Affiliate marketing is a cool way of making money online whereby you as a publisher are rewarded for helping a business by promoting their product(s), service(s) or site.
There are many different forms of promotions but in most cases they involve you as a publisher placing banners or links on your website or blog and then earning a commission whenever someone follows one of these links/banners to another site where they then buy something.
In a common variation on this scheme you will be getting paid a specific amount of money for referring a visitor who then takes some kind of action - for example signing up for something and providing an email address, completing a survey, leaving a name and address, etc.
Commissions are very often a percentage of a sale but can also consist of a fixed amount per conversion.
Conversions are generally tracked in a simple and straightforward manner: the publisher (you) is provided with a link containing a special code only given to you that enables the advertiser to track where conversions are coming from (usually by cookies). In some rare instances an advertiser might provide publishers with a ‘coupon code’ for their readers to use that helps to track conversions.
- Advertisers often prefer affiliate marketing as a way to promote their products because they know they will only have to pay for the advertising when there is a conversion. They will have to be content with making less money from each sale, but in exchange they will have recourse to a network of affiliates promoting their product which in turn will almost certainly increase overall sales levels.
- Publishers often prefer affiliate marketing because if they find a product that is relevant to their niche earnings can and will greatly exceed those of any pay per click or pay per impression advertising campaign.
Is Affiliate Marketing Easy Money?
While affiliate marketing can be an incredibly lucrative source of income it is important to know that it is not necessarily easy money. Most people who try it make fairly little money, for success relies upon a number of factors, including:
- traffic (high traffic helps a lot)
- finding products relevant to the content of your site or to your readers
- finding quality products as well as reliable companies/partners
- gaining the trust of your readers
- getting your readership into a ‘buying mood’
- being able to write good sales copy (and many more)
It has to be mentioned, that there is also some risk associated with affiliate marketing in that if you push too hard or promote products of inferior quality you can actually burn readers and thereby hurt your reputation and brand.
It is also worth noting that affiliate marketing does not work well on all blogs and websites. Some blogs/websites are on topics that make it extremely difficult to find products to promote while others attract audiences who are not in a buying frame of mind and in still other cases affiliate marketing just does not fit with the blogger’s style or approach.
Why Affiliate Marketing Can Work Well on Most Blogs
Affiliate marketing is not the only way to make money from blogs and it definitely will not suit every blog/blogger (see above) but there are a few reasons why it can be profitable in our medium. Perhaps the most important of these reasons is that affiliate marketing can and does seems work very well when there is a trusting relationship between the publisher and his/her readers.
I have found (and many bloggers will confirm this statement) that the more the trust between publisher and readers deepens the more likely the readers will follow the recommendations that are made in a specific blog.
Of course, this fact can also turn against you and your affiliate marketing endeavours - promote the wrong product and you can easily lose the trust of your readers.
Please be sure to read the related post on how to find the right affiliate products to promote.
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