Affiliate Marketing 101

Affiliate marketing can be described as outsourced marketing. It’s a process that involves you hiring a third party who is compensated for bringing business to you.

Affiliates will typically use a blogs, email newsletters, and videos to drive customers to your website; however, they only get paid when visitors convert into customers. Driving traffic to your site may be a plus, but conversions are what drive your business. This is what affiliate marketing is all about.

The purpose of generating traffic is to get more customers. If your website gets a million visitors a month but your visitors never make a purchase, then all your efforts would be pointless. With that said, the monetary risk when using affiliate marketing is quite low when compared to the potential rewards, since affiliates are only paid once a customer makes a purchase or converts.

Because all your affiliates have incentive for sending valuable visitors your way, they will put in place measures to send you only the most qualified prospects.

How Affiliate Marketing Works

Most affiliates will send visitors your way through advertising a link, button or banner in their content. You can use these avenues to track visitor data to your site.

When starting out, you will need a tracking URL to determine which affiliates are driving your traffic. Affiliates can market your company using a number of means. The most effective methods are:

• Paid traffic, e.g., Google AdWords
• Blog posts
• Email blast
• Product reviews
• A YouTube video of your product and link with the affiliate ID

There are many ways for affiliates to promote your products. As a general rule, you should limit the number of avenues your affiliates use to market your company and products. Keep in mind that affiliate programs are not the same as referral programs.

If your website has a referral program and a customer invites his or her friends to visit your website, the customer can receive some sort of reward through the program. This is different from affiliate programs because affiliates don’t need to be customers and they can be recruited in any fashion.

The Benefits of Affiliate Marketing

Small businesses have a lot to benefit from affiliate programs. Here are few advantages:

• You only pay for results.
• It’s one of the most cost-effective marketing programs today.
• Affiliates are very good at reaching segments and creating copy: after all, why would anyone sign up as an affiliate if they don’t think they can drive you customers?
• You have plenty of tools to calculate return on investment. It’s useful for finding out whether you are earning or losing cash.
• There’s very little chance of suffering losses. Affiliates have every reason to send you customers, so this minimizes risk.

Become an Affiliate Member

If, rather than set up an affiliate marketing program yourself, you want to earn as an affiliate member, here are steps you can follow.