Chapter 1: Affiliate Marketing - Definition and Overview
Affiliate marketing is a way of making money online. It’s really a simple concept. When you are an affiliate marketer, you promote a product, service, or site for a business, and you as a publisher get rewarded for doing so.
In most cases, you find products related to your niche and offer them on your website or blog. You promote the products and post a link on your site where they can purchase the products. Then, when someone follows that link to buy something, you earn a commission. The commissions can be either a percentage of the sale or a fixed amount. You’ve seen links to other sites when you’ve read other people’s blogs. These links make the blogger money.
For example: I write a book about affiliate marketing. Your blog is centered on tips to make money online. You actually promote and sell the book from your site. You get a percentage of the sale. It’s like being paid an advertising or marketing fee.
You may also sell other products that are related to your site. For example: You blog about cooking and recipes. There are endless numbers of cooking related appliances or utensils you could sell from your site to make it easier for them to prepare those recipes.
In other cases, you might earn an amount when someone follows the link and take some kind of action such as: sign up for something with their email address or complete a survey with their name and address.
Your earnings are usually tracked by using a link that has a code embedded in it. This link is only used by you. They may also be tracked when the advertiser gives you a coupon code. You’ve probably followed a link from another site at one time or another online. You’ve also probably bought something where you enter a code. When customers do this, you make money without doing a thing. They do the work for you.
There are a few factors that help make your affiliate marketing successful. They include:
• The amount of traffic you have. The higher the traffic, the greater your earning potential will be.
• The quality of the products you recommend. Recommending junk products can really hurt you, so you want to make sure what you recommend will be a value to your readers.
• The amount of trust your readers have in you. If you have established trust, your readers are more likely to click on the link.
Publishers like affiliate marketing for the obvious reason…you get paid while someone else does the work. You may be in bed asleep and still be earning money. If you find a product that is relevant to your niche, your earnings can be good if you have a large following.
You may be wondering why an advertiser would pay people for advertising in this manner. It’s a matter of cost. They may pay a lot of money for an advertising campaign that doesn’t pay off. With affiliate marketing, however, they only pay when the advertising pays off. If they have a network of affiliates they may make less per sale, but overall, their sales will increase.
If you have a good level of trust with the people who read your blog, they will trust that you wouldn’t recommend something they wouldn’t like. This will cause them to at least look at what you’re recommending. With the right sales pitch online, you can make it something they “must” have. If they purchase something from you and it is a good product that they like, they’re more apt to buy another. They’ll also pass on where they got it. That will lead more traffic to your site and increase your sales.