Affiliate Marketing: What You Need To Know
There’s a common misconception surrounding the world of affiliate marketing, which is that you only have to work “4 hours a day” to make a sustainable living.
Let us tell you a secret: as a company that’s been involved in affiliating marketing for over two decades, the rewards you seek with affiliate marketing are directly linear to the efforts you put forth.
There’s a reason why there is a significant earnings gap between the extraordinary successful affiliates (6 to 7 figures annual income) instead of the average annual salary between $41,692 to $52,500. These statistics aren’t meant as a deterrent but rather as a forewarning into the rigors and realities of affiliate marketing.
Now, moving forward.
Our beginner’s guide to learning affiliate marketing will teach you the ins and outs of affiliate marketing and how to get started. With this in mind, let’s get you on the fast track.
What is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing involves the practice of promoting an organization’s products or services in exchange for a commission after a desired action or conversion. While affiliate marketing predates performance marketing, affiliate marketing nowadays operates under the umbrella of performance marketing.
How Does Affiliate Marketing Work?
Affiliate marketing is like a well-oiled machine with multiple moving components.
In a simplified process, affiliate marketers join affiliate programs and find reputable products and services to promote to their audience. Behind the scenes, however, here’s how the process looks:
- Affiliates use unique tracking links generated in an affiliate dashboard.
- When a user clicks on the affiliate link, a cookie is stored in their browser.
- The stored cookie informs the seller which affiliate sold their products or services.
Important Note: Cookies have an expiration date, so to get credit for a sale, consumers have to fulfill a purchase before the cookie expires.
Who’s Involved in Affiliate Marketing?
Here are the primary parties involved with affiliate marketing and their roles:
- Merchants – The product or service creators.
- Affiliates – Marketers who promote a merchant’s products or services.
- Consumers – The end-users who are purchasing the product or service.
- Networks (Optional) – Platforms that manage multiple affiliates and offers.
How Do Affiliate Marketers Get Paid?
There are three main types of ways that affiliate marketers earn. When consumers use an affiliate’s tracking link to fulfill the desired action, like a click, form submission, or sale, they are credited.
Pay Per Click
Pay per click pays affiliates for every click they generate, regardless of sales. It used to be a popular compensation model for cultivating brand exposure several years ago but is rare nowadays.
Pay Per Sale
Affiliates earn every time a consumer completes a sale through their tracking links. Pay per sale is the most popular form of affiliate compensation.
Pay Per Lead
Merchants with high customer acquisition costs sometimes use the pay per lead model, which pays affiliates for new leads they generate. Per lead affiliate commissions are more common amongst service providers as opposed to merchants selling products.
Affiliate Marketing Channels
In our modern era of contextual marketing, there are more ways than ever to promote products and services. Here are the primary mediums used by affiliates for promotion:
Influencer Marketing
Social media has taken influencer marketing to new levels. Influencers and social figures with significant followings have become one of the most prominent forms of affiliate marketing. The social platforms primarily used by influencers are YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok.
Blogging
Blogging is one of the most potent forms of affiliate marketing as it organically drives traffic to merchants’ sites, boosting their web rankings. How bloggers drive sales through their platforms would be by integrating affiliate links into their reviews, tutorials, how-to guides, and other content.
Paid Search
Pay per click (PCC) marketing to branded websites and target-specific landing pages are growing more popular. Generally, these websites are structured around a particular brand or service and provide detailed articles, comparison reviews, and FAQ guides.
Vlogging
Like the content styles of blogging, video blogging is extremely popular and is one of the most effective mediums for affiliating. The platforms most used for vlogging include YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram.
Email Marketing
Despite being one of the oldest forms of affiliate marketing, email marketing has an astronomical ROI of up to 4,400%. That means for every $1 invested; it has the potential to drive in $44 worth of revenue.
Bloggers who develop a significant subscriber list often use email marketing to monetize outside their content. Promotional emails should only be performed every three to five emails to prevent subscribers from unsubscribing.
Coupon Sites
eCommerce has taken off over the past decade and reveals no signs of slowing down. Popular coupon sites like coupons.com, retailmenot.com, and rakuten.com, provide unique opportunities for affiliates to share their affiliate links (make sure your affiliate link actually saves your consumer money), allowing consumers to save money while affiliates earn money.
Mass Media Sites
Mass media sites and review portals use in-depth and product comparison reviews as social proof of brands and service providers. While you won’t find as many affiliate links integrated into the content, you’ll notice promotional and contextual banners comprise most of the affiliating opportunities (that way, the site can remain as free of bias as possible).
Top 5 Benefits of Affiliate Marketing
There are many benefits to affiliate marketing, but here are the five most valuable advantages of affiliate marketing:
- Limited to no entry barriers and can be started for free
- You don’t have to be an industry expert, just consistent and value-driven
- Create a secondary source of income (passive income)
- Working from home or on your phone provides improved flexibility
- Target a market-ready audience with a high-income potential
How to Start Affiliate Marketing
From the ground up, we are going to cover the five steps required to begin affiliate marketing:
Step 1 – Choose a Niche
Sometimes called a vertical, finding your niche is discovering what you want to be known for, while you should be passionate and knowledgeable regarding your niche. When narrowing down your niche, make sure you leave yourself some room to navigate and don’t choose singular products or services, such as Fitbit watches.
Instead, gravitate towards fitness watches as a whole. Another example would be instead of focusing on, let’s say, basketballs, you instead focus on:
- Basketball equipment like apparel, bags, and clubs
- Educational books and resources
- Basketball camps, summer league events, and membership-based offers
- Professional basketball things such as memorabilia, tournaments, and basketball history
Popular affiliate niches include health and wellness, personal finance, technology, pet care, and insurance.
Step 2 – Choose Marketing Channels
After you’ve narrowed down your niche, it’s time to figure out what platforms you intend to market through, along with the type of content you plan to produce. You can consider getting started with social media platforms like YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter to get started for free.
If you have some money you can put towards affiliating, blogging from your website is one of the best and most cost-effective methods for affiliating marketing. To strengthen your affiliate marketing efforts, consider combining multiple marketing channels when producing content, such as a blogging website and YouTube, a blogging site and Instagram, etc.
A mistake that many novice affiliate marketers make when starting would be limiting themselves to a singular platform. However, you have to remember that not a single person in your target audience is identical, meaning that one form of marketing (such as video reviews) may be more effective than another (like blogging).
As you’ll learn, affiliate marketing is a learning process. To become a successful affiliate, discover what kind of content and what mediums work best for your target audience and leave no stone unturned.
Step 3 – Find Products and Services for Promotion
Warren Buffet once said, “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it.”
The same goes for affiliate marketing. You have to remember that the products and services you choose to promote serve as a testament to the type of platform you are. You want to choose products and services that are of real value to your audience.
Here’s a rule of thumb to abide by:
If you wouldn’t buy it or tell your grandma to buy it, then DO NOT promote the product or service (regardless of how much they are willing to pay you).
Step 4 – Join or Create an Affiliate Program
After you’ve built up credibility and a significant following, consider joining an affiliate network and start diversifying your offerings. ShareASale, Amazon Associates, CJ Affiliate, and Rakuten Marketing are four popular affiliate networks to consider joining.
Alternatively, you can compile your favourite product offerings and services from multiple businesses under one roof with Getlinked’s fully customizable affiliate management and tracking software. Additionally, you can recruit affiliates to join your affiliate program (where you can start earning passive income off of their sales, too).
Step 5 – Produce Impeccable Content and Drive Traffic
The most vital component of affiliate marketing is the content that you produce. You have to create high-quality content that not only engages your audience but has them saying, “Wow, this person knows what he/she is talking about.”
Your content must be impeccable and value-driven.
Your audience is intelligent and knows when you have a hidden agenda. Don’t be that person.
Types of content you can consider creating are product reviews, case studies, tutorials, product comparisons, and resource pages.
Also, many affiliates use PPC advertising to kickoff their platform and drive related traffic to their site. Using PPC marketing and search engine optimization (organic ranking through high-value content) are powerful ways to build an audience and long-term following.
Affiliate Marketing Tips
Now that you’ve been armed with the framework for affiliating, the only step left would be to get started. Here are some tips that you can use to level up your affiliating efforts:
- Begin with Unbiased Reviews – Reviewing products and services within your niche is a powerful way to start building trust with your target audience. Make sure your reviews are value-driven and provide consumers with an encompassing oversight of why or why not a particular service or product would be helpful for them.
- Stay Ahead of Trends – Staying ahead of the curve in your industry and marketing is essential as affiliating marketing is highly competitive. Using Google Trends can help you stay ahead of industry trends while you’ll have to feel out the next Facebook and TikToks of the world.
- Cultivate Trust – Many novice affiliates and affiliate networks mistake pushing products or services out of greed rather than value. As an affiliate, your word is a reflection of the type of business you’re trying to build. Don’t make the mistake of telling your audience to buy but rather guide them into that decision through actionable, honest insights that are value-focused.
- Diversify Affiliate Product & Service Offering – It’s natural for affiliates to gravitate towards a particular brand or service provider, but diversifying your offerings is essential to safeguard you from commission reductions, affiliate program terminations, and if your merchant decides to restrict particular kinds of traffic.
- Test & Optimize – Get the most of your affiliating efforts by continually testing and optimizing your content. The funny yet irritating concept about marketing is that you never know what will work until you try. Therefore, make sure to analyze your content to see which performs the best, then focus your efforts on creating content that mirrors a similar framework.
Getting Started with Affiliate Marketing Today
Affiliating marketing is an incredibly valuable opportunity for people to earn passive income.
Now that you’re armed with the know-how to hit the ground running, it’s time to start taking control of your financial destiny and influence the masses.
At Getlinked.io, we empower shop owners, affiliating networks, and affiliates through our custom-built affiliate management software. To expand your affiliating efforts and create your custom in-house affiliate program, Getlinked.io is the leading technology and marketing partner you need.
Learn more by connecting with one of our specialists today.