Affiliate Marketing Introduction
If you are new to affiliate marketing you will enjoy my affiliate marketing for beginners guide below.
Affiliate Marketing Definition
Affiliate marketing is the relationship between a merchant or vendor with a seller (known as the affiliate) that actively or passively promotes the merchant or vendors products for a commission. The affiliate marketer usually signs up with a network administrator that handles the recognition and affiliate credit for sales referrals or promotions. The network administrator is required to work on behalf of both the affiliate and the merchant to resolve issues such as:
Payment of commissions
Recognition of sales leads and referrals
Administration of Legalities that are listed in the Affiliate Sign Up Documents
Oversight of payments to Merchants or Vendors (if Applicable)
Customer Service Issues (60-day money back guarantees, Refunds, and Prevention of Fraud)
Affiliate marketing is not just a three-way relationship that includes the merchant, affiliate network, and the affiliate. The affiliate marketing business also includes the customer too. The customer has rights to a refund under the contract agreement between the merchant vendor, the network, affiliate, and the customer. The network also administers refunds, guarantees, and the prevention of fraud to protect all parties involved.
Popular Affiliate Marketing Networks
Merchant vendors usually sign up for an affiliate marketing network to encourage affiliate marketers to sell their products. They sign up for these networks for numerous reasons.
Merchant vendors do not want to handle the complicated aspects of affiliate commissions. (i.e. website cookies, referral links, etc.)
Merchant vendors prefer to work with the expertise of affiliate networks to prevent injury to their product. (i.e. referral legal agreements, administration of referrals to prevent fraud)
Merchant vendors want a gathering place that has expert affiliate marketers so that they can gain more sales than without a network.
Affiliate marketers also gather at these networks to help promote the merchant vendor’s products, especially if promoting them is lucrative. As you will find out, commissions on some products exceed 70% of the total sale. This is very lucrative to an affiliate marketer who does not have to labor to develop their own product.
Popular Affiliate Marketing Networks Include
Amazon Affiliates
Clickbank
Commission Junction
JV Zoo
Market Health
These affiliate marketing networks are just a few. Affiliate marketing networks also include your local department stores like Walmart, Best Buy, and Target. You can sign up as an affiliate marketer for just about any store that you would like to promote their products. Before you sign up though, you should read and understand the affiliate marketing agreement.
Why Become a Merchant Vendor or Affiliate Marketer?
You should become an affiliate marketer for these reasons :
- Promotion of the products whether they are digital or non-digital is usually done online.
- You can work from home or in the Caribbean if you want.
- You do not have to labor tirelessly to produce your own products.
- Passive income that could increase every month. No intensive labor required.
- No need to deal with customer support issues. This is handled for you.
- There are potential rewards for being a top performer.
- Flexible work environment. You can work where you want and when you want.
- Very low costs to implement a successful affiliate marketing strategy.
You should become a merchant vendor if :
- You produced a valuable digital or non-digital product that you can have others promote without degrading the value of your product.
- You prefer expert salespersons to promote your product instead of relying on expensive advertising methods.
- You want to increase sales.
- You do not want to handle difficult merchant vendor issues if the network can handle them for you.
Affiliate Marketing is the Best Online Business
Affiliate marketing sales continue to increase as shown in the latest statistics. Affiliate marketing spending has increased by 40% from $4.2 billion in 2015 to a projected over $5.9 billion in 2018. Amazon.com’s sales are reporting similar increases to their overall sales in the same period. The fact is that people from all walks of life are successfully promoting products and making commissions from them. These people are not necessarily handsome or pretty but they continue to influence their audience on Youtube, Google, and other social media channels to gain commission revenue.
These affiliate marketers are gaining a luxury lifestyle of passive income off of their ingenuity and style. Let me tell you how they do it.
How affiliate marketers make their money.
The Power of Influence
An individual who has the power to socially influence others to purchase will gain lots of commissions. Amazon.com recognized the ability of influencers on the decision making of consumers. Amazon.com recently opened a new type of affiliate program called the Amazon influencers program.
To be an influencer you should post on social media, blogs, and interact with your followers. You should create an audience where people will listen to your recommendations. The best way to do this is to become an expert on a certain topic or just be a cool person. For example, if you are into weight loss you can post, blog, and have a Youtube channel dedicated to weight loss. You can recommend weight loss programs and products to your viewers so that they will have confidence in their purchases.
Blogging
Blogging is a great way to get traffic to your affiliate links and influence purchases. Bloggers can easily get traffic to their links by providing their viewers with product reviews so that those who search for the product will have confidence in purchasing the product. Bloggers can also get traffic by focusing on posting quality articles that encourage their audience to sign up for email lists where the blogger can advertise products. These quality articles produced by the blogger should be SEO optimized so that those who search for knowledge related to the product will come to their website.
Email Lists
Usually, email lists are gathered through a bloggers website. However, a website is not required but preferred. There are successful marketers out there that advertise on Facebook, Google, and Bing ads to increase their email list without having a website.
From here the email list gets inundated valuable content along with product advertisements once a week. Email list subscribers will usually stay to get more content. Whether you have a website or not, you should have an email list.
Direct Advertising to Lead Pages
Affiliate marketers understand the importance of establishing trust and rapport with their leads. However, there are times where establishing a relationship with your audience is not needed. When this is the case the affiliate marketer will opt to directly advertise to a sales lead page. This affiliate marketer will buy ads on search engines and social media directly to affiliate links to get sales. This is not the preferred method but affiliates still use this method.
Using Multiple Methods
Really good affiliate marketers will use a combination of the above methods to increase their sales. They DO NOT put all of their time and effort into one marketing strategy. Instead, they are always looking for ways to promote their products through influence, blogging, generating email lists, and by direct advertising. The great affiliate marketer will test all sales methods and focus on the methods that work.
Mistakes that Affiliate Marketers Make
Pushy Sales without Having an Attitude of Helping
New affiliate marketers do not have a good sense of how to sell. To sell online you should have an attitude of trying to help your audience solve a problem. Too many times affiliate marketers have a “BUY NOW!” approach instead of having a “this program will help you become better at something.” No one wants to be pushed into a sale especially if they do not know the person selling the product. People who buy online usually will buy because they love the influencer along with the presentation that was made.
Too Many or Too Little Products
Some affiliates have too many products listed on their website and they want to promote everything. This overload of products creates decision exhaustion with their customers and backfires. Decision exhaustion is where the customer has too many products to choose from where they make no decision.
Some affiliates have too few products. Their product profit per sale does not make them hugely profitable. They end up working for the rest of their life while having a part-time job as an affiliate.
Not Putting Yourself in the Shoes of the Customer
You must understand the footsteps of your customer. Your customer will sign up for your email list if they like your website and presentation. You will eventually refer them to products that require another email sign up. Will they be annoyed by this? You should prepare your customers for multiple email sign ups! Or try to mitigate this by sending them straight to the offer to buy. This is your choice but the principle is to understand your customers and sales leads.
How to Avoid Affiliate Marketing Mistakes
There is soo many mistakes that you can make as a new affiliate marketer that I encourage you to get educated to avoid common pitfalls. I have spent the last four years perfecting the craft of affiliate marketing and am finally earning significant amounts of money.
In the beginning, I tried to learn without the help of a mentor. After a couple of years, I finally signed up for a great affiliate program that had a clear blueprint that provided me a roadmap to success. This program is linked in the banner below.