Affiliate Marketer: Definition, Examples, and How to Get Started.
Affiliate marketing is the process by which an affiliate earns a commission for marketing another person's or company's products. The affiliate simply searches for a product they enjoy, then promotes that product and earns a piece of the profit from each sale they make.
Affiliate marketing is a type of online marketing where businesses partner with affiliates to promote their products or services, and pay them a commission for every sale that is made through their referral link. In this model, affiliates act as intermediaries between the business and potential customers, using their own marketing channels to drive traffic and sales to the business's website.
At its core, affiliate marketing is a performance-based marketing strategy where the success of the affiliate is directly tied to the sales generated through their promotions. As such, affiliates are incentivized to promote the business's products or services in a way that is authentic, engaging, and targeted to their audience.
The process of affiliate marketing typically involves several key steps:
Finding an affiliate program: Affiliates typically search for businesses that offer affiliate programs in their niche, and apply to join them.
Receiving a unique referral link: Once accepted into an affiliate program, affiliates are given a unique referral link that they can use to promote the business's products or services.
Promoting the product or service: Affiliates then use their marketing channels to promote the product or service to their audience, often using tactics such as reviews, product comparisons, or social media posts.
Earning a commission: When a user clicks on the affiliate's referral link and makes a purchase, the affiliate earns a commission on the sale. The commission rate is typically set by the business, and can vary depending on the product or service being promoted.
Tracking and reporting: The business tracks the sales made through the affiliate's referral link, and provides reporting to the affiliate on their performance.
Overall, affiliate marketing offers a win-win situation for both the business and the affiliate. Businesses are able to leverage the power of affiliates' marketing channels to reach new customers and increase sales, while affiliates are able to earn passive income by promoting products or services they believe in.
The business tracks the sale and pays the affiliate: The business tracks the sale made through the affiliate's referral link, and pays the affiliate their commission.
A user clicks on the referral link and makes a purchase: When a user clicks on the affiliate's referral link and makes a purchase, the affiliate earns a commission on the sale.
Affiliates promote the products or services: Affiliates use their marketing channels to promote the business's products or services to their audience. This can include tactics such as reviews, product comparisons, social media posts, and more.
Affiliate Marketing: How to Turn Product Recommendations Into Passive Income
In today’s hyper-digitalised world, if you aspire to start a passive income stream from your online activity to complement your monthly paycheck or simply wonder how you could make money online without really worrying about developing a product of your own, you are not alone.
One of the most efficient ways to do this is to collaborate with businesses to help them reach a wider customer base and start an income source in the process.
Crucially, this collaboration is irrespective of whether or not you have your own business.
If you aren’t participating in affiliate marketing, it’s time to consider taking advantage of this lucrative revenue stream.
What is affiliate marketing?
Affiliate marketing is the process of making money online every time a customer purchases a product based on your recommendation.
This is an online sales tactic that allows you – ‘the affiliate’ – to earn a commission and helps the product owner increase sales. 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 or code associated with their recommendation.
Do it right, and this performance-based opportunity can be a source of additional income or help diversify the revenue streams of an existing business.
How is affiliate marketing different from influencer marketing?
If an affiliate is redirecting customer traffic to a merchant’s website, doesn’t that qualify as influencer marketing? While there is indeed a natural overlap between affiliate marketing and influencer marketing, they are not necessarily the same. It is important to understand the differences between the two and how each of them works in order to maximise the revenue-generating opportunities offered by both.
Influencer marketing is a collaboration between brands and individuals who already have a sizable audience (or influencers), where the individuals are paid to endorse or promote the brand or its products/ services.
It is a marketing strategy by which brands reach their target audience and try to ‘influence’ their purchasing behaviour.
With affiliate marketing, brands incentivise affiliates to promote their products/ services online by offering a commission for every sale they cause. i.e. the affiliate receives a commission if a visitor purchases the product from a link (or code) unique to the affiliate, published on their website or channel.
In influencer marketing, the number of followers, social media impressions, and interactions measure the ‘engagement’ that an influencer could generate.
This is a key factor that determines the amount paid to the influencer based on their quote, whether or not the influencer activity actually leads to sales. Typically, influencers are paid a one-time fee, or a per post/content fee, for the activity.
On the other hand, in affiliate marketing, site traffic, sales volume, and average order value are the bases on which the affiliate gets paid a commission.
This may be a pre-decided percentage of the product sales effected by them or a flat-fee commission. This means, affiliates get paid on achieving a business outcome for the brand, whereas influencers are paid for the work they put in.
While these distinctions hold true, the similarity between successful influencers and affiliates is that both produce engaging content that resonates with their audience and instils a sense of trust. Therefore there is often an overlap between the two.
How does affiliate marketing work?
To participate in an affiliate marketing program, you’ll need to:
Find and join an affiliate program
Choose which offers to promote
Obtain a unique affiliate link or code for each offer
Share those links or codes on your blog, social media platforms, YouTube channel or website.
And you collect a commission anytime someone uses your links or codes to make a purchase. Commission rates vary dramatically, depending on the company and the affiliate program. At the low end, you’ll earn about 5% of the sale but, with some arrangements, you can earn as much as 25%. In some cases, affiliate marketing programs provide a flat fee per sale instead of a percentage.
Benefits of the affiliate marketing model
Affiliate marketing offers several benefits to you as an affiliate, one of which is its ease. Your side of the equation simply involves handling a part of the “marketing” side of the product’s success— i.e. 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. Also, affiliate marketing can generate a relatively passive income through commission.
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 innovate to reach out to a wider audience while your existing work continues to generate revenue in the background.
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. Here are some of the most popular ones in India:
AffiliateFuture
Admitad
ClickBank
vCommission
Resellerclub
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.
Brands like Juicy Chemistry, selling organic skincare products have their own affiliate programs up and running.
So if you are a user of their products or knowledgeable about skincare in general, this affiliate opportunity might be right up your alley.
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 presenting you with a unique 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.
Affiliate marketing programs will have terms of service you need to follow, so read the fine print carefully. For example, your link usually will have a cookie with a specified timeframe, and some programs don’t allow you to purchase pay-per-click ads using the product or company’s name.
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/service 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 purchases that need a more in-depth assessment, like software, your review may convert better on longer-form content platforms, like a blog or YouTube.
Which platforms to use for affiliate marketing?
There are several platforms to earn money through affiliate marketing, some of them are listed below:
Your own website or blog
Instagram
YouTube
Twitter
Facebook
LinkedIn
Reddit
Email
While any platform could be used for sharing your affiliate marketing links or codes, it’s useful to determine which platforms are the easiest to reach your largest audience with uncompromised trust, and where they are most likely to buy the products you are marketing.
For example, if you write well and have an audience seeking newsletters, email and your own blog may work out the best for you. Business products may be the easiest to market on Linkedin. If you have a large number of followers on Instagram, that should be the best place to begin. However, there’s no reason to limit yourself to any single platform.
Tips to promote your affiliate offer :
As mentioned earlier, affiliate marketing revenue eventually can become a form of passive income, but you still have to do some heavy lifting up front.
The success of your program will depend on the quality of your recommendation.
To make a convincing recommendation, it’s best to get personal. Share your experience in your blog, social media post, or video.
If you’re writing a personal review, give a candid opinion based on your experience with and knowledge of the product. The more open you are, the more authentic you will be.
However, that alone is not enough. Take into consideration the tips below while promoting your affiliate offer.
1. Build trust
People will be more comfortable following your advice if they feel they can trust you. Trust is a key factor in your affiliate marketing efforts, because people need to trust you enough to act on your recommendations.
The level of trust you’ll need to make affiliate sales depends on your industry and the products you’re recommending—for example, it takes more trust to be an effective affiliate for a INR 3,000 course, than it does for a t-shirt that costs a few hundred rupees.
Building trust, however, is something that happens over a period of time. So, if you’re new to creating content for affiliate marketing, don’t expect success overnight.
And more importantly, don’t be disheartened or impatient with your project to make affiliate marketing work for you. Patience, persistence and consistency are your allies in building trust.
2. Talk to a product expert
An option you can explore in terms of your content is interviewing others who use the product or service, or even interviewing the person who makes or sells it. Authentic experience of a product’s user, and the expertise of a product expert, both add a weight of meaning to your recommendations.
This can give your recommendation more depth, creating a narrative for your audience. And if done well, they will increasingly seek your content to discover or learn about new products.
3. Create a product tutorial
While your success with affiliate marketing can depend on the overall size of your following, another way to drive higher-converting traffic is by providing a tutorial on the offer. Moreover, people often perform “how to” searches on Google, such as “how to save money for college” or “how to decorate a laundry room.” If you offer a tutorial that solves a searcher’s problem and clearly showcases the value of the product, your referrals will make more sense in context and you’ll provide the customer with a stronger incentive to purchase the product you’re recommending.
4. Find relevant search terms
If you’re promoting an offer through a blog post or YouTube, research which keywords someone might use in a search engine to find an answer to a related problem. Google Ads Keyword Planner is a good tool that can help with identifying and targeting the right keywords and phrases. (It’s free to use, but you’ll need to create an account.)
5. Consider your angle
Depending on your offer, figure out how much energy you should invest in instructional or tutorial content, which is often a natural lead-in to someone trying a product for themselves. For example, you could record a video of yourself using and getting the most out of a physical product, or showing off the benefits of a digital product, like software. It helps audiences catch a glimpse of the product's utility before making a purchase.
Unboxing posts are popular, so if you receive the product in the mail, document your experience opening it up.
6. Set your distribution strategy
Once you’ve created your promotional content, share it on your website or social media platforms to let network effects take over. If you have an email list, you can create an email marketing campaign. And be sure to have an affiliate marketing hub on your website with a resources page where you share a quick list of all of the tools you use and love.
7. Try offering a bonus
Sometimes marketers promote their affiliate programs by offering bonuses to anyone who purchases the offer. For example, you could give a free ebook you wrote to any follower who makes a purchase.
Promotions like this encourage customers to buy by sweetening the deal. It is especially persuasive if the bonus you offer is something you normally sell, because then shoppers can see its actual monetary value right on your site.
Sometimes if you have the right audience and great engagement, you can strike a deal with the promoting brand to offer an exclusive bonus for your audiences.
This is often a win-win for both you and the brand, since you get to incentivise your audience to purchase through your links for exclusive offers, and the brands get to target their discounts more effectively to the right audience.
ShoutMeLoud, a blog that earns a good share through affiliate marketing promotes such an exclusive offer with SEMRush, the SEO tool, as seen in the image below:
Source: SEMRush
The most common bonus programs seen in India are coupons, free trials, product giveaways or extra discounts for a service/ products purchased with the affiliate links.
8. Keep things legal and above board
According to ASCI (The Advertising Standards Council Of India) Guidelines, there are some duties that need to be fulfilled when you’re doing affiliate marketing like the use of a disclosure label.
A disclosure is required for all brand promotions if there is any material connection between both the entities. In the case of affiliate marketing, your content contains a hyperlink or discount code, where you get paid for every ‘clickthrough’ and sale that can be traced back to your content. Therefore you must use a disclosure label.
Even if you put links in your content for your family brand it’s necessary that you disclose it. If you’re promoting something at your own expense and there is no material exchange of any kind with the brand you are choosing to talk about, no disclosure is necessary.
All disclosures you make must be prominently visible in a way that it can’t be missed. While ASCI, as a matter of principle, does not impose penalties and fines, it may escalate non-compliant cases to the government and sector regulators to protect consumer rights.
The guidelines are designed to help the affiliates work collaboratively and communicate effectively and responsibly with the industry. This protects the consumers from being misled and thereby protects the long term interests of the affiliates and the industry.
While this may sound foreboding, maintaining such transparency will further earn your audience’s trust in the long run.
9. Display your affiliate links/codes prominently
Where and how you feature your affiliate links and codes in your content must be carefully thought through. While it’s important not to seem pushy, it’s vital that an interested user does not miss them. Below are a few general tips you could put into practice in your affiliate marketing campaigns.
Use call-to-action (CTA) buttons wherever possible
CTA buttons encourage better conversions than URLs displayed within your website or blog.
Cloak your links
Turn “randomaffiliateprogram.com/?clickid=abc12345” into “yourwebsite.com/product-name” with tools like Prettylinks. Lengthy urls not only take up real estate in your content with meaningless hashes, but also seem inherently suspicious. Also, you now have the opportunity to convert the link into an asset that reflects your brand.
List all your affiliate offers in one place
This ensures that your audience can find and recover your offer whenever they are ready to make a purchase and increases the possibility of every visitor discovering something they link in a menu of products.
Bloggerspassion.com has ‘recommended tools’ displayed prominently on their homepage along with encouraging copy and CTA buttons for each.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Affiliate marketing is a marketing scheme in which a company compensates partners for business created from the affiliate's marketing tactics.
Digital marketing, analytics, and cookies have made affiliate marketing a billion-dollar industry.
Firms typically pay affiliates per sale and less frequently by clicks or impressions.
The three main types of affiliate marketing are unattached affiliate marketing, involved affiliate marketing, and related affiliate marketing.
Understanding Affiliate Marketing
The internet has increased the prominence of affiliate marketing. Amazon (AMZN) popularized the practice by creating an affiliate marketing program whereby websites and bloggers put links to the Amazon page for a reviewed or discussed product to receive advertising fees when a purchase is made. In this sense, affiliate marketing is essentially a pay-for-performance marketing program where the act of selling is outsourced across a vast network.
Affiliate marketing predates the Internet, but in the world of digital marketing, analytics, and cookies made it a billion-dollar industry. A company running an affiliate marketing program can track the links that bring in leads and, through internal analytics, see how many convert to sales.
An e-commerce merchant wanting to reach a wider base of internet users and shoppers may hire an affiliate.
An affiliate could be the owner of multiple websites or email marketing lists; the more websites or email lists that an affiliate has, the wider its network. The hired affiliate then communicates and promotes the products offered on the e-commerce platform to their network.
The affiliate does this by running banner ads, text ads, posting links on its websites, or sending emails to clientele. Firms use advertisements in the form of articles, videos, and images to draw an audience’s attention to a service or product.
Types of Affiliate Marketing:
There are three main types of affiliate marketing: unattached affiliate marketing, related affiliate marketing, and involved affiliate marketing.
Unattached Affiliate Marketing: This is an advertising model in which the affiliate has no connection to the product or service they are promoting. They have no known related skills or expertise and do not serve as an authority on or make claims about its use. This is the most uninvolved form of affiliate marketing. The lack of attachment to the potential customer and product absolves the affiliate from the duty to recommend or advise.
Related Affiliate Marketing: As the name suggests, related affiliate marketing involves the promotion of products or services by an affiliate with some type of relationship to the offering. Generally, the connection is between the affiliate's niche and the product or service. The affiliate has enough influence and expertise to generate traffic, and their level of authority makes them a trusted source. The affiliate, however, makes no claims about the use of the product or service.
Involved Affiliate Marketing: This type of marketing establishes a deeper connection between the affiliate and the product or service they're promoting. They have used or currently use the product and are confident that their positive experiences can be shared by others. Their experiences are the advertisements, and they serve as trusted sources of information. On the other hand, because they're providing recommendations, their reputation may be compromised by any problems arising from the offering.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Affiliate Marketing:
Affiliate marketing can yield great rewards for the advertising company and the affiliate marketer. The company benefits from low-cost advertising and the creative marketing efforts of its affiliates, and the affiliate benefits by earning additional income and incentives. The return on investment for affiliate marketing is high as the company only pays on traffic converted to sales. The cost of advertising, if any, is borne by the affiliate. The advertising company sets the terms of an affiliate marketing program. Early on, companies largely paid the cost per click (traffic) or cost per mile (impressions) on banner advertisements. As technology evolved, the focus turned to commissions on actual sales or qualified leads. The early affiliate marketing programs were vulnerable to fraud because clicks could be generated by software, as could impressions. Now, most affiliate programs have strict terms and conditions on how to generate leads. There are also certain banned methods, such as installing adware or spyware that redirect all search queries for a product to an affiliate's page. Some affiliate marketing programs go as far as to lay out how a product or service is to be discussed in the content before an affiliate link can be validated. So an effective affiliate marketing program requires some forethought. The terms and conditions must be clearly spelled out, especially if the contract agreement pays for traffic rather than sales. The potential for fraud in affiliate marketing is possible. Unscrupulous affiliates can squat on domain names with misspellings and get a commission for the redirect. They can populate online registration forms with fake or stolen information, and they can purchase AdWords on search terms the company already ranks high on, and so on. Even if the terms and conditions are clear, an affiliate marketing program requires that someone monitor affiliates and enforce rules. In exchange, however, a company can access motivated, creative people, to help sell their products or services to the world. Pros
Access to a broader market
Better accounting of qualified leads
Low-cost advertising
Cons
Subject to fraud
Less creative control
Vulnerable to theft
Examples of Affiliate Marketing Amazon Affiliate Marketing
Amazon's affiliate marketing program, Amazon Associates, is one of the world's largest affiliate marketing programs.2 Creators, publishers, and bloggers sign up to have Amazon products and services shared on their websites or apps, and in return, receive compensation for the sales their sites generate. Amazon sets strict criteria for the types of sites and apps that host its ads. For example, sites must not contain replicated content from another site or creator and be available to the public.
Websites must be active with fresh content and suitable according to Amazon's standards. For example, they must not contain obscene or offensive content, promote violence or illegal acts, or contain any content deemed harmful to others. Approval is contingent on a thorough review by Amazon staff and meeting a qualified sales quota (three within 180 days of the application). If an application is rejected, it will not be eligible for reconsideration. Once approved, commissions are earned as site visitors purchase products or services from Amazon. Amazon Associates can earn up to 20% in commissions for qualified sales. Rates are fixed and based on product and program categories. As a bonus, Amazon offers special commissions on certain events. Etsy Affiliate Marketing
Etsy (ETSY) — a global, online marketplace for vintage goods and other unique items—promotes its products through various channels, including affiliate marketing partners. To apply, applicants must submit an online application through its affiliate program portal. To qualify as an Etsy affiliate marketing partner, eligible candidates must be at least 18, have an active, unique website, have a brand identity, and meet other criteria.3 If approved, Etsy pays a commission to the affiliate for sales they procure—sales resulting from their site's promotion of the product. Commission rates vary and are paid on the order price. Etsy sellers can be affiliates, but they cannot earn commissions on their products without special permission. Etsy declares that it has the right to terminate an agreement at any time for any reason and that it can withhold compensation for any legitimate reason. eBay Affiliate Marketing
eBay's Partner Network is eBay's affiliate marketing program that pays partners for sharing their personal listings outside of eBay Inc. (EBAY). The affiliate earns a commission and may earn credit towards their final merchant fees.4 eBay partners can also earn commissions on other sellers' items. Commissions are earned when a buyer bids on or immediately purchases an item within 24 hours of clicking the eBay purchase link on the affiliate's site. For submitted bids, the commission is paid if the buyer wins the auction within 10 days of the bid. Commission rates depend on the category of items sold and range from 1%-4%. No more than $550 will be paid on any one qualifying sale. Gift cards, items sold by charities, and special promotions are generally excluded as qualifying sales because of their low revenue streams. Buzzfeed
Buzzfeed is a New York-based digital media company known for viral news and entertainment stories, quizzes, and product reviews. Its Buzzfeed Shopping segment features and reviews different partners' products and services. Visitors can read Buzzfeed's product reviews and select affiliate links to purchase. Buzzfeed earns a commission from each sale generated from its website. How Do Affiliate Marketers Get Paid?
Affiliate marketers get paid a commission for referring customers to companies where they make purchases. These commissions can range from less than 1% to 20% or more, depending on the product and level of referral volume. For online campaigns, a customized link or referral code is used to track sales. In this sense, it is a source or passive income since the affiliate can continue to earn money once they have set up their campaign. How Much Money Can You Make As an Affiliate Marketer?
Incomes for affiliate marketers vary, with some making a few hundred dollars and some making six figures. It depends on what is being marketed, how much influence the marketer has, the affiliate's reach, and how much time is invested in marketing products. Often, those spending more time marketing the company's products will earn more money. Can Beginners Do Affiliate Marketing?
Becoming successful through affiliate marketing takes time, skill, and experience. However, it may suit beginners a bit better than alternative platforms since you do not have to invest in physical merchandise or inventory at the start. Can You Start Affiliate Marketing With No Money?
Yes, there are several free platforms and affiliate networks available for little or no money. Instead, you will need to big a large online following through efforts such as blogging, social media posting, and so on. How Do I Become an Affiliate Marketer?
To become an affiliate marketer, consider what platform you will use to promote products and/or services. Blogs are an effective channel for advertising and promoting as it allows the blogger, serving as an expert, to express an opinion about the offering.
After identifying a platform, find a specific category that you are comfortable with or interested in. A focused segment can better help you attract a dedicated consumer base. Research affiliate programs and choose one or more based on your needs, whether it be earning high commissions or generating more traffic. Lastly, develop solid and interesting content around the offerings and work to increase traffic to your site.
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