What Is Affiliate Marketing? Affiliate Marketing Meaning
Affiliate marketing is the process by which affiliates earn commissions to promote the products of other companies. Affiliates search for the product they like, promote it on their social network blogs and YouTube channels and earn a portion of their profits each time they sell it. Sales are tracked from one website to another website via affiliate links. So, this was the meaning of affiliate marketing in simple words. Now, we will see how does affiliate marketing works?
How Does Affiliate Marketing Work?
For Affiliate Marketing to work, three different parties need to be involved:
- sellers or product creators
- Affiliate or advertiser
- consumer
Now let us understand the relationships shared by these three parties.
1. Seller
A seller in affiliate marketing is a person or company who wants to increase their profits by selling their products to a large population. One of the best ways to do it is through affiliate marketing. Here, they register their product with an affiliate network like Amazon and then bloggers and YouTube channels or other applications like EarnKaro etc, promote them.
2. Affiliate or Publisher or Content Creator
Affiliates, also known as publishers, are either individuals or businesses that sell the seller’s products in a way that attracts potential consumers. In other words, affiliates convince consumers that it is valuable or beneficial to them and promote the product to convince them to buy the product.
When the consumer finally purchases the product, the affiliate receives a commission on the generated revenue. Affiliates often market to a very specific audience of a particular niche(category) and serve the interests of that audience.
3. Consumers or Buyers
Affiliates share these products on social media, blogs and YouTube channels. When a consumer buys a product, the seller and the affiliate share the profit. Affiliates often choose to speak to consumers by disclosing that they receive commissions for the sale they make. The share of the profit partner is included in the selling price. The consumer completes the purchasing process and receives the product as usual and the affiliate earns a commission.
How Do Affiliate Marketers Get Paid?
1. Pay per sale.
This is the standard affiliate marketing structure. In this program, the merchant pays the affiliate a percentage of the sale price of the product after the consumer purchases the product
2. Pay per lead.
In a more complex system, pay per lead affiliate programs pays the affiliate based on the conversion of leads. The affiliate must persuade the consumer to visit the merchant’s website and complete the desired action — whether it’s filling a contact form, signing up for a trial of a product, subscribing to a newsletter or to an email list, or downloading their mobile applications
3. Pay per click.
This program focuses on convincing the affiliate to redirect consumers from their marketing platform to the merchant’s website. This means the affiliate must convince the consumer to move from the affiliate’s site to the merchant’s site. The affiliate is paid based on the increase in web traffic.
Why affiliate marketing?
1. Free to Try
Starting a business means spending money from your pocket initially for products, employees, rent etc. This makes it risky and expensive. With affiliate marketing, all you need is a website or a YouTube channel and your social media.
2. Easy to Promote
A typical salesperson only sells products of one company but as an affiliate marketer, we can promote products from many different companies of different categories and earn commissions by promoting all of them.
3. Passive income
A “regular” job requires us to be at work to make money. On the other hand, affiliate marketing offers us the ability to make money even when we sleep. By investing an initial amount of time, we can see regular returns on that time as consumers purchase the product every time, believe me, even when you are reading this article. You continue to receive money for your work which you had done long ago, even 10 years ago.
4. No Customer Support Required
Individual sellers and companies have to deal with a large number of consumers and ensure that they are satisfied with what they have bought.
Affiliate marketing allows you to overcome this disadvantage. This is why affiliate marketing is so popular. You don’t have to be concerned with customer satisfaction. The only job of the affiliate marketer is to link the seller with the consumer and that’s all. Also, the seller deals with any consumer complaints once you have received your commission from the sale through affiliate marketing.
5. Work from home.
If you hate going to the office, affiliate marketing is the perfect solution for you. You’ll be able to generate revenue from the products which sellers create while working from the comfort of your home.
Social Media Platforms for Affiliate Marketing
About Affiliate Networks
An affiliate program works with a third party to manage your connection with the merchant. Generally, an affiliate network manages affiliate links, tracking, payment etc.
Affiliate networks have thousands of merchants involved. You can join the affiliate network and then apply for each merchant program individually.
Once you have been approved, you will have access to affiliate links of different kinds of products. These links can be placed in your blogs, social media or YouTube Channels and you can promote that merchant’s product.
One of the most popular affiliate networks is Amazon Associates Affiliate Program.
Is affiliate marketing easy?
Affiliate marketing is not an easy task. It requires hard work and you must take it seriously. However, if you choose and focus on a particular niche, and create quality content that is useful for your readers, you can become very successful at affiliate marketing. One of the biggest advantages of affiliate marketing is that once you have promoted a product, it will generate revenue for you lifetime.
How Much Money Can I Make As an Affiliate Marketer?
I personally know some bloggers who make five figures monthly via blogging, from affiliate marketing alone. However, some bloggers are not able to earn much since they don’t use the correct strategies to promote the products.
In other words, Affiliate marketing can fetch you a lot of money and you can earn a lot of money if you devote your time and energy to it.