Tired of old mainstream jobs which don’t pay as much as you’d want them to. Instead of getting stuck in small jobs and struggling every day to reach your monetary goals, you can make money at any time, any place with fewer efforts than your current job. This is what affiliate marketing is basically.
Affiliate marketing is a popular marketing technique that is used to drive sales and traffic and generates substantial amounts of profit. Affiliate marketing is extremely profitable to both brands and marketers. Affiliate marketing has changed certain industry trends, here’s some data on affiliate marketing:
- 81% of brands and 84% of publishers are using affiliate marketing to increase their services.
- There is a 10% increase in affiliate marketing spend every year in the USA alone.
- 16% of all online sales made can be attributed to affiliate marketing.
- In March 2017, Amazon’s affiliate payment structure changed offering rates of 1-10% for affiliate marketers.
What is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing is a process using which an affiliate earns a commission for marketing another company’s products and services. The affiliate simply searches for a product, promotes their products on social media or websites, they earn profit from each sale made with their promotions.
How Does Affiliate Marketing Works?
Affiliate marketing works by spreading the features of the products. Affiliate marketing works with 3 different parties:
- Seller and product creators.
- The affiliate or advertiser.
- The consumer.
The presence of all these parties is crucial for affiliate marketing to work. Here’s a breakdown of these relationships:
1. Seller and Product Creators
The seller, is a solo entrepreneur, an enterprise, a vendor, or a product creator who has a product to sell. The product can be any kind of physical objects such as household goods or services such as tutorials and tests.
This party of the affiliate marketing is also known as the brand, the product creator/seller doesn’t have to promote the services by themselves. Even if affiliate marketing doesn’t lead to immediate sales, it does help in promoting the products. Potential customers can remember the products and buy them later on.
Let’s say the seller can be a software developer who provides an automated solution, they can use affiliate marketing services to promote the services.
2. The Affiliate Marketer
The second included party is the marketer, they can be an individual or an organization who can help the seller promote the product in an enticing way. Simply put, an affiliate is someone who promotes a particular product or service. The promotion includes social media posts, website blogs, and more than outlines the benefits of using the products. If the consumer does end up buying the product from an affiliate marketing source, the affiliate marketers receive a specific share of the profit.
Affiliate marketers tend to focus on a certain audience, this audience is chosen based on their interests.
3. The Consumer
More than 15% of all online sales are driven by affiliate marketing. Most of the customers don’t even realize that their purchases have been influenced by affiliate marketing at one point in time. Affiliates promote the products on multiple channels such as social media, blogs, and websites.
When consumers buy the product, both the above-mentioned parties enjoy the profit. A new industry trend has led to affiliate marketers being open with the customers that they’ll earn a profit from the sale.
How Does Affiliate Marketers Get Paid?
Brands use affiliate marketing as it is one of the easiest methods of increasing sales and promoting the services. Affiliate marketing is also an impressive business choice for those wanting to make a good enough side income. Now the question arises, how an affiliate marketer does gets paid after choosing a particular product to promote.
Affiliates don’t only get paid with the sale of a product, based on the company and the program there can be different methods an affiliate markers can be paid. Let’s say a company pays affiliate marketers just for improving the sales in other ways, these kinds of affiliates are paid differently. Here are all kinds of affiliate payment types:
- Pay Per Sale
This is the standard affiliate marketing structure. In this program, the merchant pays the affiliate a certain percentage of the sale price. The sale has to be made using the link provided by the affiliate marketers. In other words, the affiliate has to invest their time and effort in a product before they finally earn a profit.
- Pay Per Lead
A more complex payment system of affiliate marketing is the Pay Per Lead. It pays the affiliates based on the conversion of leads. The affiliate has to promote a product and entice customers to visit the merchant’s website and complete whatever action. These leads can be in the term of contract form, signing up for a trial for a product, subscribing to a newsletter service, or downloading software or any other product.
- Pay Per Click
This payment method of affiliate marketing incentivizes the affiliates based on their ability to redirect consumers to the merchant’s website. This means an affiliate has to put all their efforts to make sure the customers will click on the link and open their website. The affiliate marketers are paid based on an increase in the merchant’s web traffic.
Why Choose to Become an Affiliate Marketer?
Affiliate marketing is a profitable business venture. If you want, you can earn a good amount of money by becoming an affiliate and promote a variety of products and services. Here’s why you should become an affiliate marketer:
- Incredible Commissions
Affiliate programs from companies like Amazon, Flipkart, and others can offer huge commissions on specific products. The more time and effort you put in, the more results you’ll get, more results lead to more commission.
The best part is that most companies now offer cookie-based links, so even if a customer purchases the product after 1 month, the commission will remain.
- Easy to Promote
There are countless marketing channels you can use to promote your product and services. Most affiliates share the practices to make sure that their audience is engaged in the products you promote. Here are the most common marketing channels:
- Social media influencers
- Blogging
- The paid search focused microsites
- Email promotions
- Large media websites
- Can Be Your Own Boss
Working as an affiliate marketer is a capability of working as your own boss. You can set your own goals and working hours. Based on your needs, you can work as much and as little as you want. You can choose which project to work on, which products to target and which businesses to partner with. Being able to work on your own terms means that you can set your own goals.