Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is one of the rising techniques for selling products and is part of the disciplines that aim at performance. It’s not based on the visibility that a blog or an important figure in the digital world could offer a product, but on the direct sales that the publisher manages to get the brand. But let’s understand each other more!

1. the merchant or advertiser (advertiser)
or who creates the ad

This is for example a company that has an e-commerce with products for sale and needs to convert leads into customers. The company promotes an affiliate program to recruit affiliates to promote their business online, with the aim of increasing sales.

2. 2 publisher or affiliate
Or advertiser

Being a publisher means talking about a certain product and earning a percentage of sales. Usually it’s a person who selects a niche market and creates articles, videos or posts useful for this audience. With its content it will try to persuade users to buy the product, thus earning a percentage.

3. the affiliate platform
or the place where everything happens
They allow you to enroll in the program and immediately start earning with this technique. These are usually websites or the company’s own shop.

The reasons to start earning online with affiliations are many, both for those who are entering this world for the first time, and for industry experts.
It’s easy for publishers to get started and there are no limits to accessing this world. No specific experience or skills are required to work in this field. It will only take a lot of effort and patience and gradually you’ll learn to optimize your campaigns and get the results you want. You just need to know how to use the computer and get into the world of the web.

If you have a company and you’re considering affiliate marketing, consider that it’s part of a billion euro industry that has grown thanks to activities already on the market.
For small and medium-sized enterprises, word of mouth has always been a great benefit, addressing a specific target and niche.

Retailers often frown on the fact that the company can open its own online shop. They fear that the brand may not only be a competitor but also a more authoritative point of reference than their position. Affiliate marketing is therefore a valid alternative because it allows distributors to earn even through direct purchases on a shop other than their own.

Another useful aspect to keep in mind is the economic one. After the initial investment to collect affiliates, you may not need to keep online ads active, because the affiliates will work for you through sponsorships with the ultimate goal of higher earnings.

Affiliation is effective when it’s based on passion and interest in what you promote. This is the only way to show the added value perceived by users who recognize the benefit behind your strategy.

The affiliate program consists of these steps:

1. Choose a market
You have to choose a niche market suitable for the sale of your affiliate products. They must be people who are really interested in your content so that they can be considered potential buyers of products. It’s good that you transmit to your audience to really know the products shown, maybe telling personal experiences and advice.

2. Create your own site
It’s essential to have a platform to publish your content and gain authority. In most cases the professional blog is preferred, rather than social, as you have more chance to show products you want without limitations and will give your figure a greater consideration of expert.

3. Publish your first content
These are the key to generating traffic and attracting new potential buyers. Create interesting articles, with attractive titles and quality content, this will lead users to read your articles and be satisfied.

4. Request access to affiliate programs
Once you have created your site and content, affiliate programs will be happy to welcome you. Our advice is to have already in your blog at least 3 or 4 articles done well and with already a good community of followers.

5. Insert links or affiliate code
Once inside the program, enter links in the content or provide the affiliate code of the products. There are two ways to get started: a unique code can be generated for each affiliate that will then be used during checkout, this allows the company to track how many sales it has obtained thanks to the code; or a specific URL with referral ID is created (for example, www.namesite.com?affiliate=3909032) that allows the site to trace the origin of the purchase and to assign it to the affiliate through the use of session and cookies.

Affiliate marketing initiatives are booming and will continue to grow in the coming years, thanks mainly to the integration of Email Marketing and Social Media Marketing strategies that are proving to be a winning combination.
There are several sources that your affiliate can draw on to attract users and increase sales, here are the main ones:

SEO
One of the best techniques to attract organic traffic, or in a natural and free is the SEO, or Search Engine Optimization. This is not an easy task, especially for certain market niches. If you want to learn more about this, read our article .

Social Media
Creating a strong social presence can bring many benefits, first of all attracting a large and potential traffic completely free of charge. If your affiliate posts original and viral content on your products, interesting users will increase and so will your sales!

Email Marketing
If you think email marketing is out of the question, read our article which explains not only the reasons that make it a valid strategy, but also the reasons for its always being effective and functional! Your affiliate may use this tool to communicate their link or affiliate code to a large number of recipients.

Chargeable traffic
This is a fast and effective way to share content quickly and to a large number of people. You can create paid ads through search engines, social, banners that bring just the link useful to track purchases for your affiliate. This strategy will benefit your company in terms of brand awareness, through sponsorships made by others. Among the tools to generate paid traffic, the easiest one that requires a lower initial investment is Facebook ADS. Have a look at our article on this topic.

As we have seen, to start doing affiliate marketing you must subscribe to a program that the company provides to manage rules, percentages and profit margins. But also generation of traced links and necessary to understand how much and how you earned.
But what are the main affiliate programs that you can subscribe to to earn online? Here they are:

• Maxbounty
• Amazon
• eBay
• iTunes
• Semrush
• Gsuite

Among these, of course, stands out the giant Amazon. Its affiliate program is effective and well structured, especially because it allows you to satisfy everyone. Amazon offers an affiliate marketing circuit really intuitively, it takes very little to sign up and access the dedicated program. Immediately start to create tracked links and decide how to monetize, choosing between sharing links on social media, the service of email marketing and newsletters, or sending links in chat and whatsapp groups up to blogging and links in websites.
For affiliate marketing, as well as for all other sales techniques, always remember that content makes a difference! They are now the key to the success of online activities, especially if they involve the sale of products and services.