What is Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is the process of making money by recommending products to the potential customers. Once the qualified customers make a purchase from the brand, the business owner will pay out a commission to the affiliate.
Affiliate marketing is a type of online marketing in which a business rewards its affiliates for each new customer they bring in. The affiliate earns a commission, which is a percentage of the sale price, for each new customer they refer. Affiliate marketing is generally a performance-based opportunity that takes place between brands and affiliate marketers.
Types of Affiliate Marketing
There are different types of affiliate marketing programs. But, the most common is the pay-per-sale model. In this model, the affiliate is paid a commission every time they refer a new customer who completes a purchase.
Here are the types and break down of various categories of affiliate marketing:
- Pay per sale: In this type, the affiliate is paid a commission for each sale they refer. This can be a one-time payment, or a recurring payment if the sale is a recurring purchase. Pay per sale model is one of the oldest and widely approved affiliate marketing model running in various industries including marketing, SaaS, and eCommerce platforms.
- Pay per lead: In this type, the affiliate is paid a commission for each qualified lead they refer to the sales team of a particular organization. This can be a one-time payment, or a recurring payment if the lead is a recurring purchase.
- Pay per click: In this type, the affiliate is paid a commission for each click they refer. This can be a one-time payment, or a recurring payment if the click is a recurring purchase. Many brands have their marketing goal to gain more traffic on their product and landing pages and then they try to offer value to their visitors and convert them to the paying customers. Thus, pay per click affiliate marketing model would help in branding.
- Pay per action: In this type, the affiliate is paid a commission for each action they refer. This can be a one-time payment, or a recurring payment if the action is a recurring purchase.
How does Affiliate Marketing work?
Affiliate marketing programs may pay a commission based on the number of clicks, leads, or sign-ups generated. Some programs may also offer a flat-rate commission, which means the affiliate earns a set amount for each new customer they refer, regardless of what they purchase.
Affiliate markets might have their own digital products where they would promote the products from brands. This could be a website, a classified product, influence on video conetnt platform, social media following, and so on. Where they would add their trackable links to promote products.
A affiliate marketing tracking software is generally used to track these data from users and the links provided by the affiliates. These tools might store cookies for various length of time, i.e. some will store data for a week, some for a month, and some would store for about 90 odd days.
Once the user makes payment, the platform will execute the payments depending on the threshold they should meet.
Advantage of Affiliate marketing
Affiliated marketing is a win-win for both the marketers as well as organization. Organization gets the advantage of cost-effective marketing whereas the affiliation generates revenue by advertising. The cost-effectiveness of affiliate marketers results from the fact that organizations pay on traffic that gets converted to sales.
For the content creators and influencers’ end, affiliate marketing would generate a new stream of revenue for them. So, overall it is a win-win situation for both ends.
How do you find affiliate programs?
If you are thinking to start affiliate marketing and generate more revenue, you can simply look for online affiliate marketing programs and get enrolled. Many businesses have their own webpages that will help you to get enrolled with their affiliate marketing program.
There are also easier ways to getting enrolled in other online affiliate marketing programs, too. You can join ClickBank, vCommission, Resellerclub, and other aggregators’ websites.