What Is Affiliate Marketing
What Is Affiliate Marketing and the Concepts Behind It?
What Is Affiliate Marketing? In this article, we will be stepping through the concepts of affiliate marketing and what it means to partake in such a business model…
The concept of affiliate marketing dates back many: many years before the internet became a public domain.
Those of us, who is a little older will remember the door to door salesman and the foot sloggers that preceded them endlessly pounding the street’s cold calling on house dwellers hoping to arrange appointments for the sale force to follow up on.
A massive percentage of these guys and gals operated on a commission only basis to earn their living, paid by appointment’s and sales-related commission only.
So it’s not surprising that when the internet became a popular medium for buying and selling online, the old idea of commission only based sales became popular again.
The only thing needed was a new name to reinvent the concept of cold calling and a way to track the sale to the operative who made the sale…
The name was easy: Affiliated:- To associate (oneself) as a subordinate, subsidiary, employee, or member: She affiliated herself with a company to sell on their behalf.
And:- Marketing is the process of performing market
research, selling products and/or services to customers and promoting them via advertising to further enhance sales.[1] It generates the strategy that underlies sales techniques, business communication, and business developments.[2] It is an integrated process through which companies build strong customer relationships and create value for their customers and for themselves.
I have bolded and underlined the last sentence for a good reason. You need to take that on board for reasons I will cover later in the article.
affiliate:- affiliated:- affiliating:- affiliates…
Take the first word and combine it with marketing and presto. Of cause the words have been around for centuries so as the concept of selling and marketing a product, but the opportunity to use the internet and the technology that drives it has not.
Nowadays, walking the streets and knocking on doors are long distant memories for those who embrace the internet… Successful content marketing is the key to sales.
So what is affiliate marketing all about? And how can you use the concept to earn a sustainable income online
The concepts in simple terms are: You as the affiliate marketer provide advertising for unbranded and branded products for very small to meager seized online business.
You can do this by way of the concepts outlined below…
- Using your own hosted blog or obtaining a free blogger blog from Google:
- Placing your own written articles or product reviews on article directories:
- Writing product reviews on your own hosted blog:
- Placing advertisements on ad networks:
- Using social media like Facebook, twitter and social book marking sites:
- Use offline advertising media, newspapers, magazines, billboards:
- Use search engine paid advertising PPC “Pay Per Click” on Google, Yahoo, Bing, FaceBook, stumbleupon.com and many others.
There are many more methods of advertising affiliated products available to the affiliate marketer to use. By far, the best is owning your own blog and domain name and paying a small monthly fee to have them hosted
The advertising methods above can be used to drive highly interested targeted web traffic to your “owner hosted or free hosted blog” to read product reviews and then sent onwards by way of your tracked affiliate link to the product’s sales page. Where upon the interested parties buy the product, the affiliate marketer gets paid a commission based on a percentage of the overall cost of purchase.
Now I would like to bring your attention back to the paragraph I bolded earlier in the article…
“It is an integrated process through which companies build strong customer relationships and create value for their customers and for themselves.”
To become a top earner in affiliate marketing you need to build good relationships with your visitors to your blog. In order to earn sustainable income you need to build relationships and give your visitor’s quality and value they just cannot get elsewhere online… Always write truthful product reviews, offer a subscription newsletter and be willing to answer any question’s they may have products you review. Be ready to take a few steps more than your competitors.
Other questions asked about What Is Affiliate Marketing are listed below:
Q: How to I approach online companies and retailers to advertise their products:
A: Many companies and retailers operate their affiliate program through affiliate networks like commission junction | ClickBank | shareasale | MarketHealth and many more networks just do a search in Google. Some also support their own in-house affiliate programs just look for a link normally found at the footer of the website. You will be required to fill out an online form to signup to the network or independent program.
Q: How will they know I sent the buyer and get paid my commission:
A: You are given a unique link to place in your advertisements or on your blog website. Everyone who clicks on your unique link is tracked to the point of sale. Once the sale is completed you will be credited for it and paid according to your percentage payment.
Q: Do I need a website or blog to earn money online:
A: No you don’t but you will find it a lot harder to make a monthly income you can rely on.
Q: I don’t have money to host my own blog and domain name are free hosted blog’s any good:
A: Yes blogger is a very exceptable replacement for any self hosted blog and is very easy to learn and maintain sign-up for a free one here.
Q: How easy is it to learn the ropes and start earning money:
A: It’s not hard to learn the basics and get a blog online with content but the more advanced stuff you will need to know will take sometime to master. It would be best to pay for some online affiliate training to take your earnings to the next level. You can get some high quality free affiliate training that will help:
Q: Do I need a lot of targeted traffic to make a lot of money?
A: To be honest yes you do, high traffic helps a lot and brings in a lot of money. There is a lot of advanced stuff you can use to bring lots of targeted traffic to your blog. This is where getting some training can help a lot to improve your earnings.
I hope my article has gone a long way to answering your question. And if you have any others I have not answered, please leave a comment, and I will answer them for you… Contact me If you have Qustion and want a private answer about What is affiliate marketing.
Category: Affiliate Marketing General Articles
About the Author (Author Profile)
I started working online full time after I joined wealthy affiliate, that was over four years ago. Before that I started dabbling online to make some extra money and mostly to see if this work from home was for real... Turns out that with the right coaching and some hard work in the early weeks and months this working from home stuff is absolutely possible. P.s I suffer with dyslexia so you may find some spelling mistakes on my blog, but that did not stop me from taking up affiliate marketing to earn my living. And it will never stop me posting on this blog. Never give up on your dream keep chipping away at it until you achieve what you want in life.Subscribe
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Twitter: georgegijo
says:
Affiliate marketing is a great way to earn money as long as you’ve your own web site and willingness to spend time on it. Commission paid on tracking id mechanism records all those transactions in real time for all eligible purchases. For sellers, it opened a plethora of opportunities to enroll in affiliate marketing scheme and sell their products like hotcakes.
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