Affiliate Marketing

What is Affiliate Marketing?

                                                  

 

Affiliate marketing is a business model whereby you (the affiliate) promote other people's products to potential buyers. When the sale is made, you earn a commission.
Affiliate marketing can take several forms and one of them is an online business.

This online business can be profitable for newbie marketers and come with a lot of benefits. The commission is usually 30% to 50% depending on the companies i.e. Clickbank.com or JV Zoo.


                                                


Affiliate marketing overlaps with other Internet marketing methods to some degree, because affiliates often use regular advertising methods. Those methods include organic searches, search engine optimization (SEO), paid search engine marketing (PPC - Pay Per Click), e-mail marketing, content marketing and in some sense display advertising. On the other hand, affiliates sometimes use less orthodox techniques, such as publishing reviews of products or services offered by a partner.

Affiliate marketing is commonly confused with referral marketing, as both forms of marketing use third parties to drive sales to the retailer. However, both are distinct forms of marketing and the main difference between them is that affiliate marketing relies purely on financial motivations to drive sales while referral marketing relies on trust and personal relationships to drive sales.
Affiliate marketing is frequently overlooked by advertisers.

While search engines, e-mail, and website syndication capture much of the attention of online retailers, affiliate marketing carries a much lower profile. Still, affiliates continue to play a significant role in e-retailers' marketing strategies.

                                               


How the Affiliate Marketing works
1, The Affiliate does not require a big investment and the program allows you to start making money immediately. The affiliate marketing program provides an easy way to create additional sources of income for website publishers and owners.

2, The affiliate does not have to bother about customer service, accounts, bookkeeping or refunds. In affiliate marketing, the merchant (product owner) takes care of everything. All the affiliate (you) require to do is pre-sell the buyer and lead them to the sale page.

3, As an affiliate marketer, you are your own boss and can work at your pace from your own place no matter where you currently live or the situation of your country. You can work part time, full time and make enough money to live anywhere you want in the world.

4, An affiliate does not need to quit a main job as it can be done alongside the main job, using affiliate marketing income to supplement the main income. Today's technology allows the affiliate's laptop to be connected to the internet even while on holiday or vacation and be able to earn enough income to live the Dotcom lifestyle.




                                             



The concept of revenue sharing —paying commission for referred business—predates affiliate marketing and the Internet. The translation of revenue sharing principles to mainstream e-commerce happened in November 1994, almost four years after the birth of the World Wide Web.
The concept of affiliate marketing on the Internet was conceived of, put into practice and patented by William J. Tobin, the founder of PC Flowers & Gifts. Launched on the Prodigy Network in 1989, PC Flowers & Gifts remained on the service until 1996. By 1993, PC Flowers & Gifts generated sales in excess of $6 million per year on the Prodigy service. In 1998, PC Flowers and Gifts developed the business model of paying a commission on sales to The Prodigy Network.

Affiliate websites are often categorized by merchants (advertisers) and affiliate networks. There are currently no industry-wide standards for the categorization. The following types of websites are generic, yet are commonly understood and used by affiliate marketers.

• Pay per click affiliates use search engines to promote the advertisers' offers (i.e. search "arbitrage").
• Price Comparison service websites and directories.
• Loyalty websites, typically characterized by providing a reward or incentive system for purchases via points, miles, cash back.
• Cause Related Marketing websites that offer charitable donations.
• Coupon and rebate websites that focus on sales promotions.
• Niche market and content websites, including product review sites.
• Personal websites .
• Weblogs and website syndication feeds.
• E-mail marketing list affiliates (i.e. owners of large opt-in -mail lists that typically employ e-mail drip marketing) and newsletter list affiliates, which are typically more content-heavy.
• Registration path or co-registration affiliates who include offers from other merchants during the registration process on their own website.
• Shopping directories that list merchants by categories but without providing coupons, price comparisons, or other features based on information that changes frequently, so would require continual updates.
• Cost per action networks (i.e. top-tier affiliates) that expose offers from the advertiser with which they are affiliated to their own network of affiliates.
• Ad Bars in websites (e.g. AdSense) used to display context-sensitive advertising for products on the site.
• Virtual currency that offers advertising views in exchange for a handout of virtual currency in a game or other virtual platform.
• File-Sharing websites that host directories of music, movies, games and other software. Users upload content to file-hosting sites, and then post descriptions of the material and their download links on directory sites. Uploaders are paid by the file-hosting sites based on the number of times their files are downloaded. The file-hosting sites sell premium download access to the files to the general public. The web sites that host the directory services sell advertising and do not host the files themselves.

                                                           

Certification and training

Affiliate marketing currently lacks industry standards for training and certification. There are some training courses and seminars that result in certifications; however, the acceptance of such certifications is mostly due to the reputation of the individual or company issuing the certification.

Affiliate marketing is not commonly taught in universities, and only a few college instructors work with Internet marketers to introduce the subject to students majoring in marketing.
Education occurs most often in "real life" by becoming involved and learning the details as time progresses. Although there are several books on the topic, some so-called "how-to" or "silver bullet" books instruct readers to manipulate holes in the Google algorithm, tricks that can quickly become out of date, or suggest strategies no longer endorsed or permitted by advertisers.

Outsourced Program Management companies typically combine formal and informal training, providing much of their training through group collaboration and brainstorming. Such companies also try to send each marketing employee to the industry conference of their choice.
Other training resources used include online forums, weblogs, podcasts, video seminars, and specialty websites.


                                                   
                                                      


Ten years ago, affiliate marketing was a valid option for Internet marketing beginners. It was easy to make some real money. The affiliates would sign up for Google AdWords, start sending traffic to their affiliate links, and get consistent commissions paid.
At the time the clicks, that were worth dollars, cost only pennies. Then Google shut down the entire affiliate marketing industry with the famous "slap". In addition to Google changing their rules, steadily rising traffic prices made the whole process a lot more expensive.

                                                    



Wanting to make a million requires that you set your heart on travelling the path to achieve that goal. It's easy to get carried away, enticed by the icing on the cake and forget the cake itself.

Whatever your goal is this year, and wherever you SEE the online business going in the next few years, you need to understand and not miss the boat to earn up to six and seven figure toward your Financial freedom!

                                                  

                                                




References:  Matt Lloyd, Prussakov, Evgenii,  Shashank SHEKHAR, Chicago Tribune,  Alexandra Wharton ,   Shawn Collins.