INTRODUCTION:
It can be defined as an advertising model in which a company pays third-party publishers to drive traffic to their website or product. The third-party publishers are called affiliates, and the payment motivates them to find ways to promote the company.
DEFINITION:
Affiliate marketing can be defined as promoting other companies’ products. When a customer buys through your affiliate link, you get a commission fee.
Think as an affiliate, you will act as the salesperson for the company. You help to make a sales and the company will reward you in return.
The great thing about affiliate marketing is that you can do it on a larger scale.
As an affiliate marketer, you are not bound to promote the product of a single company but you can promote products from many different brands and earn commissions from all of them.
WORKING ON AFFILIATE MARKETING:
It works as below:
The merchant gives each affiliate a unique link, in this way they can track who was responsible for a sale. Now let’s look at how this link works?
- When a customer clicks that link, a small file that is a cookie gets stored on their device.
- An affiliate cookie does two things that are
- It helps the merchant attribute the sale back to the right person;
- Most of the time it holds an expiration date, so even if the buyer had open the link and even if he/she delays their purchase you get paid.
AFFILIATE MARKETING: THE ESSENTIAL STEPS FOR STARTING:
Affiliate marketing depends upon seven simple steps. We have listed them for you.
- Decide on a platform for affiliate marketing.
- Choose your realm.
- Find affiliate programs and join them.
- Create Quality Content.
- Drive traffic to your affiliate Website.
- Try to get more clicks on your affiliate links.
- Convert clicks to sales.
Deciding the Platform
It can be done on any platform. But, building an audience for your affiliate sales is easy by using these two, blog or YouTube channels.
Today, starting a blog is relatively easy and cheap. You can take help from the internet on how to get started and it won’t also cost you and your arm and leg.
Then optimize your website for search engines so that you have a better chance of ranking. And from there, you can add affiliate links to your content.
The other platform is YouTube where uploading video content is free which makes it ideal for many people. You need to optimize your videos for SEO and include affiliate links in your description box.
Choosing Your Niche
To stand taller in the crowd you need to select the niche for which you want to blog.
Choose the niche that is of your interest and hold your niche tightly so the content will help you find more audience for your specified niche. Do not break down into subcategories from the start.
For example; if your blog focus on women’s clothing keeps the spotlight only on it do not jump to casual, formal, and wedding dressing in this way you can focus on a particular keyword and can have more link visits. After that, you can jump into subcategories.
Secondly, if you’re going to be the main content creator constantly update your blog. Many affiliate sites die due to a lack of consistency. So always choose a topic you are interested in so that it will be easier for you to write about it constantly.
Find Affiliate Programs to Join
Choose from these three affiliate programs.
- THE HIGH-PAYING AND LOW-VOLUME AFFILIATE PROGRAMS
These are the affiliate programs for niche products with but higher payouts.
- LOW-PAYING, HIGH-VOLUME AFFILIATE PROGRAMS
These are the affiliate programs for products with low payouts but mass appeal.
- HIGH-PAYING, HIGH-VOLUME AFFILIATE PROGRAMS
These are affiliate programs for products with mass appeal, which also pay high commissions.
HOW DO DECIDE WHICH AFFILIATE PROGRAMS TO JOIN?
This depends on expertise and niche.
If you’re targeting customers, you should choose the second model of low commissions and higher sales volume.
If you want a more business audience, you should choose the first model, high-paying and low volume.
The best way to find these affiliate programs is by surfing the internet.
It only takes a quick Google search to find an application form for this program.
And, if there is a product you want to promote without a public affiliate program, reach out to the company and ask if they would be willing to build an affiliate relationship with you.
Quality Content
To get success in affiliate marketing, you need to create high-quality content so that your affiliate links fit naturally.
You should write your blog in a way that affiliate links will answer the query.
If you are reviewing something, do good research or buy that product, use it and review it according to our experience and a budget-friendly option is to start with the things you have at home.
Drive Traffic to your Affiliate Website
Now that you have created quality content, the next step is to get more audience, so your affiliate link will get more links.
Here are the traffic strategies to consider for bringing drive traffic to your affiliate website:
Paid traffic
By using paid services like pay-per-click ads, you can drive the audience to your affiliate website.
These paid digital marketing strategies will help you get more clicks on your affiliate link.
Search engine optimization (SEO)
SEO works the best for optimizing pages to get a higher rank in search engines.
As long as you rank higher in the search engines for your target keywords, you’ll get more audience.
Email list
Make an email list of your readers, these emails will tell your fans about the updates and keep them coming back to your site for the new content. This leads to more affiliate clicks and sales.
Try to get clicks on your Affiliate Links
After making quality content, now focus on getting more clicks on your affiliate links.
There are a few things that will help:
Placement of Link
Place your link in the right place. Don’t place it at the bottom of the page where most of the audience doesn’t usually scroll.
Context
Also, don’t make each word a link or your content will look ugly and suspicious.
Callouts
Using callouts like buttons, tables, and boxes will attract your readers’ attention.
Convert Clicks to Sales
In affiliate marketing, two conversions should take place for making money.
The first conversion is the click to the product page and you can do that with the strategies that are defined above.
The second conversion is the visitor buying the product. In affiliate marketing, the merchant controls the checkout, and their conversion rates are not in your control.
The strategy is to look for your advantage by looking for the merchants with programs that convert well.
Here are a few ways by which you can find them:
The public income reports
You can look at public income reports where the bloggers publicly tell how much money they’re making from their affiliate deals. You can also promote the same product as that blogger to earn more money.
Ask questions
Sign up on different platforms and ask questions about your affiliate program if you don’t have much information available on the internet regarding your affiliate program.
Use your opinion
Don’t promote a bad product or do not recommend it to friends or family.
CONCLUSION:
The thing to keep in mind while starting your life as an affiliate marketer is that don’t expect life-changing income, you have to work for it.
First, you need to make yourself an affiliate sale expert and keep in mind that as your site will grow, you have to set new goals and continue experimenting.