Affiliate Marketing: The Term Is Everywhere!
Have you heard of the term affiliate marketing? You most likely see the word thrown around a lot and even see the word affiliates at the bottom of any website page. Affiliate marketing is very popular, but it can be very difficult as well.
What Is Affiliate Marketing?
Ideally, affiliate marketing is finding someone who is offering a product similar to what you have knowledge and ideas about, and then agreeing to advertise that product in many different forms for a commission when a sale is made.
When you are advertising a product as an affiliate to a company, you will be given a unique link to that product that has your affiliate ID in it. This way, the customers that come to the company’s website from your link are associated with you and only you.
So, if you tweet about your product and use your affiliate ID link, then anyone who clicks on the link and buys the product will earn you a commission.
Commissions can range anywhere from 5% to 75% of the product price. You can even make money as an affiliate for someone signing up for a free trial in some cases. Every company is different in how much, how often, and in what form they pay you.
The companies who use affiliate marketers can use their own affiliate program, where they have to keep track of your statistics and sales for you, or they can outsource that to another company like ClickBank, Linkshare, or commission junction who keeps track of the statistics for them and you. The outsourced companies also pay you your commission.
Most companies opt for outsourcing the task, as it is well worth paying a small fee to have someone else handle affiliates for you. It’s easier for the company in question and the affiliate marketer.
Who Has It Easier In Affiliate Marketing?
In a sense, affiliate marketers have the easy end of the stick. Once they send someone to a product that they are promoting, they don’t have to worry about them anymore in the sense of sales and happiness with the product. That is up to the person selling the product or the company that they are outsourcing to. Your job is to get them to the product and make the sale. That’s it.
What Types of Products To Market
One thing many marketers learn quickly is that the trick to being a sincere and effective affiliate marketer is marketing products that you believe in and know something about. The fact that there are thousands of products to market can make it tempting to try and make money off of as many products as possible. But, if you know nothing about the product, your advertising methods can lack sincerity and actual reasons to buy the product.
On the other hand, if you are passionate about a product, and market it with that passion, then your ads will show sincerity, knowledge, and passion – which often motivates other people to become passionate as well.
For instance, if you are a huge advocate for alternative health, then marketing products for alternative health would be a great fit for you; whereas, if you think that alternative health is non-credible, then you may want to focus on something other forms of product to market instead of trying to talk about how effective acupuncture really is. Put some passion and fire behind your marketing and it will shine through.
How To Market Your Products
Once you find something that you are passionate about, then you have to find what method of marketing works best for you and when you are online, you have many methods available to you. Articles, classifieds, pay per click, banner ads, websites, blogs, e-mail, forums, social sites, and more. You just have to find what works best for you or a combination thereof and go with it.
The great thing about being an affiliate is that most of the companies will supply some sort of help to advertise their product. They may give you articles to use, banner ads, or keywords that are effective.
Who is Affiliate Marketing For?
- Affiliate marketing is for anyone who can convey their passion and knowledge about something and convince others to be passionate as well.
- It’s for anyone who wants to sell people stuff that they actually need, and that will benefit them in their life.
- It’s for anyone who wants to seriously work from home while making a difference in the world in many different ways.
- It’s for anyone who is willing to put in some work to see some self-made results. This is one of the great things about it. You see the results of your work and get paid for those results, but it does take work!
This type of work can be done from anywhere in the world as long as there is an internet connection, and the money made is dependent on the affiliate’s knowledge and drive. Just like everything, the more work, and honesty you put in, the better the results.
Make Millions in One Hour!
If you have heard that you can make millions by putting an hour of work in per day, you have been misled. That may happen down the road after many automated processes are in place for you, but in the beginning, it’s going to take some work.
The great thing is that if you enjoy doing it, then it’s not really called working, but instead, it’s called following your dreams. And, if you are helping other people find stuff that aids them in their life, then you are doing a good service to this world while following your dreams. You can’t go wrong with that.
So is affiliate marketing right for you? Only you can decide. Just remember, it is not a get-rich-quick method. Just like offline work (or any work for that matter) affiliate marketing requires effort.