What Is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing is a simple concept. It is best explained as a way of making money online whereby you are rewarded in commissions for helping a business sell their product. By way of an example to show you what an “affiliate article” looks like, I wrote a Siteground Review (which is a hosting company), and if you skim over it you’ll see that I provide links to their service throughout the article.
The amount of commission you get completely depends on what you recommend and what the company set as a commission rate, typically commissions range between 5%-50%. Some companies have a fixed commission rate and don’t use percentages. All the company does is supply you with a unique tracking link that can be placed anywhere online, and this identifies the sale as recommended by you. How you get people to use that link is totally up to you.
Why Is Affiliate Marketing Popular?
It’s great for advertisers. If you own a product, ebook, or service then creating an affiliate scheme is a great way of getting free advertising, the advertisers only pay you if a sale is made, so there’s no risk to them, you just get a cut of the profit.
It’s great for publishers (the affiliates). Most publishers don’t want to heavily invest in the R&D to create a product of their own, yet may have the perfect audience for a particular product that already exists. Selling someone else’s product gives you the rewards without the risks.
Is It Easy To Make Money With Affiliate Marketing?
Short answer: No.
You’ll find plenty online about how affiliate marketing is passive income. You simply sit back and wait for the dough to roll in. There is no such thing as passive income, affiliate marketing is damn hard work.
Making money with affiliate marketing gets easier when:
- You have high traffic blogs, websites or social media pages.
- You’re able to find relevant and high quality products to promote to your audience.
- You have a reputation with your readers that builds trust.
- You use companies that have high conversion rates, making your job easier.
The best way to get started is to come along to one of my upcoming internet marketing courses.
What Are The Most Popular Affiliate Schemes?
Amazon is currently the most popular affiliate marketing scheme used by publishers.
The best thing about being an amazon affiliate is that if you recommend a $5 beauty cream that someone clicks on, but then they decide to buy a $10,000 camera, you still get a commission, of between 5-10%. Now, this hasn’t happened to me, but I have had someone buy this strange Segway style thing for £1900 which I didn’t recommend at all. They clicked on a link for a cheap product but decided to purchase something entirely unrelated. It gave me a 7% commission of £133 before I’d even got out of bed. The best part is: these things happen all the time.
However, it takes time to drive a high number of people on your site but the more people you have the more sales you’ll make.
Affiliate markets such as Clickbank and commission junction are also two other popular schemes.
But the real money lies in finding your own companies that run their own affiliate campaigns. For example, if you run a health blog in the United States, you might be an affiliate for a herbal company that provide alternative or natural products. Typically, the commissions are higher than the generic affiliates such as Amazon and Clickbank.
Part two of this guide will outline effective methods to promote your affiliates.