affiliate.
Disadvantages of Affiliate Marketing
Having gone through the advantages of affiliate marketing, it also comes with a few disadvantages.
•The greatest one of all is that a lot of people get into this game with completely wrong expectations, unfortunately, it's not like you can simply create a small website and start earning raking in huge commissions over night. Even though affiliates generally have to deal with fewer issues than product creators, it's still a complex business that requires many different skills.
•There are link hijackers that hijack the affiliate link and then get paid the commission that the affiliate is suppose to be getting paid.
•Dishonest merchants can close down their program without telling the affiliate and without paying them their commission.
•Affiliates may mislead or falsify advertising in order to get the sales commission. The affiliate may make promises regarding the product which are completely wrong or exaggerated. If this happens the merchant will usually receive complaints and potentially lose customers
•Merchants could promise high commissions to get new affiliates and then lower the commission rate a couple of weeks after getting the new affiliates.
Lastly, No matter what the disadvantages of affiliate marketing are, it still one of the best forms of marketing available online today and is a great way for you to make money. As a vendor, you should definitely have an affiliate program for your products, as it really is the best risk-free marketing to be had. As an affiliate, you simply need to have realistic expectations and be willing to put in the work necessary to really see good results. If you are looking for a way to make extra money and help others market their business, affiliate marketing is right for you.
