What’s affiliate marketing

What’s Affiliate Marketing

What’s affiliate marketing is a question that people that are looking for an online income are asking, if you really want to make money online why not consider affiliate marketing, if you are looking for a change and want to be your own boss then read on about the pros and cons of affiliate marketing.

Affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing is a very popular business model mainly because of the low start up costs, almost anyone can become an affiliate marketer providing they are willing to learn the basics of affiliate marketing and have the drive to succeed, so what’s affiliate marketing.?

Affiliate marketing is a win win situation for both the company whose product is being promoted by the affiliate marketing person and for the affiliate marketer that is being compensated by way of commissions for bringing customers to that company’s product.

In a nutshell affiliate marketing is a simple process, as an affiliate marketer you search the internet for a product, service or a product range that interests you, you learn how to build a website.

You will write in depth keyword rich articles that will interest people in the product or service and basically promote your work through the search engines and social media.

As people use the search engines or social media to find out information on the products or services that you are promoting over time people will click on what’s called affiliate links that takes them to the vendor’s website where they are presented with the offering.

The concept of what’s affiliate marketing is very simple, once a visitor to your website or blog clicks on that affiliate link and purchases a product you will receive an agreed commission for the work that you have done to help that person find the information they are looking for.

How does it work in practice

One of the fundamental reasons that affiliate marketing is such a popular way to make money on the internet is because your job is to guide people in the right way towards products or services that the public are interested in, so basically you are providing information on a particular product or service.

Will you make a commission every time someone clicks on your affiliate link, the answer is no, however I have seen it happen many times, someone clicks on an affiliate link, they don’t purchase right then but something called a cookie is placed by the vendor on their computer.

At a later stage they come back to your website again and click on the same affiliate link the difference this time is they actually make a purchase and hey presto you have made a commission, these cookies last maybe for 12 months.

It’s very important to understand this aspect of what’s affiliate marketing, tracking cookies are in my opinion very necessary if you want to become successful as an affiliate marketer because not every visitor to a website will convert into a sale, it’s quite common for thousands to visit and not purchase right away.

The roles in affiliate marketing

Let’s take a closer look at the roles in affiliate marketing so you can fully understand how each one plays out in the virtual world, for example

1. The company or product seller

The company or product seller is the one fully responsible for all aspects of the sales process, from the initial sale, to delivery of the product and the after sales service, they may not be involved in the affiliate program that may be handled by an agency or advertiser.

2. The affiliate marketer

When the affiliate program has been put in place by the company selling the product or service the next step in the process is to enroll people in their affiliate program, the objective here is to apportion part of the product or services sales revenue to the affiliate as a reward for driving traffic to their offer.

In a nutshell, what’s affiliate marketing is best described as a method of generating more sales and revenue by sharing part of that revenue with the affiliate marketer because their efforts will attract more consumers to the brand thereby increasing brand awareness and sales.

3. The consumer

The concept of what’s affiliate marketing revolves around the fact that ultimately the consumer purchases the product or service, if that doesn’t happen often enough the whole process breaks down so its crucial that there is a good rapport between the affiliate marketer and the company behind the product or service.

Its important to point out that if you are to become an affiliate marketer you must have an affiliate disclosure on your website so that your website visitors are aware that you are being compensated for your work, they should also be made aware that just because you are making money if they buy a recommended product the product isn’t more expensive to them.

Different types of affiliate marketing

There are different types of affiliate marketing, broken down into three categories unattached, related and involved affiliate marketing, let’s look at unattached affiliate marketing.

Unattached affiliate marketing is a term used to describe an affiliate marketer that has no real understanding of the product or service being offered, they have no authority over it.

They merely place affiliate links and drive traffic to the product or service using the pay per click business model, so they must pay a search engine such as Google, Bing or Yahoo to drive people to the offer.

The second type of affiliate marketer is called related affiliate marketer, so there is a connection between the product or service and the chosen niche that the affiliate is concentrating on, the affiliate is seen as an expert in that niche, they are a trusted source even though they may not have used the service or product.

Thirdly we have the involved affiliate marketer, he or she has a better understanding of the product or service, they may have used the product themselves so they recommend it to their website visitors, they would write about their experiences through a blog post, or generate interest through a podcast.

It wouldn’t be in their interests to recommend something that didn’t work or was defective in any way as they build a following.

Pros and cons of affiliate marketing

I need to let you know that as you start your affiliate marketing business please understand that patience is required, you may have to work hard for quite a while before you begin to see commissions coming through, in other words it’s all about patience, you may hear people saying it’s a get-rich-quick scheme, that could not be further from the truth.

A few years ago I was at the stage you are at now, I can say now that I totally understand what’s affiliate marketing all about because I did an affiliate marketing online course that helped me tremendously, I highly recommend that you take the time to fully understand what’s affiliate marketing by doing this course, you can sign up for free by clicking here.

OK, now down to the pros of affiliate marketing

Looking back and comparing this type of online business to others, I would say that a real advantage of becoming an affiliate marketer is the relatively low start up costs, the ongoing costs are minimal when compared to more traditional bricks and mortar business.

A major part of what’s affiliate marketing is the need to become good at communicating with people through article writing, in effect the most successful affiliate marketers are those that are trained properly in learning how to become a successful affiliate marketer, I highly recommend that you do this training it will be the difference between success and failure.

Another thing in favor of becoming an affiliate marketer is the fact that almost anyone can do it provided they get the right training and are determined to keep going until they are successful, you can work at building your online business in a part-time capacity until your income begins to exceed the income you have from your job.

Of course many people do affiliate marketing as a means to earn some extra money, others get the bug and could have several websites on the go at the same time, obviously those people are making far in excess of what a good paying job will pay.

You don’t have to necessarily purchase any stock to start your online business, all you need is to purchase a website and get it hosted, I recommend that you use the Wealthy Affiliate platform to do this, not only do they provide everything that you need for a website they have in my opinion the best affiliate marketing training to help you become successful.

To learn more about Affiliate Marketing training from the best go to the Wealthy Affiliate official website here.

Now let’s look at the cons of affiliate marketing.

To be honest there are few cons when it comes to making a part or full time living the more you learn about what’s affiliate marketing the more you will understand that it takes great patience and determination to make money online with this business model.

Don’t be put off by the enormity of the task, just remember once you have completed the free online Entrepreneur certification course with Wealthy Affiliate the path forward will be so much clearer, the main tasks that you need to learn are:

Choosing Wealthy Affiliate as your platform

Wealthy Affiliate is without doubt the no 1 choice for people that want to learn more about what’s affiliate marketing, the two guys behind the company are very supportive to people starting out, Kyle and Carson have been there and done that, over the last 20 years they have used all of their experiences and know how to set up the best affiliate marketing training program out there.

I highly recommend that you take a look inside the platform and judge for yourself what Wealthy Affiliate has to offer, I’m not joking when I tell you that the training inside the platform is world class, you will be learning from some of the top affiliate marketers in the business, to learn more go to the official website here.

Picking a niche

My advice to you on this subject is to carefully fo your research into which niche is best suited to your personality and strengths, trust me you don’t want to enter a niche that you know absolutely nothing about because your interest will quickly fall away because it’s not something that you feel passionate about.

What do I mean about a niche that you feel passionate about? the best example that I can give you and to be honest I have been lucky as I set about choosing my niche, over the years I have been a big fan of natural alternative products for many health issues that I personally had.

When I set about trying to identify my niche I had natural alternative products in mind, so I joined Wealthy Affiliate on the free online training program, I was able to access their keyword research tool, it saved me a ton of time identifying keywords that I could choose to write my very first article about.

Basically what I’m saying is in order for you to do the best job as you learn what’s affiliate marketing you need the best tools to help you be successful, to learn more about this valuable research tool known as Jaxxy go to their website here.

Pick an affiliate program

It doesn’t matter which niche you choose to pursue in terms of picking an affiliate program, there are literally thousands of companies that use affiliate marketers to increase sales, some have their own affiliate platforms and some use giants of the online world like Amazon to promote their products.

Look around and apply to join an affiliate program that pays well and provides all the graphics and images that you will need to promote their products on your website, your blog, YouTube channel, Facebook page or other social media platform.

Learn how to create the best content

I hope that you like writing and communicating with people, it really is a necessity in affiliate marketing, if you aren’t comfortable writing engaging, informative, interesting content then I suggest that you start the free online Entrepreneur certification training course because it will help you to understand what it takes engage with your audience.

If you are a friendly natural communicator writing keyword rich engaging and informative content should be easier for you to do.

For more on how to write the best content that will rank on the first pages of the search engine go to this page.

Traffic to your website

Most of your efforts should be directed at driving traffic to your website, there are a number of ways to do this, remember it all starts with you writing great content that your website visitors will want to read, your content must solve a problem for them or offer them a solution.

Focus on real human needs, pick your keywords carefully, then write as if you were sitting across the table from someone explaining about something that you care about, once you create your first article you will need to think about promoting that article so that as many people as possible will find it.

There are a number of ways to do this, I won’t go into that here in too much detail, however what I will say is you need to open a Facebook business account, open a Pinterest business account, definitely open a business YouTube account, there are many other social media platforms out there that you can use, the o es mentioned are the primary ones to use.

Most of these social media platforms are free to use, all of them have a pay per click option, in other words you can pay to have visitors sent to your website, however I wouldn’t advise doing that until you have at least one year building your website.

To learn more on how to drive traffic (visitors) to your website why not take a look at this excellent training module.

Email marketing

Email marketing is the process of gathering names and email addresses of people that visit your site, trust me this method of communicating with people that subscribe to your website or blog is invaluable.

You may hear affiliate marketers say ” the money is in the list” what they mean is that once people subscribe to your mailing list you have a fantastic opportunity to keep them informed about product offers or news on your chosen niche.

I recommend that you do some training on collecting a data base of subscribers, go here to learn more on this.

Conclusion

I sincerely hope that you are by now better informed on what’s affiliate marketing, once you learn the online Entrepreneur certification course you will be well set up to become a successful affiliate marketer, focus your efforts on consistently writing and delivering the best engaging and informative content that you can write about your chosen niche.

You will always be learning from the very best in the affiliate marketing business, you can actually pick the brains of people that are actually making money in affiliate marketing, if you are stuck on anything just contact me and I will respond asap.

References

https://supermetrics.com/blog/affiliate-marketing-statistics
https://findstack.com/affiliate-marketing-statistics/