Affiliate Marketing: For Merchants and affiliates  

Introduction:

 

The online world has affected the lives of many people and it seems we can’t live without the online world and technology. This trend transferred to the business world, where the new technologies opened up new exciting opportunities. Nowadays businesses are no longer restricted or confined by location or infrastructure. Once everyone moved to big cities because they had opportunities for their business to grow. Businesses needed more skilled and qualified staff to run the business. Businesses are required to be headquartered in bid cities to run the business and avail themselves of the opportunities. But now all you need is a computer and an internet connection to take your business anywhere you want.

 

Speaking of the business world, this term is related to big corporations, management, and marketing teams. But nowadays, we see more one-man businesses that grow and expand their reach globally. Many businesses are set up and run by a single person. Entrepreneurship has become a famous model which helped so many business ideas come to life.

 

The possibilities on the market are numerous if we have in mind the online market. It is safe to say that these opportunities are a part of the online world, and new opportunities keep popping up. One of those is affiliate marketing.

 

Affiliate Marketing

 

 This post will aim to show you the real potential of affiliate marketing and how developing a strategy of your own can help your profits soar and your business grow.

 

For starters, you will need to understand the difference between being a merchant and an affiliate because these require two different strategies.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing statistics

 

l Over 50% of top affiliate programs fall into 4 categories: Fashion, Sports, Health and beauty, and Travel (AMNNavigator)

l The global worth of the affiliate marketing industry is estimated at around $12 Billion.

l Mobile is the source of over 50% of affiliate traffic.

l Amazon Associates is the largest affiliate marketing network with over 900,000 active affiliates.

l Around 71% of U.S.A affiliate publishers worked with three or more networks.

l The search for “affiliate marketing” rose over 200% between 2015 and 2020.

(Supermetrics, Google Trends)

l Globally 85% of customers turn to Google for information regarding a product they want to purchase. (Kenshoo)

l About 76% of publishers like affiliate marketing because it monetizes their content. (Viglink)

l About 37% of online shoppers who have made their first purchase since April 2020 did it through an affiliate channel. (Finances online)

l There are 55 companies in the world producing affiliate network technologies. (Datanayze)

l About 48% of marketers worldwide earned $20,000 per year or $1660 monthly in 2020. (Scaleo)

 

Conclusion about Affiliate Marketing

l Affiliate marketing has an important role in e-commerce.

l Affiliate marketing is a nice opportunity to increase sales and revenue for both affiliates and merchants.

l Content is an amazing way to promote affiliate links.

 

The origin of affiliate marketing

 

The concept of affiliate marketing is focused on sharing the revenue by partnering up with others. We can trace its origin back to 1994 when the first affiliate program was launched by the PC Flowers & Gifts. One year later they had 2000 partners in their affiliate program. Perhaps the best affiliate program known as today's Amazon Affiliate program was launched in 1996. In fact, e-commerce websites started seeing affiliate marketing as an amazing way for them to increase sales without any direct promotion on their part.

 

There have been several business models in affiliate marketing, what really changed the scenario was the introduction of Web 2.0. This shifted the focus to user-generated content, optimization, and integration of social media. 

The origin of affiliate marketing

Getting Started

 

As mentioned above, you will have to choose one of the two roles in affiliate marketing. If you have a product and you need help in promotion, then you are a merchant. If you have a great blog, a good YouTube channel with a lot of subscribers, or online influence and you want to cash that in then you can do this by becoming an affiliate.

 

We can summarize the entire process of these two roles. On the merchant side, he set up the affiliate program. He provides marketing material like banners, images, email swipes, testimonials, and review videos of the product. Affiliates join these programs and promote their product with unique affiliate links. Their activity is tracked through these unique links. Once the user clicks on this link, that activity is stored in the user’s browser's cookies. When the users buy a product then the affiliate gets paid because this is done by an affiliate's unique link. 

 

Types of affiliate websites

 

Affiliate links can be shared on different websites like!

 

l Price comparison websites

l  Product review websites

l  Personal websites

l  File-sharing websites

l  Video-sharing website

l  Shopping directories

 

Benefits of affiliate marketing 

 

Many benefits can be obtained for both merchants and affiliates.

 

Benefits for merchants

 

1) Pay for performance

   There is no risk involved and no need for investment for the merchant in the affiliate marketing business model. Because the merchant has to pay only when the affiliate completes a sale. Affiliate marketing is often said to be performance-based marketing.

 

2) Easy tracking

 Trackable affiliate links and marketing tools are used to track the performance of affiliates. In this way, the merchant can easily track the sales and performance.

 

3) Increase in traffic through referral

 Through affiliate links the traffic of the website and product landing page can be increased. For this purpose, your landing page should be good-looking and highly professional with a good CTA (Call to action).

 

4) Lead generation

 Not only merchant can increase website traffic and product sales but also generates leads at the same time with no additional cost. This lead will remain on your mailing list forever and you can market them your other products and offers. 

 

5) Full control over commissions, marketing materials, and selection of affiliates

 When you set up the affiliate program, you set the rules you set the commission percentage, you set the target audience, you set the target market, and you set the promotion methods and materials even though you have complete control over whom to select as your product affiliates.

 

Benefits for affiliates

 

1) No investment

 Unlike opening an online store that requires a huge investment, affiliate marketing helps you to promote and sell the products with no investment. You can start your affiliate marketing business without any investment.

 

2) Minimal or no operating cost

 Affiliates can start an affiliate marketing business with minimal or no operating cost. If you have a blog and some social media followings then you can start affiliate marketing for free. By the way, you can start a free blog. If you want to excel in your approach then you will have to buy a premium domain and hosting. 

 

3) No need to stock products

 Since you don’t own the product you don’t need to have the product stock or warehouse. You just have to register on the merchant affiliate network get the affiliate link start promoting the product and earn the money. 

 

4) Earn money 24/7

 Affiliate links can generate sales anytime and anywhere in the world. In other words, you have a possible chance to earn money 24/7.

 

5) Large audience to target

 Affiliate marketing gives you a chance to target a massive audience because internet users are increasing day by day. Consumer online shopping behavior is also increasing due to pandemics. So online marketing world has expanded a lot. There are many possible marketing opportunities available worldwide.

 

6) Multiple promotion platforms

 As an affiliate, we have multiple platforms to promote the products like our blog, social media, YouTube channel, forums, Q/A websites like Quora, etc.

 

Conclusion:

Both merchants and affiliates can get huge benefits from affiliate marketing. They both are linked by common terms to share profit and increase sales and website traffic. So it is the most common reason affiliate marketing will prevail deeper in online marketing.