Affiliate marketing is the process of earning a commission by promoting other people's (or company's) products. You find a product you like, promote it to others, and earn a piece of the profit for each sale that you make.
Affiliate
marketing is one of the oldest forms of marketing wherein you refer
someone to any online product and when that person buys the product based
on your recommendation, you receive a commission. This commission varies from $1 to $10000, depending on what
product you are promoting.
This
commission varies from $1 to $10000, depending on what product you are
promoting.
The most common question I hear is related to how companies
track the record of who is sending the traffic and making the sales. The simple
answer involves a tracking URL, which is a unique link given to you by the
affiliate company or product company.
Many online companies who sell products
such as shoes, web-hosting space or any service, offer an affiliate
program. You can simply sign up for the program and get your unique
tracking link. Now, whenever you are writing about the product, you can
simply use this special tracking affiliate link to recommend the company’s
site, and if your readers buy anything, you will get a commission.
Every affiliate program has a set TOS.
For example, many of them offer a 60-day cookie period, which means
that if a visitor uses your special affiliate link to
land on the sales page of the site and instead of buying today, he buys at some
point within the next 60 days, you will be entitled to the sales commission.
Following are some of the common terms
associated with affiliate marketing:
- Affiliates: Publishers
like you and me who are using affiliate program links to promote and
make sales.
- Affiliate
marketplace: There
are many marketplaces like Shareasale,CJ and Clickbank, which work as central
databases for affiliate programs in different niches.
- Affiliate
software: Software
used by companies to create an affiliate program for their product, for
example: iDevaffiliate.
- Affiliate
link: Special tracking
link offered by your affiliate program to track the progress of your
affiliate promotion.
- Affiliate
ID: Similar
to the affiliate link, but many affiliate programs offer a unique ID which
you can add to any page of the product site.
- Payment
mode: Different
affiliate programs offer different methods of payment. For example: check,
wire transfer, Paypal and many more.
- Affiliate
Manager/OPM: Many
companies have dedicated affiliate managers to help publishers
to earn more by giving them optimization tips.
- Commission
percentage/amount: The amount or percentage you will be receiving
in affiliate income from every sale.
- 2-tier
affiliate marketing: This is a great way of making money from an
affiliate program. With this method you recommend that others join
affiliate programs, and you receive a commission when
a sub-affiliate makes a sale, (similar to MLM or multi-level
marketing.) This income is popularly known as sub-affiliate
commission.
- Landing
pages: A
unique product sales or demo page used for the purpose of increasing
sales. Most of the programs that you will be promoting have many landing
pages, and you can run A/B testing to
see which pages convert best for you.
- Custom
affiliate income/ account: Unlike a generic affiliate
account, many companies offer custom affiliate income to people making the
most affiliate sales for them.
- Link
clocking: Most
of the affiliate tracking links are ugly. Using a link clocking technique
like URL shorteners, Thirsty Affiliates, etc., you can turn
ugly links into links that can be read and understood by your
readers.
- Custom
coupons: Many
programs allow affiliates to create custom coupons
which are also used to track sales. Custom discount coupons help
you to increase
affiliate sales as well.
For companies offering an affiliate
program, this is one of the best ways to receive free promotion, thus
saving substantially on advertising. For example, whenever you see coupons
or discount links, most of the time these are affiliate links, and when
you make a purchase, web-masters make money.
Affiliate
marketing :: FAQ
At this point, you should have a basic
understanding of what affiliate marketing is and how it works. If you have any
questions regarding any of this, you can always ask it in the comments
section below.
Now, let me answer some of the common
questions asked by web-masters and marketers where affiliate marketing is
concerned:
Is affiliate marketing
harmful or illegal?
No, it is neither harmful nor illegal, as
you will simply be using the particular link provided to
you rather than a direct link to link to any site.
Affiliate marketing and AdSense:
Can we use both?
Yes, you can because affiliate
marketing does not violate any AdsenseTOS. In fact, for me affiliate marketing works better than Adsense,
and that is one reason you see fewer AdSense ads here at ShoutMeLoud.
How do I find an
affiliate link for any product?
Not all companies offer an affiliate
program, of course, but for those that do offer affiliate programs, you
can check their website for related information. When searching, be sure to
check the company’s FAQ page if they have one.
Another way find this information to do a
simple Google search. For example, one could place the following phrase into
the Google search engine: “product name + affiliate program“.
Replace product name with the name of the product you are
promoting, and this should bring you to the landing page. Many companies
use an affiliate marketplace like ShareASale, CJ, or Clickbank. These are free
to use and allow you to create a free account.
How to find new products
to promote?
Affiliate marketplaces such as those mentioned
above are the best places to start your affiliate marketing research. You can
browse your niche and see the top performing affiliate programs
How to select the right affiliate product to promote:
How to select the right affiliate product to promote:
Alternatively, you can keep an eye on blogs in your niche and
see which products they are promoting and what methods they are using.
Is it important to have a
blog for affiliate promotion?
Not necessarily, however a blog is really
the best promotional tool. With that said, you can always use methods such
as PPC or advertising to
promote a product as well. This is more like hit-and-run affiliate
marketing however. The best way to make the most of your affiliate
marketing opportunities is to have a blog and use it for hard and soft
promotion.
How much does it cost
to join an affiliate program?
There is no charge for joining
an affiliate program, however your total cost depends on what promotion
technique you are using. For example, a blog post doesn’t cost a
dime whereas PPC marketing, email marketing or advertising come
with various price tags.
What qualifications do I
need to become an affiliate marketer?
There is literally no qualification
required to become an affiliate marketer, though having good copywriting skills and
marketing skills will be an added advantage.
Are there programs
available which automatically converts links into affiliate links?
There are a few networks like Viglink and Skimlinks which automatically convert
normal links into affiliate links. They use Javascript so it’s SEO
friendly, and you do not need to sign up for an individual affiliate
program.
How much money can
one make from affiliate marketing?
As I mentioned above, there is no limit to the
amount of money you can earn from affiliate programs. It all depends on which
program you’re promoting and how much conversion you are making. I started with
$47 as my first affiliate income, and now I make almost $4k-5K/month by
promoting products which I use day-to-day.
Here at ShoutMeLoud, I and many guest authors have covered some of the best guides to help you to understand in depth about getting started, and some of the pros and cons. Following is a list from our affiliate marketing archive which will help you to get started:
I hope this beginner’s guide to affiliate marketing will help you to get started. If you have any additional questions, feel free to ask me in the comments section below.
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