What is affiliate marketing?
There are 2 types of partner marketing – reseller and affiliate marketing. In the first case, there is a search for partners who buy the rights to the goods, and then resell these goods under their own brand. The product can be physical, or some kind of service. There are benefits for the creator of the product: they receive money for the sale of rights, growth of subscribers, additional brand advertising, as well as payment from the affiliate program if their product has referral links. Affiliate marketing works a little differently.
Affiliate marketing is a method of online promotion in which a business seeks help from partners (affiliates) to sell their products or services in exchange for a fee. The benefit of partners is that they receive payments from referred customers. Do not confuse commodity affiliate programs with referral programs because affiliates do not have to be existing customers of the company. But a prerequisite when looking for partners is that the latter have a niche for the target audience in which the company operates. Sometimes brands can invite bloggers for cooperation (influence marketing), but one way or another, the point stays the same – you place an affiliate link on your Internet resource.
How does affiliate marketing work?
In order for the affiliate marketer to attract as many consumers as possible, the seller pays them. The process goes round: the seller pays the affiliate marketer, they find customers who buy products from the seller. The key points of affiliate marketing are performance, budget allocation, and rewards. The affiliate marketer does not buy a product from the company in order to sell it to the client. Instead, they set up ads so that as many consumers as possible learn about the company and purchase its product.
The most popular payment scheme is a percentage of the sale. But there are other schemes: payment for leads, payment for views and clicks, as well as fixed, regular payments.
Affiliate programs for affiliate marketers include 3 steps:
1) Sellers pick affiliate marketers in their niche. Most often, preference is given to those affiliate marketers who have experience in the niche. For example, a company that specializes in sports supplements can take on a professional athlete.
2) Sellers provide affiliate marketers with their affiliate link, which determines the effectiveness of working with customers. This efficiency can be further calculated using cookies and pixel tracking.
3) Having worked effectively, affiliate marketers receive a reward. The conditions may be different, but the essence remains the same – affiliate marketers publish their affiliate link and receive payments for the clients brought through it.
Why should you use affiliate marketing?
This is beneficial for all parties: the business owner has the opportunity to boost the visibility of their company, increase the return on investment and earn higher profits. Affiliates, on the other hand, publish links on their blogs, on thematic sites and even YouTube channels, which makes their site more expert and allows them to get a good reward.
Benefits of working in affiliate marketing:
- Without the Internet, it is impossible to imagine communication today. Most people use it to satisfy their needs. That is why affiliate marketing is a great way to promote your business online.
- With the development of the Internet, it has become popular to blog on social networks. Many affiliate marketers have social networks with their subscribers who will gladly accept the company’s product.
- You can popularize your product thanks to bloggers with a large audience. This way in affiliate marketing is good because companies can reduce the overall costs of marketing as affiliate bloggers create content and promote it.
Types of affiliate marketing programs
Depending on the affiliate program, different platforms can be used in affiliate marketing:
- Site is the best program, since the owner of the resource, who is also an affiliate marketer, fully controls the content and messages on the site. In social networks, moderators may consider an advertisement of a product in a post as unacceptable and remove it, but this will not be the case on the site.
- YouTube videos are the second most promising sales mechanism. This site can be used as a separate platform for promotion, or as an addition to advertising on the site. Links can be specified in the description under the video, redirecting traffic to the website of the partner company.
- Social networks can also be used in some affiliate programs. Social networks contribute to the development of a personal brand, allowing you to increase your experience and authority. But remember that social networks should be used as an additional tool, as they have a limited ability to insert clickable links.
Each affiliate program has its own billing model – payment method. For example, a trial is when a customer enters their bank card details into a special form on the site and pays for delivery, thus subscribing to the monthly delivery of this product. COD affiliate marketers receive a reward after the goods are delivered to the customer and they pay for them at the post office.
Affiliate programs can be found in the following niches: beauty, health, online dating, games, finance, education. A variety of niches allows you to promote the product in narrower segments of the population. Promotion segments can also be defined by solvency, demographic factors, geography or personal interests of the population. But an ideal and 100% profitable niche simply does not exist. When choosing, take into account global trends, analyze the situation in a particular region and constantly test.
Affiliate marketing use cases
Every business, and affiliate marketing is no exception, has its giants who have achieved some degree of success. To motivate you to work, we have collected several examples of B2C and B2B companies:
- Amazon is the largest company in the e-commerce market. Their use of affiliate marketing is one of the most famous, despite many changes. Today, they have the most famous CPA affiliate program called the Amazon Associate Program. The program offers affiliates up to 10% commission depending on the category, a variety of niches and products, and various tools for creating affiliate links for certain groups of affiliate marketers. And all this is supported by a well-known name that has earned the trust of many.
- Airbnb is a popular online marketplace for short-term rentals around the world. The company has a two-way affiliate program – hosting and renting as a guest. Airbnb offers affiliates clear requirements, two segments of the affiliate program, and pre-promotion access to over 4 million properties.
- Wix is an international platform for creating and developing Internet projects that allows you to design websites, as well as their mobile versions. Affiliates receive a $100 commission as part of the Wix Affiliate Program, as well as many conversion bonuses. Participants of the program can learn about its conditions even before joining. Advertising banners are constantly updated in many languages.
Affiliate marketing is a great way to promote your business online. It consists in placing a link to the company’s website in your blog, in the description under the video on YouTube or in social networks. Many well-known companies, such as Amazon, Airbnb, Wix, offer the best conditions for affiliate partners promoting their product. But in order to achieve great results, you should be well prepared to work with affiliate programs, and the development of the Internet as well as the popularization of promotion channels fully contribute to this.
