You like the idea, don’t you? You set up a website, sprinkle a few affiliate links in strategic places of your web pages, and sit back to watch the money rolling into your bank account. That, of course, is the dream of many content marketers and bloggers.
The truth is many bloggers are earning big dollars this way leveraging affiliate programs such as Wealthy Affiliate and many more. We recommend you check out our Wealthy Affiliate Reviews to see how you too can get started with this platform.
While blogging isn’t the only way to make money from affiliate marketing, there are other methods such as email marketing, video marketing, and niche websites, among others.
Although not all bloggers are making the same amount of income from affiliate marketing, you can increase your income by improving your site using some actionable tips and strategies. However, you also need to improve online reviews of the product because affiliate marketing depends on that too.
To get the most out of your affiliate marketing business, you need to understand what it’s all about and how it works. So if you’re new to affiliate marketing, let’s start with the basics – what is meant by affiliate marketing and how it works.
What is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing is all about promoting other people’s or companies’ products in exchange for a commission for every sale made through your referral.
How Does Affiliate Marketing Work?
You probably have bought a product online before, or your friend recommended a product for you, that you bought. Your friend could get paid a token for doing this but at no extra cost to you. If this is really what your friend did, then that’s affiliate marketing has just done.
To get started with affiliate marketing, you need to find an affiliate program or network you’ll like to sign up with. Once you find an affiliate program you’re interested in – by considering their products, payment methods, and commission, among others – the next thing is to sign up for the program.
After signing up, you need to wait for the affiliate program to confirm your acceptance. Once you’re accepted, you can start to create content and add your custom affiliate links to your blog. By doing this, the product’s owner can track any sale made through your affiliate links.
Parties to Affiliate Marketing
Now that you understand what affiliate marketing is and how it works, let’s look at parties to affiliate marketing.
The Merchant
This is called different names by different people. Whether you call it the brand, the product’s seller, the retailer, or the vendor, they all refer to the person or company who creates or owns the product you’re to promote as an affiliate.
The Marketers
The marketers, also known as the publishers, are the individuals or companies who engage in the promotion of the product in return for a commission. There is no limit to what an affiliate can make in income from affiliate marketing. While some affiliate marketers are making up to six figures each month, others are making way lower than that amount each month. Overall, you can raise your income by implementing some strategies and tips.
An affiliate can use different methods to convince potential customers about the value of the product they’re promoting and end up buying it. Some affiliates can choose to do that by running a review blog of the merchant’s products. And other affiliates can decide to go by way of creating a blog around certain topics and promote products relating to them. Some examples of sites doing this type of affiliate marketing include Gadkit, This is Why I’m Broke, Awesome Stuff to Buy, Geeky Gift Ideas, Million Dollar Gift Club, BaconBeer, etc.
The Consumer
These are the people you’re targeting for purchasing the product. That is, people who buy the products through your promotional efforts. Without sales, affiliates don’t get paid any commission and merchants don’t get any revenue to share with the affiliates. So the marketer needs to implement actionable strategies and tips to attract the consumers to make the purchase. It’s normal for affiliates to use a disclaimer on their website indicating the fact that they get paid a commission for each purchase the consumer make. This, often, comes at no extra cost to the consumer.
The Affiliate Network
This party serves as a point of connection between the affiliates and the merchants. According to Investopedia, an affiliate network is “a group of companies that offer compatible or complementary products and will often pass leads to each other.” Some examples of affiliate network include ShareASale, Awin, FlexOffers, MaxBounty, Clickbank, and Commission Junction (known as CJ).
Common Ways of Promoting Affiliate Links or Products
We have talked about what affiliate marketing means, how it works, and the various parties involved in it. So let’s talk about the trends or ways of promoting affiliate links.
Blogging
Without a doubt, bloggers nowadays rely on affiliate marketing as one of the most lucrative ways to monetize their blogs. You can grow your affiliate earnings to a few hundred dollars a year or more depending on several factors. Once your blog starts attracting quality traffic and gaining popularity among your audience, you can start promoting certain products in exchange for a commission. The most important thing is that you need to offer valuable content to your audience first to be able to earn their trust, and turn them to buying customers. Doing this, you need to follow some strategies in your blogging and customer journey efforts.
Or will you follow a recommendation of someone you don’t know or just met for the first time or that old fried you have always grown up with? You most likely will opt for the latter. So before you start asking for their wallet, create awareness and engagement with your audience first. And then add more and more values to their lives so you can leverage that when the time comes to ask for their wallet.
Microsites
You probably know what microsites or mini-sites are. Don’t you? In case you don’t, HubSpot already provides one of the best definitions I have ever seen online, with lots of examples here. Microsites, when created, they’re meant to be separate from your main websites and they’re often used to target specific niches or audiences. Depending on what the blogger wants to achieve with them, microsites can be created in form of one page having its own domain or a sub-domain of the main site.
While microsites are popular among brands, affiliates create them too. But for affiliates, they must understand why they may or may not need a microsite. Some of the factors that come to play when deciding the need for a microsite include the specificity of your niche, the role of a microsite in your customer journey, purpose of creating the microsites – to test a keyword or campaign, and more.
Marketing on Social Media Sites
You probably have come across one ad or another on popular social media sites like FaceBook or Instagram before. In case you don’t already know, you can find out how advertisers are using Facebook and Instagram to reach more people here.
Email Lists
Email lists are another effective ways by which affiliates share affiliate links and get people to buy products that earn them a commission. There are steps to take to get started with this method. Except you already have valuable email list, you’d need to build one first before thinking of using this method. To get people to opt-in to your email list or hand over their email addresses to you freely, consider giving them something of value. Gift varies and could be in form of an eBook, free templates to download, or a training session. You can also use an email finder tool to build your email list.
Apart from affiliate link sharing methods highlighted above, there other ways by which you can promote your custom affiliate links including influencer marketing, video marketing, online reviews, referral links, and more.
Additional resource: Does my business need to use TikTok?
How to Pick the Right Affiliate Program
Don’t want to go through the stress of sifting through different affiliate programs? Get started with Wealthy Affiliate now! You can check out Wealthy Affiliate Reviews for more information.
Picking the right affiliate program can be daunting for most people especially if you don’t know what to look out for. Fortunately, we have you covered! To do away with the fluffs, here are the key factors to consider when choosing an affiliate program:
- Better Brand Value or High-Quality Product. This is very important as you don’t want to waste your energy and resources on low-quality products, which can lead to losing your hard-earned customers and reputation.
- High Commission per Affiliate sale. Ask yourself: is the pay worth your time and effort. If not, go for another affiliate program.
- Minimum Payout Threshold. Most high-paying affiliate programs offer a shorter minimum payout every month, while low-paying affiliate programs don’t. So choose wisely.
- Niche Relevance. You don’t want to sound like a clown to your audience. If your blog is about wedding tips, for example, it would be irrelevant to start promoting study-related materials or products to your audience. Choose products closely related to your industry. That way, your audience will respect and see you as an authority in your niche.
- Commission Structures. What does the affiliate program base its commission structure on – number of sales or value of sales? In our opinion, you should opt for affiliate programs that offer a commission structure based on number of sales rather than value of sales.
Wrapping Up
If you check the internet, you’ll see hundreds of thousands of bloggers and content marketers buzzing around about their affiliate earnings. You may want to ask yourself the question: how is this possible or true to believe. The truth is anyone (including yourself) can achieve same or better result if you start the right way. While affiliate marketing isn’t a get-rich-quick business, Wealthy Affiliate is one platform that has convinced us about the possibility of making passive income with affiliate marketing. You can check out the results people are making on Wealthy Affiliate to see if it’s the right platform for you.
Once you’re ready to take the plunge, take advantage of the tips in tips and get it right with what affiliate marketing is, how it works, and different ways to effectively promote your affiliate links. Once you find what affiliate program works for you, stick with it and continue to use it to multiply your affiliate marketing income.
What is your take on affiliate marketing? What methods works best for you when to share your affiliate links?
We will be glad to have your views.