Affiliate Marketing

Well, this concept is not exactly new, but its evolvement paints a whole different picture.

For someone who is sort of new to marketing, you might not have heard of affiliate marketing.

For those in the industry, you probably get a good dose and dish out an equal one of this phrase.

Affiliate marketing, simply defined, is a marketing strategy and process where an individual, company, firm or organizations earn commission by promoting other company’s or firm’s products.

Simple, Right!

Now that we have substantial knowledge, let’s go deeper.

There are numerous types of affiliate marketing, classified into many types.

One thing still stands, they all fall into two basic categories: the pay/performance and pay/click.

Over the last 10 years, these trends have changed dramatically, being solely affected by modern technology and core acquisition channels that have come up.

Today, this type of marketing is considered a win-win situation.

Merchants are a great way to advertise things at low cost and affiliates see this arrangement as an easy way of earning profits online, doing something you love.

Different Kinds of Marketing:-

Unattached Affiliate Marketing

These are your basic pay per click affiliates all known as PPC are the most common types out there, especially for affiliates with small websites.

It’s a basic process where the merchant pays the affiliate every time a visitor is referred to his site through text ads or banners.

The best part of the PPC marketing is that the affiliate gets credited, whether or not the visitor makes a purchase.

Search Engines like Facebook, Yahoo and Google drive online traffic to affiliate offers, a technique called Arbitrage.

Spending money to make a small gain, as the typical earning for a single click is very small mostly less than one dollar.

This affiliate marketing strategy is attractive as no authority or presence is needed.

For most people this is their only option as it takes time to build a reputation and gain trust.

No one wants to commit to blog writing and website management due to lack of time.

So why not be the behind-the-scenes middle man?

These affiliates are a great option to consider for your campaign.

However, be strict on the terms to ensure there is no internal competition against your own campaigns.

Related Affiliate Marketing

In this case, one has some level of presence online through websites, blogs and podcasts.

On these platforms, you have products related to your niche, not necessarily the ones you use.

These offer the greatest variety of affiliate websites for brand promotion.

With millions of websites and blogs on the internet, you are quite literally spoilt for choice.

It goes without saying and is a bit obvious that every person who places a link on their blog does not actually use the product!

But if it’s within an individual’s forte it’s a great strategy to earn more.

The other advantage of this kind of marketing is people tend to trust you more.

You have made the decision to place the ad on your website, which gives you some authority.

Content sites tend to work with advertisers too, and use a combination of banners and text links that drive extremely targeted users to become customers.

Related affiliate marketing is great and is probably the best way for the merchant to see results for your campaign.

Social Media Marketing

Almost everyone in these modern times has at least one social media account, be it Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest or Instagram.

Therefore, it’s no surprise that these are the newest publishers in the affiliate marketing prospect.

For those with over a couple of thousands of users following them, seriously consider affiliate marketing as a side hustle.

Monetise your following. Simple examples are like Pinterest accounts and Instagram accounts dropping affiliate links that are fashion-focused, like where to buy these items.

So for example, if you are a well-travelled individual with thousands of followers on Twitter, why not promote holiday destinations and deals?

I mean, how cool would that be?

Pay Per Performance

This is further divided into pay-per-sale (PPS) and pay-per-lead (PPL).

Pay-per-lead is mostly used by finance and insurance firms or any other type of firm that solely relies on leads to grow or expand.

In this case, when the visitor fills a form related to the organization or business, the affiliate gets a fee.

In this case, it’s a fixed fee, definitely higher than the PPC strategy.

Pay-per-sale is pretty self-defining. No? Let me break it down.

The merchant pays a fee every time a visitor, whom an affiliate has referred, buys something from the site. In most cases, it’s on commission basis, but there are fixed charges as well.

PPS definitely pays more than a PPC affiliate program, no matter the basis.

1-Tier, 2-Tier, and Multi-Tier Affiliate Marketing

This is based more on depth of affiliate networks established.

Single-tier pretty much entails the PPC and PPP.

The two-tier marketing, the affiliate gets a commission for every action done referred by him.

It’s like a pyramid system. Should another affiliate, referred by him, get a commission he/she gets a profit. Talk of two birds, one stone!

You get to earn indirectly and directly.

Lastly, the multi-tier marketing is one that runs so deep.

It’s slightly similar to the two-tier one, but in this case, you get commissions for the sales done by their affiliated colleagues!

The gravity of this may be unlimited and is probably one of the best and easiest ways for an affiliate to make money.

There are a variety of affiliate marketing strategies to choose from, the list does have an end.

But over the years, many have been outdated and are no longer in practice.

I would say you can choose from whichever kind, regardless of the reviews, all that matters is what works best for you.

In my opinion, having some authority and a hint of your niche in it is one of the best ways to go.

Maximize in what you love, be as involved as much as you can and success in this field will be yours to testify!

So happy affiliate marketing in which ever field or subject you follow.