What is affiliate marketing? The best way to describe this kind of marketing is to put it this way:
You want to start your own business as soon as possible BUT you do not have your own product to sell, you do not have enough capital to invest, and you cannot afford to take the risk associated with any business venture.
Affiliate marketing is that kind of marketing that may meet all these business concerns the easy, convenient ways. It is a type of performance-based marketing whereby a business rewards its affiliates for each visitor or customer brought he brings in through his own marketing efforts. Assigned affiliates get rewarded for directing traffic and potential customer to the company’s website. This is an excellent way to earn some extra cash on your website, as an affiliate.
As more and more companies are establishing their businesses on the Internet, affiliate programs have risen in popularity as a strong internet marketing tool. The Affiliate marketing business has the following 4 major players:
- The merchant (also known as ‘retailer’ or ‘brand’),
- The network (that contains offers for the affiliate to choose from and also takes care of the payments),
- The publisher (also known as ‘the affiliate’). An affiliate He is a person, organization, or establishment associated with another as a subordinate, subsidiary, or member.
- The customer. The market has grown in complexity, resulting in the emergence of a secondary tier of players, including affiliate management agencies, super-affiliates and specialized third party vendors.
Affiliate marketing is often confused with referral marketing since both forms of marketing use 3rd parties to drive sales to the retailer. But they differ in that affiliate marketing depends more on financial motivations to drive sales while referral marketing relies on trust and personal relationships to drive sales.
Compensation methods in Affiliate marketing:
80% of affiliate programs compensate their affiliates by revenue sharing or pay per sale (PPS), 19% pay cost per action (CPA), while the rest use other methods such as cost per click (CPC) or cost per mille (CPM, cost per estimated 1000 views).
Tips on becoming a successful Affiliate
1. Create a Great Site: You can’t display advertisers on your site if you don’t have a site on which to do it. If you really want to succeed as an affiliate, you need to put serious thought into what your site is going to be.
2. Choose the right offer to promote- Do what you like: The point is not to pick your overriding passion but you should pick something that interests you, something that will get you to want to work on the site very day. For example, If you have always understood the need for insurance and the desire to get affordable insurance to those who need it, a site based around insurance may be for you.
Try to attract people who may stop at a site even for just a few seconds so an eye-catching design and interesting content are vital factors. However, creating a site is just one part of a successful affiliate marketing strategy.
3. Build Links: A link building is based on the idea that search engines are attracted to sites that have a lot of links to them. If other sites link to your site, the search engines read it as being important.
There are a number of ways to build links for your site and one of the best is simply to trade links. Arrange to put a link to someone else’s site on your site and allow them to do the same. This will eventually build a strong link network.
Good links lead to good traffic. When you have good traffic, you are ready to add advertisers.
4. Choose Affiliate Partners well: There are several websites offering affiliate program opportunities so take extra effort in finding the right advertising programs to bring maximum profitability to your site. Partnerships are how you make your money as an affiliate marketer, so choose them wisely.
Use metrics for your site which are statistics generated for you by various sites and show how your site performs in terms of visitors it attracts, the demographics of these visitors, their length of stay in your site, and which keywords they use to bring them there. These information will help advertisers know the benefit they can derive when linking to your site and what business your site can generate for them. It is best to link with affiliates who carry products related to your site.
5. Create a strong Calls to Action: Your site may attract traffic and advertisers but not get enough clicks simply because your site lack an important marketing factor—a strong call for action. This is what prompts them to do what you want them to do, which is, to click on your advertisers’ links.
A strong call for action is created by developing a content in your site that is directed to your potential visitors explaining to them the importance of clicking to your advertisers’ links which may come in form of a banner ad, placing an order, or filling up a generation form. Make it convenient for your visitors to perform the action you want to do.
You may have motivated your visitors to the point of buying but he may still need a little push for action so you need to convince them further that what you offer is something which they really want so they click with confidence.
Fresh Content: For your site to keep an active traffic-drawing capability, it must continually have fresh contents, daily if possible. This is easy to achieve by outsourcing for virtual blog or article writers who can do the tasks effectively and cost-efficiently. Your VA can write new articles daily or keep a store of articles to be rationed at regular intervals.
New content may not necessarily create more search engine attention but people may use them for new information. A site that goes without providing new information may eventually lose interested visitor. This situation should be avoided by all affiliate marketers so fresh content is paramount to be successful.
7. Avoid sloppiness: Investors always look for professionalism in any business plan. Poor grammar, bad punctuations, and misspellings should be eliminated because they show a lack of care went into the business plan, and thus, making investors wary. Seemingly little things like a missed period or a missed capital letter is sufficient reason to drive investors away.
A major in the English language is not necessary to write a proper business plan. Just make sure it is carefully written. Ask the assistance of someone to edit and read over your business proposal before submitting it to your potential business partners.
8. Study the Industry well: Your business proposal should show how much you know of the business you are going into. If you are in the affiliate marketing industry, discussions in your business plan should be about the affiliate marketing industry. Discuss current trends in the business and where the most potential for growth is. Make sure the investors percieve in your business plan your expertise on affiliate marketing.
9. Don’t miss the details: Your business proposal should include details why it will succeed in the market. These details should be factual. Provide benchmark or metric to measure future growth based on past performance.
In the world of affiliate marketing, infallible data can be difficult to obtain since most of the success is dependent on the individual’s tactics and strategies, but an overall view should at least still be presented in the business plan.
10. Avoid Making Outrageous Claims: Stay away from promises for a “no-risk opportunity” or “no competition” in your business proposal. Risks and competitions are integral parts of any business and investors know this. Untenable claims such as these only drive them away. Discuss openly the risks and how to minimize them. Discuss the competition and how you plan to beat them
11. Include Specifics in your proposal: Business plans should have specific goals and milestones. It should show the steps needed to achieve these goals, the current, future, and long-term state of the business. These vital parts are usually what investors expect from any business proposal.
Business plan is a blueprint for the success of your business and these tips will help for creating a successful business plan. Remember that AFFILIATE MARKETING is a very good way of making money on line if done the right way.