For me Affiliate Marketing is very simple. It is finding those who have needs (they are everywhere) and connecting them with those who have solutions. There are so many people with one need or another out there. Simply identify needs and go find solution providers.
I believe Affiliate Marketing is much more easier now because of the recent pandemic. There are more people now looking for affiliate marketers to help promote their businesses. The pandemic exposed the weaknesses of their old business model and they are in search of a better one.
Trust me, when I say affiliate marketing is a great business model. It is the most cost effective model for any business owner once they understand it.
What’s Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate Marketing is a type of online marketing where you earn commission by selling other people’s products or services. This is the simplest and easiest-to-understand definition you can get. Many website owners and bloggers choose this type of marketing. The reason is that it’s considered to be more rewarding than other forms of marketing.
In this guide, we will explore what Affiliate marketing really is and how it works. We have included real examples in this guide just to demonstrate the practical ways it works for you. The most important thing is to know the its basic definition. Once you grasp the basic concept, implementing it is easy-peasy.
Affiliate Marketing Concept
Most big and important companies have their affiliate program. And they are always happy to welcome new affiliates to help in their marketing.
A very common example we can use to demonstrate this concept is Amazon.com. Consider the company Amazon. I believe, you must have heard about it. It’s the world’s biggest E-commerce company that sells all sorts of items worldwide.
They have what they call Amazon Affiliate Program that you can join as an Affiliate. I will show you how in a minute.
Let’s get to it.
As a customer, you can buy any of their products for your personal use. Maybe you are interested in buying a digital camera, for example. You then visit their website and see that the price of the particular digital camera at Amazon.com is $499.
You can simply buy it for $499. But what if Amazon offers you the option to recommend this product to your friend. And once your friend buys this laptop you will earn $19.99 which is roughly 4% of $499.
Affiliate Marketing is that simple. You simply recommend a specific Company’s products to a friend or client who needs them. And you earn commissions when someone buys them. This is called Affiliate marketing.
I hope that by now you have grasped the basic concept of Affiliate marketing. Now, let’s work you through how you can become an Affiliate marketer. And also, how you can make it work in your favour.
How Affiliate Marketing Works
We will again use the example of Amazon’s Affiliate program for this purpose.
Here’s how we put Affiliate marketing in simple steps:
First, you select an Affiliate program that best suits you or the audience you have access to. You can select the company to work with based on their commission structure, popularity, range of products, etc.
Make sure note down your Affiliate ID. (Affiliate ID is the tracking ID used to identify the Affiliate who referred the product) when you sign up.
Once you have joined a particular Affiliate Program, you start deciding which products to promote.
Make a list of all the products you want to promote and find out the commission percentage for each of them.
Determine all the necessary tools you need to promote the products to the public. The most common forms of tools are Banners, Ads, Product links, Promo codes.
Generate product links that contain your Affiliate ID. Make sure your Affiliate ID is present in the URL. For example https://nairaworkers.com/refs/finelines that is my Affiliate ID or the Tracking ID for Naira Workers.
Promote the affiliate links on your website, your blog, and social media. The more you share the more chances of generating sales.
WATCH TO LEARN HOW TO JOIN NAIRA WORKERS (A local gigs / freelance platform)
Joining An Affiliate Program
Now, we are going to discuss how to join and become an Affiliate.
There are many affiliate programs out there, like ShareASale, Amazon Affiliate Program, CJ Affiliates, Impact, JVZoo, etc. In this guide, we are going to demonstrate how to join ShareAsale Affiliate Program and work with it. Here are the steps you need to follow:
Go to the ShareAsale URL and choose your username, password and country to begin. Click Here to Apply
You will have to create a ShareAsale account to become an Affiliate. Go ahead and create one. Fill out the required application forms.
You will have greater chances of success if you own a Website or a Mobile app. If you own a blog that’s also good. Almost all affiliate programs suggest that you need to have a website where you can promote Affiliate products and Banners.
After you submit your application, you will receive a confirmation e-mail.
If your application is successful you will be notified via e-mail. Then you can sign in to the affiliate section. Here’s how it looks:
The next step for you is to select the products you want to promote by clicking on the merchant tab. Once you have selected the products, product banners, links and sales pages with be generated automatically for you. To find your generated links, you click on the link tab (menu).
After generating your Affiliate product links you can start promoting them. In the next section, I’ll explain how you can choose different methods to promote your Affiliate links.
Promoting Your Affiliate Links
There are a number of ways you can promote the product affiliate links that you generated in your Dashboard. We are going to categorize Affiliate link marketing into 4 categories:
- Social media marketing
- Whatsapp marketing
- Website / Blog marketing
- Online Forums
Social Media Marketing
If you use major social networks including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Linkedin you can easily market your product links on your social profiles.
Banners are the best affiliate contents to share on social media. ShareASale has tons of banners for this purpose.
You can generate a simple Text link, Image link or a text + Image link. Afterward, you can copy and paste this link and share it on your social media profiles.
One of the most engaging ways to share on social media is to post a question. If you want to sell Grammarly services for example, you can ask question like; When was the last time you made a grammatical wrong hile writing? You can then respond with a suggestion and an affiliate link.
That’s how simple it is to promote your product links on Social media. Whenever someone in your friend’s list buys this item through your shared link, you will earn a commission for it.
Whatsapp Marketing
Businesses today are doing great on Whatsapp and so are affiliate marketing. This is because there are lots of things they can do with WhatsApp that they can’t do with other platforms. One of such things is real-time directly messaging. It is so easy to easy and effective that almost everyone with a smartphone has a WhatsApp app installed.
As smartphone users are rising greatly, you have a chance to connect with your target customers and produce substantial leads for your business. And these are not mere sales leads, but active leads. Whatsapp is known to have the highest engagement rate among all messaging platforms.
You can use banners on your whatsapp status and also on broadcast.
Recommened read: All You Need to Know About WhatsApp Marketing in 2022
Website / Blog Marketing
If you are a website or a blog owner, you can easily put your affiliate product links and banners on your website. If you’ve got a steady flow of visitors to your website you can generate a good number of sales. Smart bloggers usually write product reviews on their blogs and generate sales from them.
For example, you can write a review about the new iPhone and include an Affiliate link in there as a recommendation. Even if one out of hundred readers buys the product from that link you will earn good bucks.
You can also get your affiliate banners and put them on your website.
Those banners can be inserted into your website/blog. Whenever a visitor clicks the banner and buys any product from there you will earn a commission.
Online Forums
Another way to market your affiliate product links is by participating in online forums. Once you have established a good reputation on a Forum you can recommend products to other members. You can also include affiliate links in your signatures. The forum signatures are shown below every post you make on a forum. Here’s an example:
We hope our guide has taught you the idea of affiliate marketing. If you have any questions or suggestions regarding our guide you can ask directly in the comments section below.
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