Think of affiliate marketing in a similar manner as being an independent brand seller. Your job is to attract people to sell it. However, the product is not made by you.
You are also not responsible for the storage, delivery or even the actual sale. Seems nice, doesn’t it? But before we delve into this, let’s take a look at the affiliation ecosystem.
In this article, we’re going to discuss how affiliate marketing works and how it’s viewed from two perspectives: an advertiser (a seller), and a publisher. Because if you’ve ever heard a sentence like “If you want to buy something from Amazon, use my link”, this post is for you.
Roles in Affiliate Marketing
In everything in your life there are people or groups of people who have to act a certain way. The same rule goes to affiliate marketing. There are three key roles that need to be filled in affiliate marketing:
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Publishers
This is the role you want to fill as an affiliate marketer. Your job is to convince people that it is worth buying the product. When someone raises the bait and buys the product or service you have chosen to promote, you will receive a commission. You need to offer potential customers useful information that will help them evaluate the products to buy.
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Advertisers
These are the brands/companies who have the product/service they want people to buy. However, to get more customers, they are looking for publishers who will promote products and services on their behalf.
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Affiliate Network
It’s a binding material that connects advertisers and publishers. It is an affiliate network that provides publishers with affiliate links and opportunities to earn money. Some affiliate networks also give their publishers various resources to help them increase their profits. Examples? Blog, YouTube channel or free to use tools for earning money. This is the kind of network you want to join. And we know one that meets all of these expectations. It’s a network with over 160 thousand satisfied publishers from all over the world. Join them now by clicking HERE.
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Customers
Apart from affiliates (publishers) and advertisers, the rest of the “internet population” are potential customers. Customers have the needs or interests. When they try to find products or services, they want more information than sales brochures usually offer.
The Most Profitable Part of AM – Niche Marketing
This segment of affiliate marketing is perhaps the easiest to grasp on. All you need is the right platform and start creating content. First and foremost, it’s important to be aware of the niche you’re in and create content that’s right for it. The cost of entry can be extremely low, and if you are committed enough, the content can be expanded constantly. All you need a little bit of passion, a computer with internet access, and some research skills.
Challenges faced by niche marketers due to the low cost of entry, there are tons of niche marketers and everyone is trying to claim to be an expert. This group includes the best niche marketers who have already gained a fair share of the market, and plucking anything can be like trying to conquer the highest mountain in the world. Niche marketers also rely heavily on search engines and social media algorithms to help them drive more traffic. It can be very capricious, and what works today may just fade away overnight and be gone for good by tomorrow.
Why is Affiliate Marketing Beneficial?
As we established, affiliate marketing always involves the advertiser and the publisher. So let’s look at it from both of the existing perspectives and answer the question “why would affiliate marketing be a win-win situation?”.
The Advertiser Perspective
The huge advantage of affiliate marketing is that the advertiser doesn’t waste funds on fruitless promotional activities. It is easy to imagine an investment in marketing the costs of which exceed the additional profits. An example would be renting a billboard in the city center, which will only generate a few additional sales.
When affiliate marketing is used, this problem completely disappears and the amount of wasted funds will be exactly 0 dollars. The Advertiser knows in advance how much the promotion of a single product or service will cost, what percentage of a price for which the product/service is sold, will be spent on marketing purposes.
Using affiliate marketing will provide advertisers with stability and minimize the chance that a few less successful promotional activities will take away the business’s financial stability.
Another advantage of this solution is the ability to reach a diverse audience. By using traditional marketing methods, the image of the ideal customer is created, to whom the promotional materials are directed. This image is always only a more or less precise approximation of reality and creating advertisements based on it often leads to ignoring some potential customers.
Thanks to affiliate programs, it is possible to reach people in various niches. The partners themselves will adapt the message to their recipients, which will save time and money on market research and will avoid mishaps if the advertiser misunderstands the clients’ needs.
The Publisher Perspective
Affiliate marketing is a good solution for people who have a passion and want to earn a little extra money, or in some cases, make a living out of it. It will not be possible to do this by using advertising, if the website, blog or channel that is run is not regularly visited by a large number of people. Fortunately, if your blog can create high-quality content, even if it’s small, affiliation can bring it some income. It is important that the audience is engaged and uses your affiliate links.
The advantage of affiliate marketing is its relative non-pushiness. Nobody will be bothered if at the end of your post or in the description of your YouTube video there is an affiliate link that allows people to buy a product related to the topic in the question. Or a discount offer that allows you to get it at a discounted price.
Two things are important here. First, you must disclose to your readers that you are an affiliate publisher of a given ecommerce store. Secondly, you can’t crash your pages with dozens of random affiliate links. They should appear in a context in which their presence makes sense. You cannot let the blog turn into an advertising board, because readers do not visit it to read texts written for advertising.
Becoming a publisher is free and easy. All you need to do is register in the chosen affiliate network. We suggest MyLead. After you’re signed up, choose the offer that is right for you and put the affiliate link in the websites/blogs you run. You don’t need to gain knowledge beyond what you already have when creating the content you publish. Becoming a marketing affiliate publisher involves no risk on your part, at least as long as you act wisely.
Working On That Success
Yes, it’s easy to get charmed by the temptation of affiliate marketing. If you really want it, you need to know that, despite the potential, success doesn’t happen overnight. This is especially true when it comes to earning money with affiliate marketing. It’s not something you can spend X hours on and then save money for the rest of your life. Affiliate marketing is just like any other full-time job so prepare yourself to work for a long time if you want to be truly successful at it.
Also, there are a few other things to consider before you begin.
Making The Right Choices
Affiliate marketers can use a variety of methods. For example, you can opt for a simple blog with affiliate links put in some entries. Or maybe build an ebook, make a live presentation via streaming platform, or create podcasts and videos.
In addition to the form or medium, you also need to decide what tone you want to give.
Are you going to shower your customers with nice words on the product? Will you give them ideas and gently push them towards what you sell? Any or all of these methods are possible. Apart from all that, you need to make the right choices with affiliate marketing. Here’s what you should focus on.
Choosing The Industry
While it’s important to do something you are truly passionate about, remember that not every industry has the same potential. Ideally, you would go into one that has a well-established ecosystem of famous brands and demand.
Marketing Angle
Decide how you intend to promote your content. Will you rely on your SEO skills to attract search engine traffic? Or maybe you want to invest funds and put cash into social media promotion? Consider a holistic approach.
Provide Value
Regardless of platforms, models or selections, always remember that you need followers, viewers, readers. To put it shortly – consumers. They are a key source of income and the only way to attract and retain them is to offer them real value. If you are an entertainer – keep them entertained. If they run a business – show them how to simplify solutions or solve problems.
Especially if you’re a beginner, it’s highly important to be aware of what people want. And once you gain that knowledge – give them what they want.
Joining The Affiliate Network
If you feel like you’re ready to start making money with the comfort of your own couch (or bed, we don’t judge), try your hand at the above-mentioned MyLead. It’s a great network for those who want to start their affiliate marketing adventure and for professionals who have already possessed enough affiliate knowledge to be able to make thousands of dollars monthly. If you’re wondering what factors you should pay attention to when choosing an affiliate network to join, consider these:
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- a support system that will always be at your disposal – the MyLead support team makes sure to solve any problem you can run across. Since MyLead cares about its international users, you can communicate with members in nine languages. Apart from the support system, you can also have your own affiliate mentor who will be like a guardian at every step of your journey with the network.
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- free resources – MyLead believes that knowledge is key to success. That’s why each new user is welcomed with training materials that are supposed to cover all the basics of the world of affiliate marketing. It offers a free industry blog with guides, tutorials and case-studies. It also publishes exclusive, free ebooks about affiliate issues. Apart from that, MyLead has its own YouTube channel.
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- monetization tools to help you increase your profits – at the moment, MyLead offers its own Content Lockers, which block access to a particular part of the website. This can be special premium content, one of the subpages, or further part of the article. When trying to access the file, the user will have to perform at least one offer from the list of offers displayed. Apart from four different types of Content Lockers, each MyLead user gets access to a link cloaking system, called HideLink, which is a huge helping hand when focusing on social media promotion.
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- a variety of affiliate programs to make sure you promote things that you’re interested in – at the moment MyLead has in its offer over 3000 affiliate programs to choose from.
Check out MyLead, by clicking HERE