What is Affiliate Marketing And How To Make Money With Affiliate Marketing

In this article, I will share the basics of affiliate marketing and all the details you need to know in order to understand how affiliate marketing works.

What is Affiliate Advertising?

Affiliate advertising is basically an online marketing channel. An advertiser pays a blogger to promote the advertiser’s products or services on the blogger’s site.

Many online companies who sell products such as shoes, web-hosting spaces, or some other service, usually offer an affiliate program. You can simply sign up for the program and get your unique tracking link. Now, whenever you are writing about their product, you can simply use this special tracking affiliate link to recommend the company’s site.

There are three main types of affiliate ads: pay-per-click, pay-per-lead and pay-per-sale. Each of these affiliate ad types has one thing in common. They are all performance based meaning you don’t earn money until your readers perform an action such as clicking on a link or clicking on a link then purchasing the product on the page to which the link brings them.

There are several large and well-known companies that offer affiliate programs which you can set up on your blog within minutes regardless of how well established your blog is.

• Amazon: You can choose from a wide variety of ads such as text links, banner ads and more. If you’d like, you can also select the exact Amazon products you’d like to feature on your blog.
• eBay: You can choose from eBay’s auctions and find the specific products you want to advertise on your site.

Whats Is Amazon Affiliate Program And How To Make Money

Here are some of the common terms associated with affiliate marketing:

• Affiliates: Publishers like you and me who are using affiliate program links to promote and make sales. 
• Affiliate marketplace: There are many marketplaces like Shareasale, CJ, and Clickbank. These work as central databases for affiliate programs in different niches. 
• Affiliate software: Software used by companies to create an affiliate program for their product Example: iDevaffiliate.
• Affiliate link: Special tracking link offered by your affiliate program to track the progress of your affiliate promotion. 
• Affiliate ID: Similar to the affiliate link, but many affiliate programs offer a unique ID which you can add to any page of the product site. 
• Payment mode: Different affiliate programs offer different methods of payment. Example: Cheque, wire transfer, PayPal, and others. 
• Affiliate Manager/OPM: Many companies have dedicated affiliate managers to help publishers earn more by giving them optimization tips. 
• Commission percentage/amount: The amount or percentage you will be receiving in affiliate income from every sale. 
• 2-tier affiliate marketing: This is a great way of making money from an affiliate program. With this method, you recommend that others join affiliate programs, and you receive a commission when a sub-affiliate makes a sale (similar to MLM or multi-level marketing). This income is also known as a sub-affiliate commission. 
• Landing pages: A unique product sales or demo page used for the purpose of increasing sales. Most of the programs that you will be promoting have many landing pages, and you can run A/B testing to see which pages convert best for you. 
• Custom affiliate income/account: Unlike a generic affiliate account, many companies offer custom affiliate income to people making the most affiliate sales for them. 
• Link clocking: Most of the affiliate tracking links are ugly. Using a link clocking technique like URL shorteners, Thirsty Affiliates, etc., you can turn ugly links into links that can be read and understood by your readers. 
• Custom coupons: Many programs allow affiliates to create custom coupons which are also used to track sales. Custom discount coupons help you to increase affiliate sales as well. 

For companies offering an affiliate program, this is one of the best ways to receive free promotion, thus saving substantially on advertising.

For example, whenever you see coupons or discount links, most of the time these are affiliate links, and when you make a purchase, webmasters make money.

What is an Affiliate Directory?

You could sign-up to monetize your blog through an affiliate directory where various online merchants post their affiliate ad opportunities. You can review the ad opportunities and apply to host a specific ad on your blog.

Most advertisers on these sites will have restrictions related to the blogs they will work with. Typically those restrictions are related to how long the blog has been active and the amount of traffic the blog receives. For those reasons, an affiliate directory is most helpful if your blog is well established.

Take some time to research each affiliate directory to find the right one for you and your blog. Different affiliate programs offer different payments and credibility. Take your time and investigate your options before you jump into anything.

Affiliate Marketing : FAQS

At this point, you should have a basic understanding of what affiliate marketing is and how it works.

Now, let me answer some of the common questions asked by webmasters and marketers about affiliate marketing:

Is affiliate marketing harmful or illegal?

No, it is neither harmful nor illegal, as you will simply be using the particular link provided to you rather than a direct link to link to any site.

Affiliate marketing and AdSense: Can we use both?

Yes, you can because affiliate marketing does not violate any Adsense TOS. In fact, for me, affiliate marketing works better than Adsense, and that is one reason you see fewer AdSense ads.

How do I find an affiliate link for any product?

Not all companies offer an affiliate program, of course, but for those that do offer affiliate programs, you can check their website for related information. When searching, be sure to check the company’s FAQ page if they have one.

Another way find this information is to do a simple Google search. For example, one could place the following phrase into Google Search: “(product name) + affiliate program”. (Replace “product name” with the name of the product you are promoting.)

This should bring you to a landing page. Many companies use an affiliate marketplace like ShareASale, CJ, or Clickbank. These are free to use and you can create a free account.

How do I find new products to promote?

Affiliate marketplaces such as those mentioned above are the best places to start your affiliate marketing research. You can browse your niche and see the top performing affiliate programs.

Alternatively, you can keep an eye on blogs in your niche and see which products they are promoting and what methods they are using.

Is it important to have a blog for affiliate promotion?

Not necessarily, but a blog is really the best promotional tool. With that said, you can always use methods such as PPC or advertising to promote a product. This is more like hit-and-run affiliate marketing, however. The best way to make the most out of your affiliate marketing opportunities is to have a blog and use it for hard and soft promotion.

How much does it cost to join an affiliate program?

There is no charge for joining an affiliate program, however, your total cost depends on what promotion technique you are using. For example, a blog post doesn’t cost a dime, but PPC marketing, email marketing, and advertising come with various price tags.

What qualifications do I need to become an affiliate marketer?

There is literally no qualification required to become an affiliate marketer, though having good copywriting skills and marketing skills will be an added advantage.

Are there programs available which automatically converts links into affiliate links?

There are a few networks like Viglink and Skimlinks which automatically convert normal links into affiliate links. They use Javascript so it’s SEO friendly, and you do not need to sign up for an individual affiliate program.

How much money can one make from affiliate marketing?

As I mentioned above, there is no limit to the amount of money you can earn from affiliate programs. It all depends on which program you’re promoting and how many conversion you are making. I started with $47 as my first affiliate income, and now I make almost $4k-5K/month by promoting products which I use every day.

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