Have you ever considered doing some marketing for a product that you have no association with or created? This is precisely known as Affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing has been around for a while now, but only recently in the past few years it has truly taken off. This concept of marketing was first introduced W.J.Tobin who was the founder of PC Flowers & Gifts. Using the prodigy network his company gained over six million US dollars in revenue.
Let’s take a closer look at Affiliate marketing. Essentially it is based on rewarding affiliates with income from their performance to convert sales of products and services or bring targeted traffic.
Within this type of marketing there are a few essential players. There’s the retailer, brand or merchant who is selling their service or product. There is a network that connects affiliates with merchants. An example of this is CJ (Commission Junction or PepperJam). In some cases merchants directly deal with affiliates without going through a network. Then you have the affiliates themselves that promote products or services via different on line promotional methods. When an affiliate brings in a visitor via their on line links/recommendations, the merchant pays a percentage of the whole sale to the affiliate. Affiliate marketing is popular with merchants as they can spread their business products and services to the market via cost effective promotional methods.
An affiliate marketer should provide the best possible advice to the consumer through proper research of the product/service they are promoting. A successful campaign will be beneficial to all parties i.e. the affiliate earns a commission, the company gains new sales/business and the customer is happy with the product or service they needed reassurance on.
To be successful as an affiliate marketer it’s important to provide options only on services or products that they either own, or understand fully and have carried out extensive research over. Too many times affiliates make the mistake of become a sales page for the merchant. Affiliates need to help their reader get the answers they need. It’s about providing a solution, not being a sales copy!
There are no costs associated with promoting a product or joining a network to promote products or services. It’s important to do your research on finding out about your niche and products that will convert. That’s where you may want to get help from the affiliate manager. Just remember your job as an affiliate is to inform. Provide information on the positives and negatives of the product, warranties, discounts, what makes the product you are recommending better than another etc? Are there any alternative products? You really have to provide valuable information for the commissions to start rolling in.
Some people confuse Affiliate marketing with Referral marketing. Referral marketing is usually carried out on a face to face level in comparison affiliate marketing is performance based carried out over the internet. Affiliates can earn high income without ever meeting merchants or consumers.
Want to learn more about affiliate marketing? Check out the foreveraffiliates.wordpress.com site to learn more.
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