Affiliate marketing is basically selling another person’s products and receiving a commission, which is normally a percentage of the total price of the sold items. The products that affiliate marketers could sell are varied from digital products (software, audiobooks, ebooks, apps) or tangible (laptop, books, mobile phones, perfumes, designer clothes, jewelry).
If you don’t have any experience in affiliate online marketing, the first thing you need to do is to consider your interests, your specialties and your hobbies. For instance, if you have special interests in bodybuilding, then you can easily start a blog where you can post content relevant to this niche such as bodybuilding workout, diet, tools, books, etc.
Make sure that your blog is interesting by posting high-quality content. It must also be interactive and features media posts (video, graphics and photos). When you have several visitors to your blog, there are several ways you can optimize it for web traffic.
The Major Players in Affiliate Marketing
There are five major players in this kind of online marketing – the merchant, the affiliate, the network, the affiliate firm and the customer.
Merchants refer to individuals or companies who are actually selling the products, while the affiliates are individuals with an affiliated blog or website. They optimize their sites for traffic and then attract customers to the main website (merchant’s online store). Basically, an affiliate network is the provider of technology that serves as a centralized communication portal for the merchant and affiliates. The network usually provides payment transactions, invoicing, customer care and technical support. On the other hand, the affiliate firm provides support to the merchants in establishing an affiliate campaign such as looking for effective affiliates, training of new affiliates, providing comprehensive reports, and managing the campaign regularly. And obviously, the customers are those individuals who are willing to buy products from the affiliates.
In a usual setting, the affiliate markets the products from the merchant on its affiliate site through discount codes, banner ads, featured content, links, and forum posting. A prospective buyer clicks on the website and then the customer will be redirected to the merchant website hoping that he or she will buy products. The affiliate will receive a commission for each sale.
Payment Models in Affiliate Online Marketing
There are several payment models in affiliate marketing. These models are used to define the payment terms between merchants, affiliates, network and firm. Common payment models are:
Cost Per Action (CPA) – The merchants pays for particular action such as a purchase or email submission.
Most experts in the affiliate online marketing believe that CPA is the best way to earn money as an affiliate. Instead of receiving a commission from every sale, affiliates can earn high profits simply by creating leads for the merchant. Because these leads don’t have to actually buy a product for you to receive a profit, affiliate can easily earn quickly for their efforts. Affiliates who are using CPA write their own blogs and then promote them using varied marketing techniques such as SEO, social bookmarking, article submission and many more. Affiliate blogs are ideal platforms in generating leads for varied merchants.
Cost Per Lead (CPL) – The merchant pays for outright sign-up from a possible customer through the affiliate website.
The payment model of CPL is solely based on the number of new leads generated through the affiliate website or blog. For instance, if a customer clicks on a banner ad on the affiliate site and submitted an application form or survey, the affiliate will receive profit.
Cost Per Click (CPC) – The merchant pays the affiliate when the ad is clicked by a potential client.
CPC may also mean Cost Per Customer. This is the usual Google payment model and is proven effective in targeting the right customers through specific keywords and key phrases. Affiliate campaigns through CPC are very dependent on the conversion of the leads through the affiliate blog or site.
Searching the Right Affiliate Product
Finding the right product is one of the most important steps in affiliate marketing. Once you ignore this step, you will find it hard to earn money from this online business. You need to choose products that will help your market. If you have a bodybuilding blog, then promoting the latest romantic comedy film is nonsensical since it will rarely provide you with any profit.
Furthermore, if you market a low-quality product on your blog, your reputation may be compromised as well. To build your brand image, always market products that you can vouch for. You must try them yourself or give your confidence for the quality of the product.
The best way to get started with marketing products as an affiliate is to look through different Affiliate Networks and find the right affiliate program for your blog. You can use a search option to find related products to your niche. You can also use Google to search for possible affiliate programs. For example, if you have a bodybuilding blog, you can search for “bodybuilding affiliate programs,” to easily find the suitable product.
Top online stores such as EBay and Amazon also have their own affiliate programs. You can easily sign up to these programs and promote the products listed on these sites. Even though the commissions are not that high with these stores, the popularity and the wide range of products could give you an advantage.
If, still, you cannot find the right products to promote using the methods mentioned above, you can take a look on your competitors. Try to browse for their promoted products and find a way to include these products in your affiliate site.
Affiliate Marketing Through Niche Blogs and Social Media
Once you have gained enough readers to your blog, you can start adding banner ads of your affiliate products. You can also write a review for these products, but be sure to add the affiliate link at the end of the post. Moreover, social media is a fast growing platform for affiliate online marketing. For instance, two of the most popular social networking sites – Facebook and Twitter – have almost one billion users combined. This large pool of potential leads can be tapped for your affiliate marketing campaign.
In using Facebook, you can search for fan pages for bodybuilding and similar niche or search for individual accounts who like bodybuilding. Meanwhile, you can signup with Twitter then search for tweets in bodybuilding niche, then reply to them with links that will be redirected to your affiliate site.
By now, you should have gained better understanding of affiliate marketing. Start today and earn your first online profit soon!
