Guys! It’s 2019 and guess what? Performance-based marketing has surely taken over! Social media, commercials, door knockers, family and friends; everywhere we turn we see affiliate marketing of some great, must have, product happening. A simple objective in which a business rewards one or more associates, known better as affiliates for each visitor or customer brought to business by the affiliate’s own marketing efforts.
One of the original methods in which people began to use as a means to make money online, affiliate marketing appeals to many as a simple concept. Make a sale and get paid, however depending on which collaboration of affiliate marketing one may choose there is still a waiting period before one receives payment. Often depending on a Merchants new account policy, money back guarantee or network commissions it can take up to 30 days to receive payment. But, hey – One is still getting PAID!
How Does it Work
The average affiliate marketing has 4 basic components or steps that no matter how elaborately put this is it.
- Join an affiliate program by signing up online
- Pick a product to promote
- Share the product and your personalized link via Social media, Blog, YouTube videos, Facebook ads or any other form
- When someone makes a purchase, you earn a commission.
- There are 4 parties involved for affiliate marketing to work as it should. The merchant, affiliate, consumer and the network.
The merchant, often referred to as the seller or retailer, is an individual or a business that sells a product or provides a service to the consumer. The merchant and affiliate marketer work hand in hand together in a collaboration to meet an overall goal to promote the products and services in which the selected merchant sells.
The affiliate is the individual who uses a variety of online avenues to promote products and services in order to gain a commission from each sale. Working with the merchant the affiliate promotes the products and services creating their own marketing campaigns by use of ads, links and banners to find potential buyers for the merchant’s products and services.
The consumer, is essentially all of us, yes everyone! In affiliate marketing, the consumer is basically the person who potentially uses goods or services and can become a buyer to meet the cravings of their wants and needs.
The network, is a formal name for the program or platform and should be the hub point as a link between the merchant and the affiliate. The network is solely digital and requires various levels of involvement from both the merchant and affiliate.
Payout Types
Cost per Lead (CPL)
When you start looking at services and/ or products to market, you may, in fact, find some affiliate programs that offer a commission based payments on Cost per Lead (CPL). Something as simple as an email or completed contact form can earn you a small amount of referral fee normally the lowest form of affiliate marketing payout. Most often looked at as easy money – an email is much easier to acquire than a sale.
Cost per Click (CPC)
At times, a company will offer a commission formed from the total amount of clicks or impressions that is generated from your referral base to your assigned link. This often the case in the travel and fashion industries.
Cost per Sale (CPS)
Cost per Sale (CPS) is definitely the most commonly utilized and well-known commission structure. By the CPS model, commissions are given when an individual buys a product or service from the advertisers’ website after clicking through your affiliate link. The amount paid generally varies depending on the advertiser but is guaranteed to be the most profitable structure in almost any case.
How it's done
Let’s look at the example of an ecommerce store, named I don’t know… Nicole’s Clothing Boutique, that sells clothing in the US. The boutique has a website and the infrastructure for making sales of its products come through a variety of channels via online and traditional stores. However, Nicole’s Clothing Boutique knows that the customer base is not as large and sufficient as it needs to be to reach their business profit goals and revenue..
To increase awareness and notoriety to a new market base, Nicole’s Clothing Boutique starts a collaboration program with an “influencer and or affiliate” in which they commit to paying out a commission to the affiliate for a certain number or amount of sales achieved by those who join the program. So the influencer or affiliate now goes out, builds websites, promoting on social media, does commercials and advertisements as their own form of marketing campaigns to sell the products of Nicole’s Clothing Boutique to their customers. Now earning additional income from simply marketing. No product in hand, no shipping and no major overhead cost. The main attraction being the benefit of earning a passive income!
It takes money to make money
Can you really create more wealth with affiliate marketing? The short answer is yes. Affiliate programs can give you an avenue to earn extra money and possibly even a full-time income. The long version of an answer is a little more complicated. Like any other income venture, success comes not just from what you choose to do, but doing what needs to be done correctly and consistently.
The negative connotation with affiliate marketing typically comes from the wanna-be gurus and get-rich-quick communication the affiliate marketing leads often suggest, selling others on the dream that wealth can be given fast and with little effort.
The Affiliates
An affiliate program is an automated electronic program that uses Web advertiser and recruited webmasters. The webmasters yes, aka; affiliates, place the company’s advertisements on their individually owned websites. The ads in affiliate programs are linked to a particular company’s websites and are referred to as affiliate links. 2019 has made it easy to earn more income by using these top 3 affiliate marketing programs:
- Amazon Associates Affiliate Program
Absolutely the most popular online affiliate programs for beginners. Just about everyone already has an Amazon account and is actively buying stuff from them, so it makes a ton of sense to partner with them as an affiliate marketer in their program. They also sell just about everything, so you can be sure that they have a product to market that is relevant to the content on your website.Amazon Associates carry an extensive range of stock that can service just about any affiliate niches. This means that regardless of whether your niche is baby clothes or dog bags, you’ll probably find it being sold on Amazon.
The best thing about being an Amazon affiliate is that you’ll make money from any sale, not just from the dog bags. For example, you’re marketing a book of poetry, and someone clicks your link to buy a Treadmill – you get the commission for the Treadmill still! Did I mention it’s free to join?
- Clickbank Affiliate Network
Clickbank has been in the game for many years now and as a company is just a year past its sweet sixteen. Viewed by many as one of the best affiliate networks for beginners, Clickbank is known for working with the little guys.
The key to Clickbank is to focus on the gravity score. Gravity is the form of metric that Clickbank uses to show how well a product is selling. So although a high gravity score means the product sells well, it also can mean greater competition.
Clickbank is known for having a higher commission rate than other affiliate marketers. They even run a Clickbank University to teach the ins and outs of affiliate marketing to those new to the field.
Free to join with commission up to 75% Clickbank remains one of the leading affiliate programs around.
- Ebay Affiliate Program
By joining eBay you become partners with one of the world’s largest and most visited online brands. Affiliates worldwide will gain an upper edge simply due to Ebays range of inventory, global brand recognition, and high conversion rates.
Ebay provides itself on giving category-level commissions with a 200% referral bonus for new or reactivated buyers and most of all its global reach. Free to join but known to require a bit more monitoring Ebay is worth a shot, especially for those with high anticipation for a global audience.
To Conclude
There are several benefits of affiliate marketing that make it a good option to consider for building wealth. Little to no cost to get started and there is no need to originate a product or service. You are not responsible for any stock or shipping of products and you can work anytime and from any location with Internet access. This is why every time you search on your phone or visit a site on the web, an ad will come to the forefront offering you some form of a deal to purchase a product or even at times a specific service.
Affiliate marketing has become one of the most effective and profitable marketing techniques for many to participate in. The merchant is happy as his sales are increasing, the affiliate is happy as he’s earning more passive income from commissions on each sale, and the consumers are happy because they get products without any hassle. A Win – Win for everyone.
It is another avenue for you too to gain wealth. Simply sign up, select your products and let the advertisement roll while sales come in. As always, do your research, find the program that will work best for you but most importantly never give up on building great wealth!
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