Heard of affiliate marketing and wish to start it now? Well, it is not that easy to achieve!
Yes, keeping it clear and straight to the point, is no magic that you can pursue within hours. It requires time, patience, and some decent knowledge of the same. If you are thinking of jumping over this by quitting all your earning sources, stop and don’t do it!
However, if you’re thinking to keep it aside from business for the long term and not expecting any miracle to happen overnight, this can make you earn a lot more than you imagine!
Here, we are writing this whole guide on affiliate marketing and how to get started with it. Let’s scroll and find out more.
What is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing is what you earn from marketing a product. In other terms, it is a process through which you earn some commission via your marketing of a particular product and which you can be termed as an affiliate. The task is to promote the product and let people buy the same. If the sale is coming, you’re going to earn some part of the profit the company makes from the sale. Tracking the sale will be done by the affiliate link you’ll be given.
If we talk about the best thing about this affiliate marketing, then it is the fact that you can scale it to a larger level as you can promote various products from various companies and earn a decent amount of commission from them.
How does Affiliate marketing works?
Affiliate marketing works in some simple rules. You get the sales, you get the part of some profits. There is no rocket science behind that. But for a successful affiliate, there should be three different parties involved-
- The affiliate or advertiser
- Product creator
- Consumer/Buyer
These three parties play a crucial part in making the process successful. Let us take a look at their roles-
1. Product creator:- Product creator could be anyone, the direct seller, a vendor, retailer, large enterprise, or entrepreneur. Anyone selling the product is a product creator and the product could be a service, tutorial, guide, or physical object. Now it is not required for a seller to be involved in the marketing but they can optionally be the advertiser and take the profits if they’re dealing directly with the affiliate marketing.
2. The affiliate:- Now the affiliate is going to be the person or a company that is marketing the product to get the sales. Let’s say, you’re promoting a product so that the customer will get convinced to buy it. Now if you get the sales, you will be the one who will get the portion of the revenue generated from the product sale.
3. The consumer:- The third yet most important one is the consumer or the buyer who is actually buying the products. They are also termed as the drivers of affiliate marketing as they’re the ones because of who the affiliate can earn the commission. Affiliates promote their products via social media, websites, etc to the customers.
How does an affiliate marketer get paid?
The main question that you will anyway search for is how do these affiliates get paid for the same. It is a tricky yet the most important thing one should know to master affiliate marketing. Because when you’re actually not selling the products physically or making many efforts for the same, the sale is surely not confirmed. You might make the sale or you may not. And in such cases, how to assure a passive income? Well, there are different ways through which an affiliate gets paid. Let us take a look at a few of them-
1. Pay per sale:- If you say affiliate marketing, this is what you are supposed to understand. It is the standard structure through which the marketers get paid. The merchant of the product will pay a specific percentage of the sale made from selling that product. But here, the sale is the vital part from which you are getting paid. If you cant drive the sales, you can’t get paid.
2. Pay per lead:- One more method for getting paid in affiliate programs is getting paid pay per lead. It is based on the conversion of leads via which the affiliate will get paid. Here, the task is that the affiliate must convince the consumer to visit the website of the merchant and complete the given task such as filling a form, sign up to their website, downloading something, or let’s say subscribing to the newsletter. If you get it done, you will get paid even if the customer isn’t buying the product.
3. Pay per click:- Here, you are neither have to make a sale or get a task done. The only task for the affiliate is to get the click clicked by the consumer and let them visit the merchant website no matter what. They may buy, they may not and it is completely up to them. But if you are making them click on their website, you will be getting some web traffic to their site which is why you will get paid.
Some common affiliate marketing methods:
There are many types of affiliate marketing channels through which you can get paid. And all of them are different from each other in terms of how they advertise their products. Here are some of the known affiliate marketing channels you can try-
1. Influencer:- Influencer is someone who has the power to influence people around them. It could be anyone. Maybe a brand or an individual. If they have a certain amount of followers, it is an easy task for them to get the sales driven from their followers. They generally interact with people through their blogs, social media posts, etc. The most commonplace of it is Instagram where they run such campaigns and earn profits from the same.
2. Bloggers:- Bloggers do the same with the help of ranking their websites on the search engine. They make their blogs and websites and write appealing reviews that can mold the potential target to the buyer of the product and get the commission. They also get paid for bringing traffic to the seller’s website. They also give their own affiliate links for services through which people can get some discounts whereas they get a decent amount of profit sharing for the same.
3. Paid-focused microsites:- If you can make a microsite and monetize the same, you can also get some great sales from the sale. You can get the sponsored listing there where you can lead the traffic to the sale. Although this channel is a reliable and highly successful one, it is also tough to achieve.
4. Email list:- If you’re an affiliate and if you do have an email list, you can use that to promote the product and drive a good amount of sales. Here, you must do email marketing in such a manner that people get forced to buy the product. It could be a tempting mail or a newsletter with the link to the product. Just get it clicked by them and get paid for the same.
Wrapping up,
This was all about affiliate marketing and how to get started on the same. Here, we have included everything you must know about it. Be it how to get paid or the channels from which you can get started, you will get everything in this guide written.
Now if you want to get started now, you already have enough information. But if you have even the slightest doubt, please feel free to ask by commenting down in the given comment section.
