Tired of working in a rush? Waking up every day, rushing towards your work. Even sometimes you get late. Then, reaching at work late and having to listen to your boss’s gibberish. No one tolerates late workers. Today, I am going to go in-depth into Affiliate Marketing.
What if you could avoid this touch routine and earn money even while you’re asleep? This is what affiliate marketing actually is. First of all, let’s talk about what is the meaning of Affiliate. Affiliate means “Relating to an organization”. Therefore, affiliate marketing is a technique for different companies to drive and generate sales to their products. This means going away from traditional marketing techniques and doing everything on the internet.
In the US, spending on Affiliate marketing has increased by 10.1%. Moreover, it is increasing every year. This means, that the trend will be skyrocket in the future. In the past, Affiliate Marketing has proven to be quite responsive and fruitful for many companies. It’s a win-win situation for both. So let’s talk about what is affiliate marketing.
What is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing has two parts. The Affiliate and the Company or a person. Now, Affiliate marketing is really ideal for Bloggers and YouTubers. By the use of Affiliate Marketing, they can earn free products and money for review. There are many ways to earn money by Affiliate Marketing.
Basically, it’s just reviewing your favorite products. After that review you just show them to the public, recommending them to buy it. That’s the whole circle of Affiliate Marketing. You get a product, review it. Recommend it to people. When people buy it through your referral link. You get paid. This is the whole concept of Affiliate Marketing.
An online retailer pays you commission for every person that buys a product. They should buy on your behalf though. Therefore, affiliate marketing has taken the world by storm. Instead of companies wasting tons of money, they are shifting to affiliate marketing. Moreover, Affiliate marketing is pretty straight forward.
In the case of online bloggers, they make a deal with a company. The company then gives that blogger a referral link. Using that referral link, people buy stuff. The commission is then given to the affiliate. The Blogger promotes products and showcases them on his blogs or videos. This is the ultimate way of affiliate marketing. Now, let’s talk about how affiliate marketing works.
How does Affiliate Marketing work?
Affiliate marketing isn’t the work of a single person. It’s a whole circle. Things work in an angle. It’s not like the only affiliates can do everything alone himself. A variety of strategies are applied and hence, the result is fruitful. For affiliate marketing to work, there are three parties of people involved.
-
Company or Seller
-
Affiliate
-
Customer
Let’s take all three parties step by step to know how they work.
1) Company or Seller
Seller is the most important part of this process. Without a seller, Affiliate marketing won’t even exist. It is the hub of affiliate marketing. Seller involves in the company or person who wants to portray their products to the consumer/customer. Moreover, the product can be basically anything such as a tech product, makeup or food. It also can be some services such as car tuning and stuff.
One thing to notice is that the seller doesn’t have to actively take part in marketing. What is the point of giving a commission if they have to take part in promoting? That was basically the seller part. Now let’s move on forward towards Affiliate.
2) Affiliate
Affiliate also is known as, The Publisher can be a whole company, individual person, even a blogger. They portray the seller’s products in such a way that they look appealing and attractive to our eyes. This increases the reach and audience of that product. People check out that product and many just click to buy them.
It’s hard for the affiliate to actually hold together both sides, Consumer and Seller. The Affiliate has to build up a community which he can show awesome products to. If a consumer buys the product using the Affiliate’s reference. Affiliate will then earn a fraction of revenue that was made by this whole process.
Often times, affiliates just create a very responsive audience for them. They then show their products on a regular basis to them. This results in a very stable passive income for the Affiliate and is pretty consistent and reliable. This creates a special niche for the publisher. With that, he can sell the specific type of product he wants. This also increases the audience with time. So it’s a pretty effective way.
3) Customer/Consumer
Now, the whole point of affiliate marketing is to attract consumers. Whether they themselves know it or not, consumers are the ones who drive traffic to the affiliate. They are the most important part of this tree. Affiliates share products with them. They further share and show products to other people and might share them on the different social media platforms.
When this consumer buys a product, both affiliate and seller profits from that. All sales depend upon the consumer. Customers then make comments on products. This increases the reach of a product on the internet.
This all doesn’t mean that the customers have to pay more than the actual price. But sometimes customers do have to sacrifice because the products are highly-priced. Though the customer will buy products just like normal and this will complete the whole process. That’s why customers play an important roll in the world of marketing.
How does Affiliate get Paid?
Affiliate marketing is an easy way to earn a passive income. The income can be in thousands or maybe in millions. Everything depends upon your audience and customers. Affiliate marketing helped people who were looking to earn extra money. It’s easy online to get some extra cash. So, how does an affiliate gets paid? It’s not the consumer buy products for the affiliate to get money. There are various ways affiliate can earn money.
1) Per Sale Pay
So, this is really simple. The seller sets a percentage that affiliate is going to get per sale he makes. When the customer buys using an affiliate link, the affiliate will get a portion of that percentage that the merchant set for him. So basically it’s a merchant-affiliate relation.
2) Pay Per Click
This is also a very simple way to earn money. Basically, what happens is, the affiliate gets money by transferring people from his website to the product website. It’s like an outbound link we talk on websites nowadays. Making traffic redirect to the product’s website is the main focus of this method.
Reasons to Become an Affiliate Marketer
There are several reasons to become an Affiliate Marketer. Now we are going to talk about a few of them
1) Income
Now, one of the main drawbacks of other jobs is that you have to be there. That is understandable. You have to work in order to get money. But, what if there was a way to have money without really having to go to the job every day? That is affiliate marketing. You can even make money while sleeping on your bed, without having to worry about what’s happening. Though you have to spare a lot of time to promote a certain product once it’s done, the return feedback will be bright.
You can receive money even after you’ve done a review or ran a campaign long ago. So, what can be called as “Passive Income“. All that is required is your marketing skills. Even if you are not in front of your Laptop sitting all day promoting stuff, you are still going to earn money. That’s affiliate marketing and your strategy mix.
2) No Responsibilities
Now, in a regular marketing strategy, the seller and companies both need to have feedback about products they are selling to their customers. Thank Affiliate marketing, you don’t have to deal with all sorts of customers and be degraded by them all the time. You just have to link that product with the seller. He/she will then complain online if they didn’t like that product. That is the beauty of Affiliate Marketing.
Once you link sellers and customers, all you need to do is receive your commission and then the seller themselves will handle customers and the storm of them if they don’t like a certain product.
3) Working From Home
This is my personal favourite advantage of Affiliate Marketing. Working from home is like a dream job. Imagine having Netflix and chill all day without having to worry about stressful co-workers or boss at a job. If you hate going out of the bed to your job, Affiliate marketing is the perfect solution for you.
You will be able to receive payments from customers sitting all day in your home. You don’t even have to change your clothes into the working code for that.
4) No Investment
In lots of new start-up businesses, you have to invest a ton of money for that sole purpose. And that is to actually run a business. But if we talk about Affiliate marketing, there isn’t much to it. You just need to start. There isn’t anything like a joining fee. The whole process of Affiliate marketing is really simple. All you need to do is to start.
5) Easy and Flexible
Becoming an affiliate marketer is like becoming a freelancer. The difference is that everything is in your hand. You choose the audience and you choose the product you want to promote. It’s less stressful than freelancing. You have your whole schedule in hand. You can even choose your available hour to talk to the customers. It’s like an automatic system once set up. Moreover, you don’t have to follow strict rules and regulations of a company.
6) Rewards based on your Work
In a lot of companies, it doesn’t matter if you work from 8 to 5 to 8 to 12. You will receive the same salary and no one in companies cares about you. But, affiliate marketing is solely based on the amount of time you spend on promoting stuff.
The more you work the more money you get. You will get the reward-based of your sales. That’s another beauty of Affiliate Marketing. Making a great audience to listen to your recommendations every day will do the trick.
7) Search Engine Optimization
Now, SEO is one of the main part of Affiliate Marketer’s whole career. By using the power of SEO, you can brain a lot of traffic onto your website or blog. People look for products all the time and if you do the right SEO, they will come to your website. This is the power of SEO. That’s why every marketer should learn the use of Search Engine Optimization.
It the best way to bring traffic to your website and due to more traffic, more people will buy that product. giving that product a nice rating.
Types of Affiliate Marketing
To become an affiliate marketer, you have to build up a reachable audience. For that, you need to use different platforms and techniques. With these come types of affiliate marketers.
1) Websites
A lot of companies build a website. While their goal is to reach like, a million of people. Therefore, they use all possible ways such as SEO to optimize their page for audience When they have a very big audience they promote their own products all over the internet using the affiliate links to other marketers too. Basically it is a very effective way to promote your products. This method gives the most benefit to both the seller and the company.
2) Blogging
With the power of Search Engine Optimization, bloggers have lots of power. They choose a specific niche. They then promote the product on their blog making a huge community for all sorts of people. In a very appealing way, they showcase the products on their blogs.
People are then attracted to the products and buy them. This is how blogging works. The Affiliate Marketing Bloggers gets both revenue from customers and the blog itself. By adding ads on their blogs, they earn double revenue.
3) Email List
Email is still a very strong thing even in 2019. It is an effective way to sell products. Basically, it works in a way that, the seller builds up an audience and send them products regularly on Emails. They also do this by sending them Newsletters.
They showcase their products in the form of an email. It’s a pretty effective way because people check their emails a lot. Almost everyone on the internet uses Emails. So to think that if they are sending to 100 people, there is a possibility that almost 50 per cent will must-read that email.
4) Influencers
With the passage of time, there has been a great addition in the world of influencers. Every day as I scroll through Instagram and other social media, I see influencers everywhere. Many of them are showcasing a lot of products too. The influencer has the power to control his audience. That’s what the name says otherwise. That person holds great power and responsibility in his hand. They have the power to deeply impact their audience.
The most amazing thing about an influencer is that their audience almost always listen to them. It’s very easy for them to reach out to their audience. And to think that, if they are showcasing or promoting a certain product on their platform. Many will surely buy just to please that influencer.
Best Affiliate Programs
After actually starting the Affiliate marketing, where should you actually start? There are many affiliate programs. Now we are going to talk about some of the best affiliate programs
1) Amazon Associates
Amazon is the worlds biggest technology company situated in Seattle. Basically they deliver everything from a cup to big screen L.C.Ds. Every category has its own place at Amazon. That is why Amazon is best for starting affiliate marketing. Amazon has such a large audience to be with. So selling their products is no big deal. People, first of all, look up to the websites they are buying from.
There are many advantages of Amazon Affiliate programs.
1) Reliability
For newbies in the game of Affiliate Marketers, affiliate programs that are provided by Amazon are the best. That is because of the remarkable reputation of the website. It has been decades since it’s inception. That is the sole reason why amazon is so reliable. So, without a doubt, you can start working on amazon with your eyes closed.
2) Good commission amount
If you refer a product to a person and he buys it, per product sold by you, you will receive from 4-15% of the real sales amount. It means with minimum effort, you can still earn a lot at Amazon
3) Huge Product amount
At Amazon, there are millions of products. So when people come to buy a product, they just not buy one. Rather than that, there’s a slight chance that they will fill a whole cart of products. This means that in addition to earning some cash, you will also be promoting their other products
2) eBay Partners
Even a store like eBay wants you to promote their stuff to people. If you help and advertise their products, you will be rewarded accordingly. All you need to do is promote. eBay has its own Partner Network Tools. By using them you will earn passive income.
There are many advantages of eBay partners.
Advantages
- The market of eBay is very vast. There are all legal products and you can sell them. It’s solely based on users.
- The process of marketing on eBay is really simple. There are no complex rules to get starting. You just have to share the affiliate link and when people buy a product, you earn money. Simple as that.
- You get a double commission when you start for the first 3 months.
3) Shopify Affiliate Program
Shopify is one of the most popular eCommerce software used by many people like bloggers and sellers. If you’re a blogger, you must know what Shopify is. Shopify is a great affiliate program if you want to be. It’s pretty straightforward too.
Now let’s talk about some of the advantages of Shopify
Advantages
- Per Referral, you gain a lot of money.
- As Shopify is really popular, a lot of people come running. Therefore, it’s worth the subscription plan
4) Clickbank
A very diverse marketplace that is pretty popular. It is a pick and choose the program. You promote many products to the people who are interested in a specific niche. So Clickbank is also very straightforward.
The one and main advantage of a click bank is that it’s very simple to use. So there are no complexities involved in using it. You find a product you straightforwardly promote it people who are interested.
5) Envato Market
Now, evanto affiliates earn a lot of money. They earn more than $3 Million per year according to their own website. They sell millions of digital assets. Every year. There are a lot of advantages of Envato Marketplace too.
- Their Affiliates earn a lot of money
- You get 30% affiliate commission in referring to people.
- Easy to use and set up
- They let you monitor everything right at your dashboard.
6) Google AdSense
Google AdSense isn’t really an Affiliate program but as the name says, it’s all about ads. But, it is the best way to earn on the internet until this date. Even if you are a blogger or YouTuber, you can earn some serious cash with it. So it works in such a way that you showcase some product and if people show their interest in it, you will get paid.
Now let’s talk about the advantages that we get from AdSense
- You don’t have to bother the hassle to actually find a product. As long as you have a site. AdSense itself will handle everything itself.
- You have full control over the ads. If you don’t like them, you can simple disable them
- The most respectable platform for earning online. It’s just so simple and easy.
Final Thoughts
In the final thoughts, I will say that, if you are free or you don’t want to go outside for a job in a company. Therefore, You should definitely start affiliate marketing. In addition to that, It’s worth every second you spend on it. The output is pretty good and you’ll be paid handsomely. But, to actually make it work, you need to choose a platform and strategy for it to work. Therefore, Affiliate marketing is must recommend as long as you know what you’re doing.