Affiliate Marketing and Management FAQs (2021)
The affiliate marketing industry has an estimated worth of $12 billion and continues to grow as more businesses endorse remote work.
Given the surge in affiliate marketing, there are many affiliate marketing and management FAQs that go unanswered. As a result, many unknown variables and open gaps prevent people from embarking with affiliating.
Today’s article aims to remedy the unknown regarding affiliate marketing and provide you with the comprehensive insights needed to make educated affiliate management decisions.
With this in mind, let’s begin.
1. What is an affiliate management system?
An affiliate management system, either in-house or with an agency, is a solution that helps network operators manage affiliates within a centralized hub. These systems support merchants with products and services that marketers can affiliate with in-house promotional tools, landing pages, and other performance marketing resources.
As a whole, affiliate management systems have come a long way over the years. If an affiliate management system doesn’t support networking, back-office, and financial accounting functionality, you’re using an obsolete solution.
2. What’s the best affiliate software?
Getlinked.io is an industry-leading affiliate management software for network operators, merchants, lone wolf marketers, and affiliate managers seeking scalability and cross-integrated platform functionality. Combining next-generation performance marketing tools with back-office, networking, and automated finances functionality, Getlinked.io is your all-in-one affiliate software.
3. How do you structure an affiliate program?
Affiliate programs should be structured to align with your business objectives. Here are six steps you can take for structuring a scalable affiliate program:
- Define Organizational Goals – Decide how many affiliates your network requires, what platforms you intend to use, the core benefits of your brand, and create goals to align with your mission.
- Fine-Tune Offers & Services – Find services and offers that give your network a high-profit margin while compensating your affiliates with generous commissions.
- Create a Budget & Timeline – Narrow down business costs, commission structure, and create timelines that take into account product launch dates, holidays, onboarding, other affiliate collaborations.
- Discover Target Audience & Create Buyer Personas – You already likely have a good idea of your target audience, but how do they consume? Which social platforms are they spending their time on? What’s more effective, written or video content? Who do they trust for reliable information? Discover those and create buyer personas.
- Recruit Talent – Find influencers within your niche that have engaged followers and recruit affiliates with builder platforms (reoccurring content like blogs or video blogs) to capitalize on short and long-term campaigns.
- Prepare Tracking Links – Ensure that your program supports multifaceted tracking links which provide data-driven analytics and seamless tracking functionality.
Learn more about affiliate management infrastructure in our 2021 Affiliate Management Guide.
4. What features should affiliate management software have?
Affiliate management software should have features for:
Traffic Management
- Comprehensive performance reporting hub
- Complete affiliate management
- Smart API system
- Tracking links
- Dynamic split testing
- Postbacks & Pixels
Traffic Monetization
- Leads distribution tools
- Customizable and conditional commission structures
- Dynamic offers and creative marketing tools
- Automated campaign targeting and scheduling
- Multi-advertiser campaign support
- Flexible geo-location management
Remarketing
- Third-party integration support
- Omni-messaging systems
- Event-driven and scheduled outreach messaging
Network, Back-Office & Financial Management
- Full network logs
- Complete invoicing system
- Permission system controls
- Real-time alert systems
- Data compliance standards legal pages
- Ability to create and manage users and groups
Security & Scalable Infrastructure
- Real-time backup and disaster recovery
- 2 Factor Authentication (2FA)
- Complete data encryption and secure servers
5. How can I track my affiliate sales?
Every affiliate management platform should support multifaceted tracking links (although many do not). With Getlinked.io, our solution seamlessly tracks a customer’s journey through our affiliate’s smart affiliate links. Alternatively, you can remove tracking links from the equation entirely and use our robust parallel tracking links.
6. How do I optimize my affiliate program?
Use these five steps to optimize your affiliate programs:
- Access your customer and revenue data to discover the value of new customers, reoccurring customers, the lifetime value, how you can improve profit margin in every sales category, and your cost per acquisition.
- Recruiting talented affiliates is a time-consuming process but serves as an essential benchmark for determining the success and user-friendliness of affiliate programs.
- Improve affiliate collaboration to understand your marketer’s pain points (and how to solve them), what improvements you can make to your solution to enhance marketability, and to bring latent affiliates out of hibernation.
- Fine-tune affiliating traffic sources (SEO, social, blogging, PPC, and email) to reduce unwarranted affiliate practices.
- Test and optimize landing pages and offers through dynamic split testing (A/B testing) to discover the best-performing pages and offers.
7. What are tracking systems used for?
Tracking systems, or locating systems, are used to observe the web journey of a user and gauge the performance of marketing activity. They provide user demographics insights and allow campaign managers to see how users interact with their landing pages and offers.
8. How do I set up affiliate tracking?
Setting up affiliate tracking links is effortless with an affiliate management system like Getlinked.io. In addition to providing multifaceted tracking links, we offer state-of-the-art parallel tracking links that eliminate the need for offputting affiliate tracking links.
9. How do I create an affiliate program?
Affiliate programs can be built in-house, with an agency, or a technology partner like Getlinked.io. Creating an in-house affiliate program may be best for you if you have the time to manage a full-scale affiliate network. Alternatively, you can outsource to an agency or use a technology partner that will operate as an extension of your business.
10. How much money can you make as an affiliate marketer?
There’s a broad range of income levels that affiliate marketers can reside, but according to Glassdoor, the average annual salary of an affiliate marketer is between $41,692 to $52,500. High-level affiliates with significant platforms can drive in well over 6 to 7-figures annually.
11. What is affiliate marketing?
Affiliate marketing is a branch of performance marketing where a business compensates an affiliate in exchange for a desired outcome or sale.
12. How can affiliate marketing improve scalability?
Affiliate marketing can improve an organization’s scalability by driving in separate but related traffic sources.
13. What are the 3 main components of a successful affiliate marketing program?
The three core traits of a successful affiliate management program include:
- Diverse and valuable products or services
- Optimized and compelling landing pages designed to convert
- Active and engaged affiliates that provide innovative marketing strategies
14. How do I stand out as an affiliate marketer?
To become a standout affiliate marketer, try discovering unexplored niches that you’re passionate about and start creating a foundation for adding value to your audience. From there, improve your sale and marketing skills and create firm goals. Stay consistent with the grind and adding value to your users, and you’re on the right path.
15. How can I start affiliate marketing with no money?
YouTube is the second most visited worldwide and is free to use. Alternatively, you can use social media apps like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Discord, Clubhouse, and TikTok to cultivate a following free-of-charge.