Affiliate marketing allows you to act as a third party to advertise products and earn a commission. Explore the ins and outs of affiliate marketing and how you can starting doing it yourself.
What is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing is a revenue sharing marketing method in which a third party affiliate, such as a blogger, YouTuber, or influencer, advertises a business’s goods or services to help it meet sales or marketing goals. In return for generating sales, the affiliate earns commissions or rewards. A business might work an affiliate to achieve the following:
- Increase sales
- Attract more web traffic
- Improve brand awareness
- Connect with the affiliate’s audience
For example, a shoe company could partner with a fitness blogger to reach the blogger’s audience of fitness-minded readers. Through the bloggers efforts, the shoe company could experience more site visitors and boost sales. Some of the new customers could go no to become long-term subscribers.
| Amazon affiliate marketing program
Amazon Associates, Amazon’s affiliate marketing program and one of the largest such programs in the world, boasts tens of thousands of affiliates earning up to 10 percent commission on qualifying referrals. |
What makes affiliate marketing attractive is that businesses can partner with affiliates at a low cost. Typically, businesses offer their affiliate marketing partners such rewards or compensation as:
- Commissions (percentage of the sales)
- Free products and samples
- Exclusive rewards
- Networking opportunities
- Access to training or education
While revenue-sharing is not a new marketing concept, modern affiliate marketing usually refers to online digital marketing in which affiliates link to a business’s product or service online and receive a percentage of sales or wed traffic.
How does Affiliate Marketing Work?
Affiliate marketing involves a relationship between four main actors: the affiliate, the merchant, the affiliate network, and the customer. Each plays a unique part in the marketing process:
- The affiliate (or “publisher”): This is an individual or entity that promotes the merchant’s product or service.
- The merchant: This is an individual or entity selling the product or service that the affiliate promotes.
- The affiliate network: A network serves as an intermediary between an affiliate and a merchant’s affiliate program. While affiliates and merchants can connect without an affiliate network, it is a common channel for such relationship.
- The customer: A customer is anyone who purchase a product through an affiliate. Merchants partner with affiliates to connect with the affiliate’s audience and convert them into customers.
As an affiliate, you can connect with merchants through affiliate marketing programs. After making some initial connections through a program, you may be able to find other appropriate merchants and gradually build a wide network of brand partners in a particular industry. For example, if you are an affiliate who reviews cell phones, an affiliate marketing program might suggest a range of tech products for you to review. You can then build a network within this industry and focus on reading new customers who are interested in tech products.
Occasionally, an affiliate and merchant connect organically through direct outreach. For instance, a merchant who manufactures cake pans might connect with an affiliate who blogs about baking in order to get their product in front of the affiliate’s audience of baking enthusiasts.
Affiliate Marketing Examples
You’ve likely seen examples of affiliate marketing before, even if you didn’t realize it. This is because the most effective affiliate marketing tends to be paired with quality content that readers enjoy and find useful. Although it can be tempting to promote various products to make sales and drive traffic for merchants, affiliates who have developed trust with their audience by highlighting quality products they believe in are more likely to inspire audience members to make a purchase. In other words: quality and relevance sell.
Some common examples of affiliate marketing include:
- Websites covering general topics that occasionally include affiliate links in blog posts or articles, such as in this list of Kitchen Essentials compiled by the cooking-focused websites Besttips.click
- YouTube videos that include affiliate links in the description, such as the one attached to Android Affiliate’s video.
- Dedicated review websites that cover products that appeal to a targeted readership.