How to make money with affiliate marketing? The concept of digital marketing is broad and complex, closely linked with what today is defined as the ‘professions of the future.’
It is a discipline characterized by having infinite facets, each of which can support achieving specific objectives. At the center is the promotion of products and services via the web, to be implemented through strategies that are always different and calibrated on the basis of what the target audience is.
Among these, affiliate marketing is having great success, also known as ‘performance marketing’ (it is one of the most popular performance channels).
This method allows putting experience and professionalism into the system, in the name of valuable content and to obtain visibility and earnings.
There are two main players at the center of this strategy:
- The merchant (it is the advertiser, the one who needs to sell goods and services).
- The publisher (it is the affiliate that is the person who deals with the aspects related to the promotion).
The latter receives a commission, pre-established when the agreement is signed, for each sale that is successful thanks to content or ads hosted on its platform and referring to the merchant’s products.
Of course, we must not forget the importance and centrality of a third party: the end-user. It is a system that may seem simple only in appearance. It is a channel with great potential, but at the same time, very complex, so before investing time and money on it, it is good to know in detail its functioning and potential.
What Affiliate Marketing Means?
Affiliate Marketing is a type of advertising investment that involves the commission’s payment by the company that wants to promote its products/services to the affiliate based on the results generated.
Therefore, the company that decides to open an affiliate program, or an affiliate campaign, will pay the affiliate a commission only on the results generated.
Results usually mean:
- Sales (CPS Campaigns, Cost Per Sale)
- Lead (Contacts, CPL Campaigns, Cost Per Lead)
- Actions (CPA Campaigns, Cost Per Action, an example of an action is the Download)
- Software/App Installation (CPI Campaigns, Cost Per Install)
When you decide to work with Affiliate Marketing, you can sign up directly to an affiliate program or sign up within an Affiliate Network. There are various campaigns and various advertisers.
The two types of affiliations:
- Direct Affiliations
- Affiliate Network
Put simply, an example of a Direct Affiliate is the Amazon Affiliate or the Booking.com Affiliate, while an example of an Affiliate Network is the Trade Tracker Affiliate Network.
How Does Affiliate Marketing Work?
More and more companies, through the internet, decide to open an affiliate program, thus allowing anyone (As long as the mentioned terms and conditions are respected) to register and thus earn money by promoting their products or services.
These products or services can be promoted in various ways:
- Influencers promote them through their social accounts
- Bloggers promote them through content posted on blogs
- Youtubers promote them via YouTube videos and reviews
- Affiliate Marketer uses different traffic sources, taking advantage of paid advertising.
Pay attention to this facet if you plan to do affiliate marketing using paid traffic. As they say paid advertising, the affiliate will have to invest in buying traffic from a “traffic source.” Which can be Google (through Google Ads), Facebook (through Facebook Ads), YouTube (through YouTube Ads), Native (through platforms such as Outbrain and Ligatus), and so on and so forth.
So let’s get into the practice to understand how to do affiliate marketing (simplifying): an affiliate or aspiring affiliate must first register with an affiliate network or an affiliate program, then he will have to:
- Choose one of the available offers (evaluating which is the best).
- Request approval for the campaign promotion (after reading the terms and conditions, type of traffic accepted, payment terms).
- Create content (in case you want to work with SEO and organic traffic) or creative content (which include banners, selection of images, choice of text to use, a landing page) for using in the offer promotion.
- Create an advertising campaign on the selected traffic source.
- Evaluate the progress of campaigns, stop those at a loss, and scale those in profit.
Content and conversions: activities and objectives of the affiliate marketer.
To be successful in affiliate marketing, it is essential first to identify an ‘evergreen’ niche in which to specialize. Then it will be necessary to find a product to promote (with market analysis, it will be possible to understand if users actually seek this and if, therefore, it can lead to profits). It will be necessary to create a specialized site or a sales page.
Finally, we will have to dedicate ourselves to generating traffic in substantial quantities. The work is completed when the user makes a ‘conversion,’ that is, he shows interest and finally buys the specific product or service (generally, in internet sales, the conversion rate indicates the success of a specific activity).
How does one get to this point?
We said that the affiliate takes care of the promotional aspect; specifically, it will create interesting content (it could be a text, video, or even graphic) to offer them to the public. The goal is always to intrigue the user and leads him/her to the affiliate platform.
He will display the products to be purchased (those that the merchant or advertiser wants to promote) in beautiful order and attractive graphics. The goal of content that illustrates the goods and services is to get the audience to complete the purchase with one click.
Although, in general, the so-called ‘conversion’ can also take place in different ways (for example, the user could end up leaving his data by subscribing to a newsletter or downloading specific materials).
How does an affiliate make money?
An affiliate earns only from the conversions generated:
- To fill in contact forms/information requests (lead)
- To advertise a product or service
- For installing software or an app
Precisely for this reason, the online world compares an affiliate to the “door-to-door seller”. Instead of going from house to house to propose a single product (working as a single-firm representative), a person who can offer all the products and services that many want through websites and online advertising.
In addition to the traffic sources we have already talked about, an affiliate can also earn:
- Through Telegram Groups.
- Through Facebook Groups.
- Through DEM (Direct Email Marketing).
How Much Can Affiliate Marketing Make?
The truth is that theoretically, there are no limits. You can earn immensely with affiliate marketing, but you can also lose everything.
It is important to have a good cash flow, know how to select the right campaigns, know how to manage critical issues and problems encountered along the way (of which today, the most frequent, is certainly the ban on Facebook Ads account).
Being an affiliate marketer means becoming an entrepreneur of yourself, and, like all entrepreneurial activities, it too involves risks. But the success comes by taking risks.
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