Maybe you’ve heard of affiliate marketing and that’s why you are here to know more about it. Well, you clicked on the right article. This is the perfect place for you to get the whole picture of affiliate marketing simply. Let’s get around it!
Affiliate Marketing Explained Simply
Perhaps, you have brought a product that is so good before. A product you’re really in love with, and because of how amazing that thing is, you can’t wait to tell your friends about it.
So, when you and your friends had time to talk, you shared your experience with the product. They were curious why you want it so bad that they decided to buy the exact same thing.
Affiliate marketing goes just like this scenario— you go and tell people about the product. However, as an affiliate marketer of the product, you will be earning commission every time the person you talked about the product with, buys one.
By telling other people about a product, you will be able to make money from affiliate marketing.
This is how simple affiliate marketing is. Only that you will be reaching out to a wider audience, instead of just sharing it with a friend.
Let’s say there is XYZ Company. The company manufactures clothes, and they are targeting a specific audience. They spent millions to produce their product and set them down in the market.
Using the traditional way of advertising products, they would normally go for radio and television advertising. Businesses usually spend money to get people’s attention through these mediums, so people will end up buying their products.
However, as knowledge and technology evolve, marketers don’t want to limit product promotion with just the costly technique of advertising.
Instead of going to TV and radio stations and pay a hefty amount to make sales, XYZ Company thought: If there will be someone to sell our products for us, in whatever means they want to use, they will earn 20% every time our collection was bought through them
And so, affiliate marketing was born.
From having radios and televisions to show off the product to its target audience, the role of an affiliate marketer is to tell the audience about the product.
Affiliate marketers are the middleman between buyers and sellers.
Influencer Marketing is a Face of Affiliate Marketing
Have seen your favorite actor, actress, blogger, or YouTuber promote a product that they are so fond of? There’s a big chance that you probably had.
Affiliate marketing also guise in form of influencer marketing.
For instance, the famous American actor Dwayne Douglas Johnson, known as Rock. He has a huge following— over 280 million— on a photo and video-sharing social networking service called Instagram.
If you browse through his account, you will see affiliate promotions on his posts. One of them is Zoa Energy, which is an energy drink.
The actor’s post is probably not made out of virtue. By simply showing and discussing the product on his post, he gets a flat commission by being an affiliate of the product.
Affiliate Marketing Blueprint
Let’s go back to our previous example. There is XYZ Company, they are selling their manufactured clothes, and they want you to sell them as well.
Basically, to know how much you are bringing into their company, they place it down on a marketplace, for example, ClickBank. The marketplace is where affiliate marketers could go and choose which product they want to promote.
From a marketplace, marketers or influencers will be given a link that customers could click to see the product they are promoting. The link is unique forever affiliate marketers, and so it is used to track how much the marketer is bringing into the company.
If an affiliate marketer applied as an affiliate of XYZ Company who offers a 20% commission for every product sold, he will make $20 from every $100 worth of product sold through his link.
Technically, there’s no need for affiliate marketers to go to marketplaces all the time because some companies arrange affiliate programs on their own platforms.
Affiliate Marketing through Paid Media
If you don’t have a big following like Dwayne, it will surely be hard for you to promote your product on your social media account. Regardless, there’s no need for you to be so famous in order to succeed in affiliate marketing.
You could use Facebook as the platform to share the product. Through Facebook Ads, you could dominate Facebook marketing algorithm to make the product more visible to your target audience, having bigger chances of landing a sale.
Facebook is the largest social media ever, so the audiences who could be reached by your ad are enormous.
Setting Facebook aside, there are also other platforms like TikTok, YouTube, and Snapchat where you could promote your affiliate’s product. If the company isn’t going for these platforms, you have a big chance of being the mercenary when it comes to going out and landing a sale.
Basically, affiliate marketing through paid media is just about finding a product, targeting the right audience, landing a sale, and making commissions. Simple, isn’t it?
Affiliate marketing through paid media works the best with good visuals like images, videos, etc.
Affiliate Marketing through Organic Content
While paid media gets the attention of the target audience through catchy visuals, organic contents focus more on educating and highlighting information about the product.
Blogging is one of the most commonly used methods to promote a product. The basic idea at the back of blogging is simple. It is to communicate with people who share the same hobbies, passions, and views.
Before actually setting up a blog, you first need to have something or a niche you want to speak about, and why. Determining which area, you will be working in early on is important because it will be your driving force in choosing products, and almost everything you do.
Make sure to dip your toes on a niche that you’re knowledgeable at, and you’re passionate about.
Some people opt to choose something they really know about because it will be easy for them to share their knowledge with others. And later on, become an expert within their chosen niche.
For instance, you want to promote XYZ Company’s clothes, however, you are not knowledgeable when it comes to fashion and trends. It will be quite hard for you to reach out to an audience because you, yourself have no idea what you’re talking about.
Moreover, if you decided to be XYZ’s affiliate, but you’re not passionate about clothing. There’s a big chance that you will easily burn out, and eventually give up on affiliate marketing because you’re not actually going for what you love.
There are a lot of angles to look at in creating organic content for affiliate marketing, but one thing is for sure: Go for the niche you are fond of.
Once you have chosen the product you will never be tired of promoting, create valuable content about it. It may be a review, comparison against other products, or anything related as long as you are highlighting the benefits your targets will get from it.
You have to insert your affiliate link on your content. Make sure that it’s not too pushy, or you will just sound like a hopeless vendor desperate to make a sale.
There are a handful of ways to undertake affiliate marketing, and digital nomads are coming across new techniques every day.
