These affiliates are often referred to as publishers, influencers, etc. Since affiliate marketing is based on a revenue model, it is considered a type of performance marketing.

BASIC TERMINOLOGY

– Advertiser:
An advertiser can be a merchant, seller or a brand with the aim to find a suitable platform to promote their products. This can be done in order to expand their reach, connect with new customers or generate more revenue.

– Publisher/Affiliate:
A publisher or an affiliate promotes the products and services through various promotion techniques on their platform. They want to provide their audience with a wide variety of choice by promoting products of various brands, offering multiple offers.

– Affiliate Network:
An affiliate network refers to a platform through which an advertiser can connect and work with a publisher where all parties benefit mutually. Although advertisers may have their own platforms, an affiliate network acts as a middleman between the advertiser and the publisher.

JOINING AN AFFILIATE PLATFORM

How does the process of being an affiliate exactly work? There are two ways of becoming an affiliate. An affiliate can register with an affiliate network or another way is by registering independently on the advertiser’s platform.

Although the process sounds fairly simple, it is far more lengthy and comes with a few prerequisites. As a start, both affiliates and advertisers or affiliate networks have their own set of rules. When an affiliate agrees to work with the latter, they might either provide the affiliate with a coupon code or an affiliate link to know that the traffic has come from an affiliate. The affiliate embeds the unique link with the tracking code through the content they use to promote a specific product. An affiliate may face a setback if the advertiser or the affiliate network may not grant commissions when traffic is produced in a way they do not prefer. Different networks and advertisers differ in terms of the commission they provide.

PROMOTION METHODOLOGY

There are different products that an affiliate can promote online but what works well is to promote products within their niche, the affiliate should be familiar with it. Success as an affiliate also depends on the kind of content produced. Content strategies vary vastly depending on the type of product and the talent of an affiliate marketer. Some common strategies include product reviews, how-to posts, unboxing videos, coupon codes. Affiliate marketing comes with numerous benefits and is one of the most common and effective ways of using digital channels to promote products and services.

There are numerous other ways in which an affiliate marketer can use different promotion techniques to promote products and services, some of which have been listed below.

Coupons: Coupons serve as one of the most effective promotion strategies to offer users great deals on products and services. This promotion technique is beneficial as users may visit an affiliate’s website multiple times to make use of the coupon for purchasing different products. It is also a great promotion technique for affiliates who don’t enjoy making long-form content.

Pay Per Click Advertising (PPC): PPC is a great way to scale growth and promote affiliate programs. It can serve to benefit in many ways such as growing mailing lists, promoting webinars or simply guiding the user to the advertiser’s website. In PPC advertising model, the affiliate won’t pay for placing the advertisement on a search results page, but for individual clicks. This channel allows an affiliate to make sales immediately but requires intensive knowledge on Pay Per Click Advertising.

Reviews: A review focused blog is an excellent way to start affiliate marketing. Affiliates become a spokesperson for the products they promote. This is considered to be one of the best techniques as it’s more authentic and effective since the affiliate uses the product, thereby providing a seal of approval.

Email Marketing: If an affiliate owns a website, they can promote any marketing offer that will be sent to the user’s mailbox in exchange for the email address the user provides. An affiliate can also offer content upgrades once a user signs up by providing their email address.

Social Media: Affiliates need to be actively using social media to promote themselves as well as the marketing materials they create to promote the products. This involves choosing the right channel and the right products to promote and understanding how to target the right audience.

PROMOTION METHODS FOR AFFILIATES

Affiliate Payout

Once an affiliate understands what products to promote and the way of promotion that is best suited to their niche. The next step is to understand various payout models that can be offered to an affiliate by an advertiser.

CPS (Cost Per Sale):
This is the most common form of payout structure for affiliates. In this model, an affiliate gets paid when a user buys the products of the advertiser through different marketing strategies used by the affiliate marketer. The advertiser pays a percentage of the sale price of the product to the affiliate after the user completes the purchase.

CPO (Cost Per Order): This is similar to the cost per sale model but the only difference in this model is that the affiliate is paid a fixed fee from the sale of the product whereas in the CPS model a percentage of the sale value is shared with the affiliate.

CPL (Cost Per Lead): In this payout model, the affiliate is paid based on conversion of leads. The marketing strategies of the affiliate must influence the user to visit the advertiser’s website and complete the desired action – that can be filling a form, subscribing to a newsletter, trial of a product, etc.

CPC (Cost Per Click): In this payout structure, the focus point is to direct the user from the affiliates market platform to the advertiser’s website. The marketing efforts should push the user to land on the latter’s platforms. The affiliate is paid based on an increase in traffic on the advertiser’s platform.

BENEFITS OF AFFILIATE MARKETING FOR ADVERTISERS

Affiliate marketing comes with numerous benefits and is one of the most common and effective ways of using digital channels to promote products and services. Listed below are a few benefits of affiliate marketing:

1. Performance Based:
The main advantage of affiliate marketing is that it follows a performance based approach. The affiliates are only paid once the desired action has been completed. They act as the middlemen to ensure that the advertisers’s product is promoted through the right channels with little effort on the latter’s end which ensures that the affiliates are paid for the performance they generate from a certain campaign.

2. Expanded Reach:
Since technology has worked successfully in bringing us closer, affiliates are located in all product categories and markets that can exist on the internet today! Most affiliates already have a pre-existing visitor base which makes it easier and reduces cost and time which would have been invested in promoting through other ways. Such partnerships allow for a strong brand presence and are viewed as an extension of the advertiser’s sales or marketing teams.

3. Site Traffic Generation:
In addition to promoting products, recruiting affiliates allows an advertiser to generate site traffic faster. An advertiser is likely to convert users into customers if more websites are linked to their page. It will allow users to search and navigate to the advertiser’s pages leading to a better and organic ranking.

4. Cost-effective:
Most businesses require startup fees as well as cash flows to be able to finance the products being sold. However, affiliate marketing provides an opportunity to be able to start at a low cost both in terms of time and money. It also provides affiliates the freedom to choose their niche and be independent in operating or conducting business.

CONCLUSION

Affiliate Marketing is one of the easiest and most effective methods to sell products and acquire new customers spread across a wide range of networks. It is however important to ensure that affiliate networks, affiliates, and advertisers have a strong reputation in their niche. A good affiliate network is one that allows for good customer service. It is also important to analyze the sales success of a product being offered by the advertiser. To ensure the best result for promoting products and services, affiliates need to produce authentic content regularly.

Affiliate CPX is an affiliate network platform that will connect you with the most widely recognized brands, and enable you to monetize your marketing efforts and maximize your income. To become a publisher, register on www.cpx.ae