In a few years, affiliate marketing has established itself as an essential marketing strategy. Many e-commerce companies use it to generate sales but also to develop their notoriety and acquire new customers. Affiliate marketing can also be very powerful in B2B.
In this guide, find out everything you need to know about affiliate marketing.
What is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing – is a system by which an advertiser uses a network of publishers who, through advertising or an affiliate link, will drive traffic to their site. If an Internet user who visits the publisher’s site or publication clicks on the advertisement and performs a predetermined action on the advertiser’s site, then the publisher is paid.
Affiliate marketing is a strategy based on the relationship between:
The merchant, who we can also call the creator, seller, or retailer. It is this part that creates and sells the product. It can be a start-up, an SME (Small or Medium Business), or a large company.
The affiliate, i.e. the advertiser, can be an affiliate business or an individual such as a social media influencer, for example.
The consumer, that is to say, the customer who allows the proper functioning of this affiliate strategy.
The cost of the affiliate network is usually included in the price of the product, which means that the consumer will not pay more than if this strategy had not been put in place.
What Niches Affiliate Marketing is Particularly Good At?
Experts name 3 topics affiliate marketing keeps being good at:
- Relationships / Dating / Marriage Counseling
- Personal Healthcare / Fitness
- Finance / Investing / Wealth
If you are running an aged forum, blog or just website in one of these topics affiliate marketing may bring you more profit than AdWords.
Affiliate marketing strategy relies on a multitude of payment methods:
-The cost per click (the seller pays a commission to the affiliate when a user clicks on one of his advertisements which redirect him to the site.)
-The cost per lead (the seller pays a commission to the seller as soon as an Internet user contacts the selling company by any means previously defined thanks to the affiliate)
-The cost per sale (the seller pays a commission when an Internet user makes a purchase thanks to the online advertising set up by the advertiser)
-The cost per view (defining the cost per view of a video, often defined by a number of videos viewed, over a minimum amount of time by the Internet user) and many more.
How to start affiliate marketing in 2021 as a beginner:
Well, in short, here are the steps you need to take now:
-Choose your platform: Website, YouTube, Social Networks or Messenger Group.
-Pick a niche of affiliate products.
-Join affiliate programs or install a code on your platform to manage it independently
-Create great content (your success key)
-Drive traffic to that content.
-Optimize content for conversion.
-Analyze the results.
There were over 31.7 million blogs last year (2020) alone in the US. And this number will likely grow in 2021. – (source: Statista)
What does this mean for you who want to start affiliate marketing? You will face fierce competition which will worsen over time. Therefore, you need to dig deeper and go with a little more specific topic. With such a specific niche, you have a chance to make money promoting affiliate offers. Because you can create a more targeted audience and you can easily rank on the search engines.
Analyze Your Results
Establish the budget that you are willing to invest in your marketing strategy in order to attract traffic to your website. Next, you’ll need to calculate conversions as well as commissions to determine where to focus your efforts. There are various affiliate tracking system plugins you can easily install to track your affiliate program performance.
Conclusion
Like all marketing strategies, affiliate marketing takes time, money, and most importantly, knowledge of online marketing and advertising.