How does Affiliate marketing help netizens?
While searching Google, you may find this term fanciful since many people have you believe that it offers so much money without putting any effort. But it’s not as easy as they say it is or you think it is. Yes, you can make money through affiliate marketing. And, yes, you can even make money while being inert, but with a minimum amount of effort. In this post, we are going to understand what affiliate marketing is, and what it stands for
What Is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing means when an online retailer pays you a commission for traffic or sales generated from your referrals (links).
Generally, it refers to affiliate, promoting a product and getting a share of the profit generated from each sale of the product they promote, helping the seller or product owner to get their products sold online.
How does affiliate marketing work?
First things first, to start doing affiliate marketing, you must join an affiliate program. Many companies offer affiliate programs as part of their marketing strategy and market development
Let’s look at the actors and process involved in affiliate marketing
Product owner or seller: This could be anyone who engages in ecommerce like a drop shipper, retailer, multinational enterprise or a marketplace with a motive to sell their product. They take the revenue generated from affiliate marketing and are not directly involved in the process.
Affiliate: affiliate promotes the products to potential customers by creating affiliate links. If a customer buys the product, the affiliate gets a share of the revenue generated from the sale. Affiliates are usually bloggers, social media influencers or content creators because they have a motley crew of followers to whom they can market the products.
Customer: “There is only one boss. The customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else”- Sam Walton
This is absolutely true in affiliate marketing as its entire existence is based on customers buying products. Whether customers are told or not, customers pay more when they purchase through affiliate marketing window. More often than not, customers are not aware of the affiliate marketing structure that drives them to buy the product, and customers pay for the product including affiliates’ share
Process of affiliate marketing
1. Join an affiliate program
2. Select the right products and offers that you want to promote
3. Collect your unique affiliate link
4. Share the link to your targeted audience via online
But many platforms only accept a certain kind of people, who are social media influencers, bloggers or content creators, as affiliates because they already have a set of followers.
You earn from 5 % to 50% as commission depending on the offer and type of item that you promote. Rates are fixed according to the affiliate marketing program adopted by each organization.
Affiliate programs are offered by many platforms including giants like Amazon, Shopify etc. Each one has a separate affiliate program depending upon their policy. You can choose any program after going through their affiliate program module and analyze whether it serves your best interests. It all depends on your taste and your niche and what these companies can offer.
Channels that can be used for affiliate marketing
Blogs: blogs give boost to conversations and provide insights. It is a space that you can use to target a particular audience.
Social media: Social media has become an inevitable part of human lives and it can attract a large number of audiences who may become your potential customer.
Websites: These channels are used by small merchants who use their website as a reference to promote other companies products
Cold emails: these emails are sent to the audience that is prospects, who may buy your product.
Affiliate marketing benefits
Flexibility: You are more like a freelancer when you do affiliate marketing. You are not under the leash of anyone; you can work any time you want. Once you successfully created a loyal audience, your revenues will jump and you get gobs of money.
Work from home: Do you hate tight schedules and hefty office jobs, and then affiliate marketing is for you. As the world becomes more and more complex, the work schedule gets tighter; this job is a niche for many people.
Cost effective: You don’t need to invest too much money to begin with. You can think of putting more investment when you grow in the business.
Unending profit: The profit is based on your performance. If you do a lot of campaigns and persuade your audience to buy, you’ll get more profits. No one can stop you from earning more if you’re sincere to the job.
