Affiliate marketing Become an Affiliate – Preparing for Affiliation
A term that you will often come across, in connection with modern business models, is online affiliation. It makes it possible to establish interesting business relationships between companies and partners in a joint venture – in order to earn commissions on sales. What roles does affiliate marketing involve? What are the responsibilities of each party? More on that below.
An affiliate, that is…
The entire affiliate business could not exist without the work and commitment of the people who take part in it. Affiliate agencies acquire new campaigns, collect information about them, and have affiliate links, but it is the work of affiliates that is needed to reach potentially interested customers.
So, what is an affiliate? It is simply a person who promotes a particular product or service. It can do this through a blog, website, or social media. To get started, they need to acquire referral links through which future customers will make a purchase. The affiliate must therefore enter into a business relationship with an organization that will enable him or her to undertake such an activity. Usually, this will be an agency, such as an Onaffiliate.
The affiliate receives remuneration in the form of a commission, i.e. when the customer performs an action specified in the campaign rules (registration, interest in the product, willingness to contact or direct purchase).
Taking into account all the assumptions, an affiliate can be called the profession of the future. The industry is characterized by low or practically no own contribution (you only need to have a computer and access to the Internet). There is no fee to register on the affiliate agency’s website. You can do your work at any time and place, even when you’re on vacation. In addition, there are no restrictions on gender and age. It is an ideal activity for both young people, such as students, but also older people. Most importantly, business does not force them to physically own any of the products, let alone warehouse space.
An affiliate partner, that is…
An affiliate business is a business based primarily on partnership, i.e. cooperation between people and entities. Without building a broad community, it’s hard to talk about a well-thought-out affiliate strategy.
In this business, it all starts with the advertiser, that is, the person or company that wants to outsource the advertising and dissemination of its products or services to other entities. This is when the organizer of the affiliate program comes into action, i.e. most often an affiliate agency, which takes the advertiser’s campaigns under its wings and establishes cooperation with partners who, through their activities, will ultimately direct products and services to people interested in them – customers.
Who exactly is a partner, i.e. an intermediary in the whole process? An affiliate partner is a person who advertises a product or service and their task is to reach the recipient directly. The affiliate receives a portion of the sales revenue from the advertiser. His remuneration is therefore entirely commission-based. In his work, he uses individual referral links, i.e. a personalized link that he shares with other people. It is thanks to the use of this solution that it is possible to find out later which partner has sold a given product or service and what amount of remuneration will be due to him.
An individual link is also a great source of knowledge about the effectiveness of an affiliate campaign. As you can see, it plays a huge role in the whole process and makes it possible for affiliate marketing to be well run and controlled.
In affiliate marketing, you can also come across the concept of a superpartner. Superpartners are the individuals or companies with the largest reach. Very often these are influencers who have a huge audience – a large amount of followers and subscribers. A great advantage of using the capabilities of influencers is that they are able to have a great impact on customers’ purchasing tendencies, not only through an effective affiliate strategy, but also through great persuasive power.
A superaffiliate can get a whole host of benefits from getting into affiliate marketing. On the one hand, they will add another source of income to their portfolio, and on the other hand, they will develop their image and gain content to publish new content on their media.
Affiliate marketing presents many opportunities. It allows you to get money not only from product promotion, but also from the promotion of the business itself. At the moment when the partners start to grow, they can invite new partners to their structure – the so-called second-level partners, who will follow in their footsteps and jointly implement the affiliate strategy.
Building Your Network
When talking about affiliate business, it is impossible not to come across the concept of networking. What exactly is it? An affiliate network is an affiliate marketing tool that is designed to provide advertisers and publishers with the right technological facilities that will enable them to work with partners.
Now that we know the theory of the network, it is worth considering how it actually works and what it is based on. The affiliate network counts the traffic and transactions generated through referral links to advertisers. With the help of the right affiliate campaigns and strategies, it aims to convert and sell as much as possible. On the web, each member works for their own profits.
The main advantage of creating an affiliate network is the very low cost. The advertiser eliminates the risk of running a traditional advertising campaign (often ineffective), which does not necessarily bring the assumed profits. In return, it pays partners only for the achieved and measurable results – for sales.
From the advertiser’s point of view, the process of launching an affiliate campaign on the web is not complicated, because the network, through affiliate agencies, provides full software, guides the advertiser through the entire implementation process, helps in defining the terms and conditions of the campaign and provides an administration panel for developing cooperation with promoting partners.
Being a partner, you already have much more freedom in how you run your affiliate campaign. Of course, the rules of each of them strictly define the permitted and prohibited activities. Usually, however, they are not rigorous. You can successfully implement promotion on your social media, blogs, websites, YouTube, as well as online forums. Effective work in an affiliate network from the partner’s point of view can be summarized in a few basic steps:
- Choosing the product you want to promote – each affiliate agency has products and services segregated thematically. The partner has the option to choose the ones that suit them best (for example, only banking products). It is worth choosing a product based on your experience and the group of recipients to whom it will be addressed.
- Registering as an affiliate partner – Once you’ve decided to enter the business, you’ll need to find an affiliate agency, such as Onaffiliate, and go through the account activation process. This allows you to quickly access your current affiliate campaigns.
- Starting a promotion – promotion is the right part of an affiliate’s job. The revenue from the business will depend on how effective the affiliate strategy will be. A customer will purchase a product or service if they are properly encouraged to do so.
Reach for the tools
Marketing tools that are used in the affiliate business are justified in carrying out an effective campaign and, consequently, achieving the assumed sales goals, as well as increasing brand recognition or website traffic. Most tools can be used to achieve a variety of marketing goals, but the experience of a significant number of affiliates shows that the best results are achieved by using several tools at the same time to strengthen marketing activities.
The basic tool in affiliate marketing is, of course, referral links. To be precise, it is a unique and individual URL address directing to the advertiser’s website, but assigned to a specific partner (it usually contains their ID number). Thanks to affiliate links, the system counts every click and every successful sale.
Another interesting tool used in affiliate marketing is a product widget, i.e. a special graphic creation on which there are products selected by the partner from one or more affiliate programs. Widgets can be placed on web pages. They require you to paste a special code.
The most advanced and experienced partners have XML files at their disposal. They are mainly used by price comparison websites and product search engines, which want to place the entire assortment of a given company on their websites. The data in the XML files is constantly updated, so you can always be sure of the validity of the offers. Generating an XML file in the publisher panel is not complicated at all. You need to choose an affiliate program and the scheme in which you want to receive the file. When creating an XML file, all links to products are replaced with affiliate links of the partner, which ensures that transactions from them will be counted on the partner’s account.
One of the oldest, but equally effective marketing tools that can be used in affiliate marketing is banner ads. These are simply graphics that are designed to encourage potential customers to buy with their appearance and message.
Among the marketing tools offered by affiliate networks, there may also be discount codes. They are most often used by coupon services, updating the discounts of many stores. However, they can also be used by affiliate partners by placing the code on their blogs or social media.
Affiliate marketing can be a great way to build a modern form of income. However, it is wrong to assume that this money does not require commitment and a lot of work. Competition in affiliation is also quite high, so the key to success is to develop an affiliate strategy using the right tools and create a network based on reliable entities, people, and advertisers.
