Affiliate Marketing: Every one of us dreams of passive income, isn’t it? Earn money while you sleep sounds like a dream. With an affiliate marketing program, you have such an opportunity. All need is to tell about different products and services, and for that, you will earn a commission.
Affiliate Marketing – Easy Money?
While affiliate marketing can be incredibly lucrative it is important to know that affiliate marketing is not easy money. Most people who try it make very little as it relies upon numerous factors including:
- traffic (high traffic helps a lot)
- finding relevant products
- finding quality products
- building trust with your readers
- having a readership who is in a ‘buying mood’
- you being able to write good sales copy (and more)
There’s also some risk associated with affiliate marketing in that if you push too hard or promote products of a low quality you can actually burn readers and hurt your reputation and brand.
It’s also worth noting that affiliate marketing doesn’t work on all blogs. Some blogs are on topics where it is hard to find products to promote – other blogs attract audiences who are not in a buying frame of mind and for other blogs, it just doesn’t fit with the blogger’s style or approach.
What is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing is a method of promoting a business on the Internet. Many webmasters earn money with it. They just post on their online resource a unique link to another site. When users follow this link and perform a certain action on the customer’s portal (register, buy something), the affiliate receives a cash reward.
The principle of cooperation is as follows. A platform negotiates cooperation with the owners of thematic portals, blogs, and YouTube channels. The customer provides the webmaster with the necessary advertising materials and unique links. The partner publishes them on his resources. After that, he receives income if users click on his link and perform certain actions on the advertiser’s resource.
Why Affiliate Marketing is Growing So Rapidly?
Users are increasingly using the Internet to make direct purchases: order groceries, call a taxi, buy a train ticket, buy new jeans, shoes, etc. Online stores are expanding their reach. Over 80 % of brands are using already the affiliate marketing program.
Affiliate marketing uses many creative tools. For example, advertising on coupon sites (discounts in the form of coupons and promotional codes), cashback services (returning part of the purchase price), etc.
The basis of success is the advertiser’s interest in developing an affiliate program. In this case, a lot depends on the proposals that are made for webmasters.
It is important to consider the following components of the offer:
- The amount of reward;
- Offer conditions (characteristics and user segments, percentage of confirmed orders, the processing time of actions and payment);
- Fame and reputation of the advertiser.
Now the affiliate marketing is at the stage of active development and is the most popular among companies working in the field of e-commerce for B2C (food delivery, ordering tickets, taxis, etc.).
What are the Responsibilities of an Affiliate Manager?
An affiliate manager has to fulfill a wide range of functional responsibilities. He should know how to advertise, how to sell and be a user support specialist. In a word, the profession is universal in nature and requires constant development. It is necessary to improve affiliate programs based on the results of marketing research.
The main responsibilities of an affiliate manager are:
- Create different types of promotion;
- Individual support;
- Search for new channels to attract traffic;
- Counseling and support and of partners;
- Finding new webmasters-partners;
- Analysis of advertising.
Pros and Cons of Affiliate Marketing
Advantages of affiliate programs for webmasters are:
- A decent pay;
- No need to develop your own advertising concept. Banners, articles, keywords and other materials are provided by the advertiser;
- Passive earnings. Even when you are relaxing, users follow your link, thereby increasing your income;
- Distant work. To work with an affiliate program, you only need a computer or smartphone connected to the Internet. Therefore, you can engage in affiliate activities from anywhere in the world.
- A new and popular profession;
- The possibility of continuous professional growth;
- Maintaining long-term interesting projects.
- Quick payback on time and money spent. The first profit can be obtained in a matter of days.
- A wide selection of affiliate programs. Now there are thousands of good affiliate programs on the web.
The list of merits of affiliate marketing is large. The most important thing is that the person works for himself, which means that the level of his income will depend on creative efforts.
As for the disadvantages of affiliate marketing, there are such as:
- Low stability of earnings in the absence of experience.
- Profit is influenced by several factors that are difficult to calculate in advance (the relevance of the product, methods of advertising, etc.).
- Risks with paid methods of promoting an affiliate link.
The experience gained in the process of partnerships is invaluable. This knowledge will be very useful in the future. Perhaps you can create your own unique affiliate marketing scheme and make a fortune on it.
Common Affiliate Program Errors:
- Wrong choice of an affiliate program. It is important to trust your partner. To do this, read reviews about the affiliate program, as well as evaluate the service of your potential partner.
- Attracting inappropriate traffic. It is important to ensure that the product is advertised among potential buyers.
- Promotion of an unfamiliar product. If you do not understand the advertised product and cannot even roughly estimate the demand for it, then it is better to refuse such an affiliate program.
Professional Tips for New Affiliate Marketers
The following professional tips I have collected over time and consider them to be very helpful.
Create A Website Today
I see many people who want to join an affiliate program. But they are planning forever and looking for the perfect theme, which does not exist. And they are wasting precious time in which they could fill their website with great content and attract the first visitors. That’s why the first professional tip for you is – don’t waiting too long and get started today.
Show Passion
I strongly recommend that new affiliates choose a theme for their site that they really find useful. Then content creation is so much easier. Don’t sell, recommend a product.
Offer Solutions
This point is closely related to the previous one. Instead of selling something, affiliates should offer solutions.
That’s why it’s important to listen to your own website visitors and find out what their problems are. And then you just offer the products that solve their problems.
Good Content is Important
Good content is the alpha and omega of successful affiliate websites. Of course, you can also buy texts, but you will never get the quality and the style as if you wrote the content yourself.
Use Seasonal Highlights
Seasonal events are a great way to publish special content on your website. It might be Christmas gifts, information about spring cleaning and much more. Use seasonal highlights to make your website look livelier and more accessible to visitors.
Tell Stories
Instead of theoretically writing about something and listing data, you should report on how you used the products and what they brought you. Describing own experience can make you really successful.
SEO is Important
Google is still the # 1 traffic source for affiliates. So, you should take the search engine optimization seriously. It is important to stick to the rules of Google and not to use unauthorized measures, because that will sooner or later cause trouble with Google.
Learn from Your Mistakes
You cannot avoid making mistakes. Of course, you can learn how to avoid typical mistakes, but this will not work out. But that’s not bad. You usually learn much more from mistakes than from successes. It’s just important that you analyze and learn from your mistakes.
Use Social Media
Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest are indispensable and relevant. Therefore, you should at least be active on a platform and post content appropriate to your affiliate website. You should be as active as possible and act naturally. Only then will people be interested in it.
Do Not Forget About the Call to Action
Build a variety of affiliate links, like a banner and take care of a suitable place for a call to action button or something similar. Of course, you should not overdo it, but visitors should have several options to click on an affiliate link.
Analyze Your Success
Both the statistics of the own website and those of the partner programs offer a lot of potential for optimization and thus for increasing the revenue. That’s why you should analyze regularly which content is well received, how the advertising material works and so on. Only by analyzing how well something works can you improve it.
Maintain Website
The own website develops further and therefore it is necessary to maintain it. This may be outdated content that you should update. But even outdated advertising or missing updates need your attention. A well-functional and up-to-date website is very important for the trust of the readers.
