Introduction to Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is the process of making money from other people’s ideas by selling products. In today’s digital marketing world, the terms ‘Affiliate Marketing’ refer to the art of promoting a brand, organization or company’s business, product or service, and earning commission as reward in the process.

If you have never been a member of an affiliate program before, here how it works:

You’re an entrepreneur. You develop an idea. You write it down in a spreadsheet and keep track of all the different people who bought it. You have to figure out how much they spent to buy it.

You keep track of what they are buying so you can start charging them for it. You use affiliate programs to charge these people by selling something they like. You make money by selling the product or service to the people who are still interested. This process could go on forever, but it only ends once you stop making money from it.

That’s why affiliate marketing works. It takes the hard work out of making money in the first place. It’s a lot less risky, a lot more fun and it means you can always make more money.

How does affiliate marketing work ?

To succeed in the affiliate marketing business, you must know and understand the way it works.

Like we all know, the main problems facing every business today is how to increase their revenues by attracting more customers. Besides making their products the best, employing trusted hands or taking advertisement a notch up, businesses have also realized that affiliate marketing, which is a system that can help bring in more customers, can be an important revenue stream to. Which is why the top companies are venturing into it.

Understanding the mechanism of affiliate marketing is very simple.

Take for instance, a very big organization or brand that sells their goods, products or services through their website and various channels such as online store or land stores. This organization starts to feel like their current customer base does not match up to what they would like.

The brand or organization employs the services of a prominent salesperson, who recommends that in order to increase their customer base or access into new markets, the organization tries affiliate marketing. The brand or organization then ventures into a partnership program, were they reach agreements with independent vendors (affiliates) that involves paying commissions for certain sales targets.

These affiliates or vendors can either be influencers, bloggers or any other digital marketing professionals. The affiliates would proceed to building websites, generating traffic to the websites through marketing campaigns and good content, and persuading their followers (the consumers) to buy the good, product or service they are affiliating.

Easy right? 

How does affiliate link works ?

The affiliate link system is a system where you share the product to your customers. When you do that, it is considered a referral link. The person that you are referring them to is referred to as the “Referral Partner”. When the referral partners sign up for a product from you, it is considered a “Referral”.

A referral program has two purposes. The first purpose is to keep you in the black. That means you will get a small commission on every sale. The second purpose is to help you to grow your business.

This is where affiliate programs come into play. In an affiliate program, your referral partners are referred to as your affiliates.

Now it’s time to talk about the different kinds of affiliate programs that you can choose from and where to find them. Before you choose an affiliate program, you have to ask yourself these questions. 

• What affiliate program should i use ?
• What are the best affiliate program to use ?
• Where to find the best affiliate program to use ?

What are tracking cookies in affiliate marketing ?

Tracking cookies are used by affiliate marketers to collect information about users’ interactions with their site, including whether the website user took an action, whether they were referred to another site or how far along they are in their shopping experience. They may be used to improve or personalize ads or other online content and can also help track users’ location and provide content that is tailored to them.

Tracking cookies contain a unique number that is sent to your computer every time you visit a website. This number is the cookie’s unique identifier (UID).

You can choose to allow or deny third party cookies, or you can accept them and disable their storage on your computer. In doing so, you are giving your consent to allow third parties to use cookies to serve you online advertising, personalize content and measure the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns. This consent can be revoked at any time by changing your browser settings. Advertising networks also use cookies.

Understanding top attribution models in affilliate marketing

If you want to do affilliate marketing then you need to know the attribution models available. Here are the top two to check out :

• The first model which is the ‘indirect channel’ is the best for affiliate marketing. For instance, in this case the customer is buying from your site. This means you’re getting paid for the customer s that come to your site and click on your affiliate link. You will get paid a commission for every sale. For the most part, the commission will be 3%.
• A second model is the ‘direct channel’. For example, you are selling an item on Amazon and the customer purchases it directly from you. You are a “direct channel” seller and you are getting a higher commission than Amazon. The indirect channel model is different, as the customer orders from you and you receive a lower commission, but you do not receive a “net” commission. This is how you can have higher margins on direct channel, yet be less profitable on indirect.