Affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing is a commission based revenue system where a third party (an affiliate) brings leads/sales to a product owner/company website. It is a process of earning commission by promoting other people’s / company’s products.

In simpler terms –

1. You find a product you like,
2. You promote it to your audience and,
3. For every sale that is made because of you within your audience, you earn a profit commission from the product owner.

The industry has four core players:

1. The merchant - also known as ‘retailer’ or ‘brand’

               The product can be anything ranging from SaaS applications to physical products (like shoes), it can also be a digital product (like ebooks).

2. The network – A platform or a place where both Merchants and Affiliates co exist, that contains offers for the affiliate to choose from and also takes care of the payments

3. The publisher - also known as ‘the affiliate’

               The one who takes up the product links from the merchant and promotes it within his own audience to send traffic to the merchant’s property (website). 

4. The customer

How Does Affiliate Marketing Work?

Let’s say you have a website.

You are driving traffic from various sources like Facebook Ads, Google Adwords, Organic Traffic because of branding, and there could be many other sources like social media marketing, community engagement, etc. Now there will be a time when you will exhaust the sources to gain more traffic or sales on your websites. This could be due to:

?        Running out of marketing campaign ideas.

?        Exhausting different traffic sources to source from.

In this case, what should you do? This is when companies/websites rely on Affiliates to outsource more traffic. You could do revenue sharing with others who have traffic with them and benefit out of that. Now how will you do that?

Usually, the format for affiliate links looks like this:

               www.website.com?affiliate=1 (for Affiliate #1)

               and       

               www.website.com?affiliate=2 (for Affiliate #2)

The part after “?” in the URL is called tagging the URL so that the website owner can understand which Affiliate sends him the traffic/sale.

Based on this knowledge, the website owner will give commission to the respective affiliate.

Affiliate 1 and Affiliate 2 both send traffic to the website www.website.com but the sale was made through Affiliate 1.

The website owner comes to know about this through the link with tag www.website.com?affiliate=1.

So, the affiliate commission is sent to Affiliate 1 because his traffic converted into a sale. Affiliate programs are not based on earnings per click. It is based on earnings per Lead or a Sale.

How to become an Affiliate? (Affiliate Networks and Programs)

There are four different ways to become an affiliate and start earning from them on a regular basis.

1. Look for Affiliate Links in Homepages
2. Join Affiliate Networks (Commission Junction, Impact Radius, etc)
3. Apply to become an affiliate with companies (some have hidden programs)
4. Have a well-known blog and let people reach out to you

Look for Affiliate Links in Homepages

In many SaaS company websites or Product company websites, within the homepage (mostly in the footer or Top Navigation Bar in some cases), find the link saying affiliate and click on it to learn more about their internal affiliate program. 

               Visit https://affiliate-program.amazon.in/

Join Affiliate Networks (Commission Junction, Impact Radius, etc)

Affiliate Networks are those platforms who have a lot of merchants and affiliates both registered with them. Within Network, it is easy to manage the affiliate program than having individual affiliate accounts because, in affiliate networks, all your payments are consolidated according to different commissions from different merchants.

               Visit https://www.cj.com/

               And https://www.impactradius.com/

Apply to become an affiliate with companies

Some companies have a hidden affiliate program which they do not reveal on their website. But are open to new and qualified affiliates. In this case, just send them an email inquiring about the affiliate program and if not in place, would they be interested in having one in place with you. Opportunities are endless here.

Have a well-known blog and let people reach out to you

 “Since DigitalDeepak has become a well-known brand among Digital Marketers, a lot of affiliate program owners reach out to me to ask if I can promote their product on my website.” - Deepak

There are a lot of networks available online these days:

1. Commission Junction (CJ)
2. Amazon Associates
3. Impact Radius
4. ClickBank
5. ShareASale

Tips:

a)     If you want an India-specific affiliate network, vCommision is a good affiliate network.

b)     There are a lot of affiliate networks that you can search on Google and find. 

c)      These companies send you money directly to your bank account if it is in India. There are a few technical documentations required to get paid in your bank account.

d)     You have to submit a form called W8 BEN Form so that you can receive money from the US to your Indian bank account and comply with tax regulations. 

e)     You need to be a well-known blogger

Example of Affiliate Marketing

Go to google.com and search for “Drip.co review”

You will see that Deepak’s article (review of Drip.co) is ranking on top for this keyword. And when you click on this post and read the article, you will notice that he has placed affiliate link of Drip.co all over the blog article.

So, whenever people search for Drip.co review and land on this article, they click on Sign Up link on his blog (which is an affiliate link) and he earns commission for every sign up that goes from his blog to Drip.co.

Note that he gets 30% commission whenever someone becomes a Paid Customer of Drip.co from his blog post.

Things need to done to become an Affiliate Marketer

This requires a process of Signing up and adhering to some technical policies by uploading some forms. The approval process might be tricky and will be based on how good your online record is.

Be ready with the information about

a)     How are you going to promote their products, and

b)     What are the channels you are going to use to promote, etc

It is better to have a niche website (like digitaldeepak.com) and show them the funnel for your website to get approval easily.

Now that you know all about Affiliate Marketing, why wait? Go ahead and try it.