Affiliate Marketing: What It Is and How Does It Work?

What if you wake-up in the morning and see a figure such as 20,000,000? Of course all of us want to reach this type of figure and live a lavish life. Many even look for such options online but are often tricked by the online players.

There are some smart entrepreneurs that run a thriving business and know that there’s always more that can be done for growing their business. They find an alternate stream of income for taking things to the next level. This doesn’t mean that they start a second business but find some ways for complementing and growing the business that already exists by offering additional value to the customers as well as followers. unlimited website hosting plans are getting an offer by various web hosting companies.

If you haven’t given a thought on affiliate marketing, it’s time to think about the benefits offered by this revenue stream. Let’s understand the meaning of affiliate marketing.

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is basically a tactic of selling products or services online where a product owner increases sales by allowing others targeting the same audience—“affiliates”—to earn a commission by suggest the product to others. Also, the affiliates can earn money on product sales without creating their own products.

In simple words, affiliate program is a process in which a product or service is referred by sharing it on a blog, website or social media platforms. Each time someone purchases the product or service via a unique link posted on the blog, website or social media platforms, an affiliate earns a commission. If you do it in a right way, it can help you generate healthy revenue.

Reasons to Start Affiliate Marketing Business

• Effective rewards: Though you will get many ways of earning money online, you won’t be assured about the rewards from them. But with affiliate marketing, you can genuinely get assured commission for the sales generated.
• Cheap to start: You don’t much investment to start with as there is no cost for raw-material, infrastructure, or for product development. Also, there isn’t the need of any place to store goods. You only need a website or blogs where you can start doing your affiliate marketing. You can join the affiliate programs at free of cost so just select the one that pays you higher commission. MilesWeb is one such affiliate program that offers high commission and also, a sign-up bonus worth Rs.1000.
• Independent business: Affiliate marketing makes you, your own boss. You can work as per your preference and any location such as from cafes, home, mall, etc. but all you need is an internet.
• Easy to measure: You don’t have to play the hide and seek game in the affiliate marketing program. Mostly, you get easy to navigate dashboard where you get to see and measure your sales performance.
• Sell what you want: You can sell any product as per your choice, you won’t be forced. You can work with the brands that you like and advertise the products that you want to. You will earn by selling your choice of products.

Who Can Play the Game of Affiliate Marketing Model?

Brands (Advertisers/ Merchants)

There are companies that sell products or services. The industries include retail, financial services, direct-to-consumer, travel, ecommerce, gaming, telecom, and more.

Affiliates (Publishers, Partners)

These include marketing partners to brands. The can include active social media posters, bloggers, personal website owners, niche content sites product review websites, mobile apps, online stores, mass media sites, app-to-app-marketing platforms, coupon and reward websites and also other brands.

Affiliate Networks

Affiliate networks play a key role in managing all tracking, reporting and paying to affiliates. Apart from providing tracking technology, some affiliate networks also provide full-service management or self-service management of a program. Brands get access to a network of affiliates who apply to join their network with affiliate network. This also enables these affiliates to access hundreds, even thousands, of affiliate programs.

Affiliate Agencies

Affiliate agencies supervise and manage the daily operations and program strategy on behalf of the brands that include partner recruiting, partner relationships, activation and optimization. These agencies directly work with affiliates and with the affiliate network or SaaS platform that caters with the technological needs of the program.

Customers

These are the people that are influenced by the affiliates for making a purchase, signing up for a newsletter, submitting a lead form, testing out a service, etc.

Working of Affiliate Program

If you want to participate in an affiliate marketing program, you’ll need to take the below five simple steps:

1. Search for and join an affiliate program.
2. Select the types of offers you want to promote.
3. Get a unique affiliate link for each offer.
4. Share those links on your website, blog or social media platforms.
5. Receive a commission when someone uses your links to make a purchase

Different hosting affiliate program offers different commission rates based on the offer and the company. May be you will earn about 5% of the sale at the start but with some arrangements, you can earn up to 50% when you promote a class or event. Some of the affiliate programs also offer a flat rate per sale rather than a percentage.

Common Performance-based Models to Affiliate Marketing

Pay-Per-Click (PPC): The affiliate gets paid for all the valid clicks generated whether a lead is generated or sale was done. But this happens rarely as the product creator has to take the risk.

Pay-Per-Lead (PPL): The affiliate will get paid for every lead generated by him. This can be an online form submission, any pre-purchase or trial creation. This risk is shared by both the merchant and the affiliate.

Pay-Per-Sale (PPS): The affiliate will get paid for every sale generated. Because all the risk is on the affiliate, this is the most common model.

Conclusion

If you are looking for an easy way of earning or side hustle, affiliate marketing can be the best option. Moreover, there are various web hosting providers such as MilesWeb that run the best affiliate programs as they offer sign-up bonus as well as higher affiliate commissions.