Affiliate Marketing – Getting Started and New Terms/Words to Learn

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Every product/service wants to reach and hopefully sell to more customers, so they need to advertise to as many people as possible.  Part of their advertising budget is an affiliate program.  As an affiliate marketer, products or services are promoted, and when someone makes a purchase the affiliate marketer is paid a commission.

How does Affiliate Marketing Work?

 – Find a product or service to promote

 – Join the affiliate program to get a unique link

 – Promote the product or service using the unique link.

  When a purchase is made using the unique link, the affiliate marketer gets a commission.

Two Takeaways:

Words/terms associated with Affiliate Marketing

Getting Started in Affiliate Marketing – Hints & Tips

Words / Terms Associated with Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate Program – membership in an affiliate network (more than one retailer/service/product) or affiliate program (one retailer/service) that allows a publisher to promote the product/service in exchange for a commission based on sales.

Affiliate Link – unique link used by publishers when promoting a product/service that contains a cookie so sales are tracked for the purpose of paying a commission to the publisher.

Publisher – the person that creates content to advertise a product and provides their affiliate link to potential customers.

Traffic – number of people that visit a website.  For affiliate marketing, the goal of a publisher is to drive as many people as possible to a website that displays their affiliate links or allows for sign-up to an email list.

Niche – products / services related to specific category. Most publishers, choose products/services in a niche such as digital courses, fitness, health and beauty. Having a niche establishes a brand and builds expertise when persuading people to make a purchase.

USP – Unique Selling Proposition or Unique Selling Point. The one thing that sets a product/service apart from the competition. To market or sell a product/service the USP needs to be conveyed to the potential customer.

Value Proposition – the clear benefit a consumer will receive when buying a product / service. Linked to the USP.

Conversion Rate – the rate at which a desired action is completed. For example, how many people that saw your message completed the Call to Action like submitting their email address or clicking on a link vs number of people that saw the message and didn’t take the action.

CTA – Call To Action. This is the action you want someone to take, such as ‘Click on this Link’, ‘Submit your Email Address’. Your CTA must be clear and concise.

Open rate – the number of people that open an email vs the number of emails sent.

CTR – Click-through Rate – the rate at which people who view a page, website, offer, email – click on the link to view the product/service.

A/B Test – also known as a split test. This is a test that pits two items against each other but with one different element. This kind of test is used to gather data about the impact of clicks/conversions based one element, i.e. subject line.

Multivariate Test – this is a test that pits two items against each other but with a variety of differences, i.e. images and wording of the email. With this type of test it will more difficult to know what element impacted the increase in clicks/conversions.

Upsell – offering related products to encourage people to buy additional items. For affiliate marketing, some products/services dashboards will list the number of people that convert to upsells.

Tools Used in Affiliate Marketing

SEO – Search Engine Optimization. Improving the search ranking of a website or blog to drive traffic from search engine result pages like Google and Bing. Services are used by publishers to know what terms, and words need to be included in content to increase ranking. These services also help publishers what type of content to produce.

Funnel – a series of emails that leads a person to a specific CTA.  Once a publisher has an email list they will send that list a series of emails to promote products/services. The emails will take the customer on a journey towards a CTA, clicking on a link and purchasing a product/service.

ChatGPT – artificial intelligence tool used to create content. For affiliate marketing, this tool is being used to create content maps, first drafts of blogs, and keyword identification.

Getting Started in Affiliate Marketing

Find a Niche

Find a Niche you want to promote.  Start with your interests, hobbies, and stores you shop with to decide what type of products/services you want to promote. Use SEO tools to research if content is needed and the types of related products/services that can also be promoted so that there is a clear plan of how much content can be created and the conversion rate.

Become Part of an Affiliate Program or Network

Apply to become part of an affiliate program or an affiliate network

The two easiest programs to become a part of are Amazon and Clickbank. Other programs will require that you provide a link to your website, information about how you plan to promote products, your email list and some other information about your business as a publisher. You will see YOUTUBE videos of affiliate marketers listing their top affiliate sites but these videos don’t tell you that as a beginner/novice it will be difficult to get accepted into all of these programs.  For this reason, most people start with Amazon and Clickbank.  The cons of being an affiliate with Amazon is that your link is only valid for 24 hours so you need a way to drive traffic to that link in a short period of time; and the low commission rate. The cons of Clickbank is that not all of the products are of the highest quality. RESEARCH, RESEARCH, RESEARCH any products you are promoting.

Popular Affiliate Programs – Amazon, Clickbank, Partnersize, ShareASale, CJ Affiliate. AWIN, and FlexOffers.

Create Content

To drive traffic to your affiliate link you need to create content that is visible to potential customers that provides a clear CTA to click on the link. Your content will need to include the USP and Value Proposition that gives people a reason that the product/service you’re promoting will solve their problem.  Content is created by posting information on a website, publishing a blog, video on YouTube, or shorter videos on TikTok / Clapper; or posting on Instagram / Facebook.

Create and Manage a Website

If you want Affiliate Marketing to be your long-term business a website is needed to build your brand, post blogs, post links in one place, and collect email addresses so you can actively reach out to people with your most recent offers.

Get Organized

Is this a side hustle or a long-term business? If you want affiliate marketing to be your business then as a business owner you need to create a calendar of how you will manage your business. When will you perform research to know what products/services you want to promote? How often will you upload videos and on what platforms? How often will you publish blogs? Will you use paid ads?

In Closing

Affiliate Marketing is a business and the amount of income you earn will be directly related to the amount of time and effort you invest in your business. It’s an easy business to start, an industry that is continually growing, and can be done by anyone with the willingness to invest the time to learn and run a business.

Advantages of Affiliate Marketing: 

  1. Affiliate Marketing can be done from anywhere with an internet connection.
  2. Equipment needed is a smartphone and laptop
  3. Joining affiliate programs is FREE
  4. Promotion on Social Media platforms is FREE

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I’m Michelle Downey,  a full-time writer and entrepreneur.  Also the Mom to two teenage boys. On my site you’ll learn the steps I took to thrive instead of just surviving. My passion is to find people that want to find their purpose and help them to transform their lives by providing information about attaining Financial and Time Freedom.

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