Affiliate marketing is essentially promoting a company’s product or service, then earning a commission off of that sale. You do not deal with the development of the product or service, deal with manufacturing, distribution or sales transactions. All you are doing is marketing/promoting to gain a piece of the sale (commission) and provide customers to a company.
By only focusing on the promotion aspect and drawing people to your niche website, you funnel their attention to a specific goal which is to make a conversion, meaning a sale in most cases.
When you sign up for an affiliate program, you can get paid in several ways:
Pay-per-sale (PPS): For every sale conversion, you may get %20 commission for example.
Pay-per-click (PPC): Get paid $0.25 every time you get a customer to click on a specific link.
Pay-per-lead (PPL): Rather than getting an affiliate commission for a customer buying something, you will get paid based on a type of action (or pay-per-action) you get the consumer to do such as sign up with a newsletter or sign up with a free trial period program.
Cost-Per-Impression (CPM): An advertising method where advertisers pay you an amount based on how many times their ad is displayed on your website regardless if they purchase something. “M” in CPM represents the roman numeral for 1, 000. You may charge an advertiser $1 for every 1, 000 impressions (how many times your ad is shown), so you’d get $1 for every 1, 000 impressions or page views.
Usually with most affiliate programs you need to have a website. So assuming you have a website about flowers called “John’s123 Flowers.com,” you’d look for an affiliate program that has to do with flowers. This is how the overall picture would look:
1) You sign up with XYZ Flower company’s affiliate program.
2) Choose a payment (listed above), ex: pay-per-lead, signing up for a newsletter and get paid $1 per sign up.
3) XYZ Flower company will then provide you with your own affiliate link. This is how XYZ flower identifies you and gives you credit. Let’s say your affiliate ID is “John123.” Your affiliate link would look something like this: http://www.XYZFlowers.com/John123.
4) So on your site, you have a picture banner advertising roses from XYZFlowers.com. You connect your affiliate link ( http://www.XYZFlowers.com/John123) with that picture banner so when anyone clicks it, it goes to XYZFlowers.com.
5) The customer goes to XYZFlowers.com from your website, and then signs up on their newsletter and you get paid a $1. XYZFlowers.com gives you credit because they have identified the sale through your affiliate link: ( http://www.XYZFlowers.com/John123)
Even if the visitor to XYZFlowers.com doe not sign up or purchase anything initially, if they come back within 30 days or whatever the term limit is set from the affiliate program, you can still receive credit. This is based on their cookies setting.
To get started with affiliate marketing you need to:
1) Pick a domain name.
2) Create a website (or you can create a website first since usually you know what topic you want to build on, but not sure of a domain name yet which is usually the case for me).
3) Choose a hosting provider to make your site live online. You are able to choose a domain name from the same hosting provider or a different one. For example, buying a domain name at GoDaddy.com and hosting your domain name online through Bluehost.com. Or buy a domain name through Bluehost.com and host it live on through Bluehost.com. Many people like doing both. Just comes down to preference and costs in deciding which to choose as well as customer service. Both Bluehost.com and Godaddy.com are good hosting providers.
4) Once your site is live and running with content and has traffic, choose an affiliate program associated with your site.
5) Sign up with the desired payment type within the affiliate program (Pay-per-sale, Pay-per-lead, Pay-per-click) embed the affiliate link within your site and get a commission through conversions.
* It is important to note, to be successful with affiliate marketing, you need to be familiar with SEO and marketing to gain traffic to your site. Once this is achieved, then you need to learn how to turn those visitors on your site to consumers who make an action leading to a conversion or sale. Without any conversions, your website and efforts will be useless.
With these steps in mind and continuous practice, you’ll start to make some earnings. Remember, it does take hard work. Some make a lot and others don’t make anything. If you already have a website and quite a bit of traffic, it’ll be easier to make earnings. But if you are just starting off, focus on one niche, build an audience around that then start promoting. With dedication and hard work will come earnings. Good luck!
