An encyclopedia of Affiliate Marketing
Want to make money from blog or online business?
Need to diversify monthly income but hesitating to try Affiliate Marketing?!
It is hard to understand what is true and what is false from many articles and blogs over the internet.
It is easy if we understand basics.
Understand these four core players better:
MERCHANT
Merchant is the one who owns the product. The products can be anything ranging from applications to physical products, it can also be a digital product. Basically, a merchant is the one who sells a product online. A merchant is most likely open to get affiliates on website to increase sales.
PUBLISHER
Publisher is the one who takes up the product links from the merchant and promotes it within own audience to send traffic to the merchant’s property i.e.website. He will use different Digital Marketing campaigns and tactics to sell more of the merchant’s product and earns commission for doing the same.
NETWORK
Network is the place where both Merchants and affiliates co exist, Merchants sign up to list their products in the affiliate marketing program, and Affiliates sign up to find the products they like and enroll in the affiliate program. This network is the platform which settles the payments between merchants and the affiliates in a structured manner.
CUSTOMER
The one who makes the purchase on the merchant’s property i.e.website and completes a sale. The one who does the payment doesn’t know the relationship between an affiliate and merchant in most of the cases though it is recommended for affiliates to disclose that they are promoting.
HOW DOES AFFILIATE MARKETING WORK?
If we have a website and we are driving traffic from various sources like Facebook, Google Adwords, Organic Traffic because of branding, and there could be many other sources like social media marketing, community engagement, etc.We need to sign up for an advertiser’s affiliate program. After that we will get an affiliate link that contains our Username or ID. We can then use this link when we mention the advertiser in our website.
When a customer comes to our website and chooses to click on the affiliate link to the advertiser’s website, a cookie is dropped in our customer’s computer. Let’s say that the customer orders something from the merchant’s website and completes the entire
checkout process, the advertiser then checks this cookie in their computer. The advertiser will come to know this cookie that belongs to our site and will give us the credit for making the sale.
Reports will show us how much clicks and sales were generated from our affiliate link. Once this is done, we will be given commissions by the merchant. Pay out can be weekly or monthly for all the leads or sales that we have made but this could also be according to the payment policy that we have agreed upon with the advertiser.
DOES IT COST TO JOIN AN AFFILIATE PROGRAM ?
There are no charges or cost for joining an affiliating program but the cost will depend on the promotion technique we use.
EARNING MONEY AS AN AFFILIATE MARKETER
If wondering how much affiliates earn well, there is no limit actually. However the amount we earn will depend on the program we are promoting and as to how many conversions are generating. Truth to be told we can earn millions too if we are really good at it.
TOP AFFILIATE NETWORKS WHERE WE CAN EARN FROM
There are a lot of networks available online these days but 5 networks are at top.
- Commission junction
- Amazon Associates
- Impact Radius
- ClickBank
- ShareAsale
