Did you ever think about earning money while sleeping? Yes, you read it right. We are in the 21st century, and this thing is possible. Have you ever heard of Affiliate marketing?
Affiliate marketing is a marketing process where a company, brands, or organizations market their products and services by third parties on a commission basis.
What you are going to learn
What is Affiliate Marketing?
Firstly let’s understand what Affiliate marketing is. It is a marketing technique where companies, brands, and organizations sell their products and services through affiliates.
It’s all started with incentivizing the products and services by referred businesses. These Businesses started paying commissions to third parties and are considered to sell their products.
Generally, people get confused affiliates with a referral, but both are different forms of marketing.
However, Affiliate marketing promotes financial motivation while, on the other hand, referral marketing aims at personal relationships and trust.
It is a commission-based marketing technique where the affiliate gets a commission on every sale of product and service.
The affiliate marketers promote the products thought their Websites, social media pages, YouTube channels, blogs, etc.
Generally, affiliates use affiliate links to the sale of the products and services of the company or brand.
So, whenever a person clicks on the affiliate link and purchases the product or avails the services, the affiliate gets a commission.
Who are affiliates?
Affiliates are individuals or companies (merchants, retailers, advertisers) who promote the good or services of brands.
Mostly these individuals market the products on their content like blogs, videos, social media profiles, podcasts, etc.
And as we have discussed above, these affiliates get paid for it.
Types of Affiliate Marketing
Now we have discussed what actually affiliate marketing is.
Let’s discuss some types of it.
There are majorly three types of Unattached, related, and involved affiliate marketing.
To begin with:-
Unattached Affiliate marketing
These types of marketing techniques include search engine marketing campaigns and PPC (Pay per Click). In this type, an affiliate does not require any particular niche or social media presence.
You just have to promote the product or service provided by the brand or a company by using an ad campaign.
In unattached affiliate techniques, affiliate use pay per click skills to generate traffic by social media advertising, search engine optimization, and Google Adwords.
The affiliates usually use paid models to advertise the product or service. The main motive of these affiliates is to connect to the audience, generate traffic, and convert leads.
For example Ads symbol in yellow mark above the meta description of a website in a google search.
Moving on towards the second type:-
Related Affiliate Marketing
In this type of marketing technique, an affiliate should have an online presence to market the products and services.
An affiliate use niche related websites, blogs, social media handles like Instagram, Facebook, youtube channels, and podcasts to advertise the product and services.
For example, Kylie Jenner promoting beauty products on their Instagram post. If anyone wants to purchase the product, he/she should purchase it by clicking on the affiliate link mentioned in the description.
So, in this case, Kyle Jenner will get a commission on every purchase of that product.
Many bloggers and YouTubers use affiliate links, banners, coupons to market products and services for which they receive a commission. So many content sites use these techniques to generate revenue.
Last
Involved Affiliate marketing
In this case, affiliate marketers promote the products which they use it personally. Affiliates have a strong involvement with their audience.
They build their audience before offering them any product or service.
People involved in affiliate marketing build trust and connections with their audience. Their audience has faith in these marketers.
As a result, on the basis of trust and relationship, affiliates sell the products and services to their audience. There are lots of review sites which people trust before opting for a product or service.
For example, People check the reviews of the product on Amazon customer reviews before purchasing them. People trust the authority of Amazon.
Similarly, people check the reviews of movies on IMDB before watching any movie.
How does Affiliate Marketing work?
The one who does affiliate marketing called an affiliate. These affiliates get paid on the bases of lead conversions.
Let’s discuss how to become an affiliate and how this whole ecosystem works.
- Enroll in an Affiliate Program- To become an affiliate; a person needs to sign up in an affiliate program. Usually, affiliate programs are free. So you can easily signup in it. For example Amazon affiliate program.
- Now, after the registration, a specialized link is provided to the affiliate with the username or ID. Therefore this link is called an affiliate link.
- The Affiliate link– Now you have successfully signed up in an affiliate program. You have your affiliate link. This link is the most important tool in this whole process.
- What happens is when a person clicks on the affiliate link. It stores some cookies in the browser which track the moment of the person who clicked on the link.
- Affiliate Commission – Now, if the customer purchase or place an order of the respective company, he will get a commission.
- However, the link will automatically track the order and list the lead to the affiliate’s account. As a result, an affiliate gets his commission.
- The affiliate commission varies from 0.2% to 12% depending upon the product and services and the policy of the affiliate program.
- Who can be an affiliate? There is no such educational qualification required for such work.
- However, if a person can produce written content or any type of digital content. He is eligible to become an affiliate.
How much does Affiliate Marketing pay?
As we have discussed in this blog, an affiliate will get paid whenever a person uses his link to avail of a product or a service. At this point, you must be thinking how much does affiliate marketing will pay you?
The perfect answer for this is it varies from person to person. The more people use your link, the more you will earn. However, in many cases, it depends upon the product or services you are promoting.
An affiliate should have a good network of audiences. Affiliate commissions vary from affiliate program to program.
Physical Products
Physical products have a low commissions rate; also, the conversion rate is less as compared to the other services. A person should have trusted audiences to well build networks to market the product.
Suppose a person can market the product or services by his website, social media pages, and digital content. The best example of Physical products is the Amazon associates program.
Amazon Associates Program
Amazon has the world’s largest affiliate program, which mainly focuses on physical products. This program allows you to promote any item from the website.
Amazon has a wide verity of products whose affiliate commission would vary from 1% to 10% depends upon the product category.
Digital Products
Generally, E-books, Kindle, and online courses are a part of digital products. These digital products have huge affiliate commissions.
But again, as we have discussed before, the commission varies from product to product. In the case of digital products, the commission will cost 15% to 75%.
Therefore it is more rewarding than physical products.
Conclusion
Firstly we discussed in this about what is affiliate marketing. Later on, we have discussed who are affiliates how a person can become an associate. This is how the entire ecosystem works.
In the end, we have discussed how much does it pays and what are the products and methods are used in it.
To summarize everything, affiliate marketing can be a source of passive income. Affiliate marketing will not make you rich, but it will help you to achieve your financial goals. It will add some extra bucks in your bank account.
FAQs
It depends upon how you do it. You can do it part-time if you want to make a living, then it will take time.
Yes, it is not necessary to have a website for it. You can use your social media platforms and networking to do affiliate marketing.
There are various online platforms that offer affiliate programs.
For example Amazon Associates, Awin, Clickbank
By using affiliate links in the description. When a person buys the product using the link. The influencer gets his commission.
5.
Any person who has a strong network, who have an audience that he can influence. The person can do it easily.
For example,
Social media influencers, bloggers, YouTubers.