What is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing is an up-to-date version of traditional commission selling. An affiliate marketer will sell products on behalf of an affiliate merchant and gets to keep an agreed percentage of the proceeds.
If a member of the audience follows through using a unique URL to a website selling the product, the affiliate marketer earns a percentage of what they spend as a reward for bringing them there.
Affiliate marketing is a form of revenue sharing. People who have products but not a large enough audience can boost their sales by working with influencers or people with larger followings who don’t have a product themselves.
Who is Involved in Affiliate Marketing?
The Product Creator - These are the businesses that create and provide the products for sale.
The Affiliate Network - Although some product creators interact directly with affiliates, lots of others use a middleman instead. Affiliate networks work with product creators to compile a catalog of products which they then make available for affiliates to sell and promote.
The Affiliate Marketer - These are the people that choose products and encourage their audience to buy them. They can promote and make sale links on their websites or social channels.
The Consumer - This is the person that purchases the product(s). They notice the recommendations that are made by the marketers and follow their unique links to purchase products.
The Product Creator, Affiliate Network and Marketer all get a share of the money made from the Consumer.
How Does it Work?
It starts with the creation of products to sell. They choose to share a proportion of the revenue with those who promote the products to their audience. Depending on each creator’s following, they’ll either choose to work directly or to go through an affiliate network.
The affiliate network acts as a middle man between the marketers and the creators.
When somebody acts as an affiliate marketer they sign up to one or more creators or affiliate networks. This is the point where the creators usually decide what they want to sell. The creator or network will give a special unique code to each affiliate marketer meaning that they can include their code in the URL when they link the products they want to promote. This unique code also allows the creators to see which marketer sent each customer who makes a purchase.
Who Makes Good Affiliate Marketers?
Influencers - Due to the fact they already have a large online audience as well as a strong bond, they are easily able to convince followers to purchase their products. They just need to ensure that the products they are promoting are relevant to what they do.
Bloggers - Much like influencers, bloggers already have a larger audience to promote products that are relevant to them. They will have a very good understanding of SEO, meaning they will know how to write reviews and promotions in a Google-friendly way.
Email marketers - If you specialise in a certain product that relates to a particular niche, you might be able to create a large email list over a period of time. Once you have a sizable list, you can use it to promote your affiliate products.
Why Do Influencers Make Good Affiliate Marketers?
It often comes across that affiliate marketing is a very easy way for someone to make a high income. However, the issue is that unless you already have a large online audience, it can be difficult and time consuming to build a large enough audience who are able to sell your products.
Since influencers already have large followings, as well as having a strong bond between the audience and them, they are able to convince the audience that they should buy these products.
We hope this post helped you and hopefully encourage you to integrate it into your social media strategy!
TBP x