Affiliate marketing is rapidly growing in popularity with companies and individuals alike. For companies, it’s a cost-effective way to promote their products or services. For individuals, it offers them the opportunity to easily become entrepreneurs and earn money from their interests.
If you’ve been thinking about trying your hand at affiliate marketing yourself, now’s a wonderful time to get started.
Did you know that there are several types of affiliate marketing that exist? In this article, we’ll present you with the various options available and provide you with a few helpful tips to start you off on the right foot with your future affiliate adventure!
What is affiliate marketing?
Before getting into the different types of affiliate marketing, it’s important to understand exactly what this kind of advertising strategy entails.
Affiliate marketing is where companies work with third parties to promote their products or services and generate traffic to the companies’ websites. Depending on the exact agreement between the company and the affiliate partner, commissions may be paid for every successful sale, lead, or visitor. A specific action must occur, however, before the partner can earn any revenue.
There are three primary players involved in affiliate marketing:
- The affiliate: Affiliates, also referred to as publishers or partners, are the influencers, opinion leaders, or ambassadors promoting a company’s product or service on their website, blog, social media networks, etc. Affiliates recommend items to their audience, and when people click on their designated affiliate links and make a purchase, the affiliates receive a commission.
- The seller: Sellers, also referred to as advertisers, offer a product or service for sale. They collaborate with affiliates, who promote their offerings and earn a commission on every sale. This exchange can happen via the advertiser’s own affiliate program or a third-party program.
- The consumer: Consumers are the end buyers who trust the recommendations of the affiliates they follow (be it on social media, blogs, etc.) and make purchasing decisions based on their advice. After they click on the link provided by the affiliate for a product or service, they’re directed to the seller’s site to finalize the purchase, which then allows the affiliate to earn a commission.
What are the different types of affiliate marketing?
If you’re interested in becoming an affiliate marketer and launching your own business, you’ll want to be sure to have a solid understanding of not just what the pros and cons of affiliate marketing are but also what options are available to you in terms of the kinds of affiliate marketing that exist.
Unattached affiliate marketing
With unattached affiliate marketing, the affiliate isn’t connected in any way to the product or service that they’re promoting, meaning there’s also no connection between the affiliate and the end consumer. The affiliate doesn’t need to have any expertise, knowledge, or skills concerning the items they’re advertising and aren’t viewed as an authority in the related niche.
Affiliates who engage in unattached affiliate marketing will usually simply create pay-per-click (PPC) ads on platforms like Facebook Ads or Google Ads and include affiliate links inside them. They then just wait for internet users to click on their links, purchase the product or service, and earn them a commission.
Out of the three types of affiliate marketing described in this article, this is the model with the least amount of involvement on the part of the affiliate. For this reason, it’s particularly appealing to people who don’t have loads of time to devote to developing their own website or blog but who still want to get involved with affiliate marketing in order to make money.
It’s true that it certainly does take time to build trust and authority with an audience to be successful with other kinds of affiliate marketing. If your time is limited, you prefer to stay “behind the scenes,” and you really only want to do affiliate marketing as a side gig, this may be a good option for you.
However, keep in mind that you won’t be developing relationships with end users with this model. Your focus is always going to be on earning your next commission and generating income. If you don’t have any real passion or enthusiasm for the niche of products or services you’re promoting, it may be difficult to sustain your business over the long term.
Related affiliate marketing
Another type of affiliate marketing, known as related affiliate marketing, is when the affiliate has some sort of connection to the niche of the product or service that they’re promoting. That being said, affiliates availing of this model usually don’t use the items they’re advertising themselves.
Because these affiliates have already created an online presence, be it via a blog, social media networks, a podcast, etc., they’re easily able to advertise items by placing affiliate links, for example, in website banners or in the text.
Then, as they have some authority with their audience, the people viewing their links usually trust their recommendations (even if the affiliates don’t make any specific claims about whatever’s being promoted) and are more willing to click on their links and make a purchase, generating a commission for the affiliate.
This method is also fairly popular with people just getting started with affiliate marketing. If the affiliate’s already built up somewhat of an online following, this can be a good strategy to earn more income without a significant amount of extra effort.
The danger with this type of affiliate marketing, though, is that you can quickly lose people’s trust. You’re not testing the products or services you’re promoting, so you can’t really be sure of their quality and/or usefulness. As mentioned earlier, it can take a long time and lots of hard work to build an audience, and the act of promoting a single bad item could spell disaster for your business.
Involved affiliate marketing
Finally, we come to the third type of affiliate marketing: involved affiliate marketing. As can be expected by the name, of the three models described in this article, it requires the most amount of involvement on the part of the affiliate.
This kind of affiliate marketing isn’t just about trying to attract as many clicks as possible to boost the commission total for affiliates. It instead focuses on creating a strong link between the affiliate and the product or service they opt to promote on their website, blog, social media, etc.
Because the affiliate currently uses the item in question or has used it in the past, they’re very familiar with it. Their vast experience with the product or service allows them to be viewed as an authority on it and can help add significant weight to their reviews and recommendations in the eyes of the people in their target market.
If you use this type of affiliate marketing, note that it’ll be best to promote things that you’re very passionate about. As you’ve had a positive experience with the product or service, your enthusiasm is going to be felt by shoppers, increasing the likelihood that they’ll decide to click on your link and buy it for themselves.
Affiliate marketers using this model should keep in mind that there’s still some risk of compromising their reputation if members of their audience have a negative experience with any of the offers they share. Nevertheless, because these affiliates will already have tried these items themselves, this risk is quite a bit lower than what can occur with related affiliate marketing.
How to be successful with affiliate marketing
Now that you have an understanding of the different types of affiliate marketing from which to choose, you’ll hopefully have a better idea of what kind of setup you’d like to use yourself. To help you succeed, here are a few affiliate marketing tips to keep in mind!
Pick your products or services wisely
The products or services you choose to advertise are going to have a significant impact on the success of your venture. Depending on the type of affiliate marketing you opt to use, the best items for your specific business will vary.
However, a good place to start is by simply taking a look at what interests you, especially if you already have some knowledge and/or experience concerning the niche you’re considering. Your natural enthusiasm will likely spill over to the shoppers you’re hoping to attract and help you to carry on when the day-to-day activities of managing your business are a little boring or when you run into challenges.
In addition, the offers you decide to promote should ideally be popular with consumers and likely to continue to be in demand for a while. It can be tempting to go for a niche or brand that’s all the rage at the moment, but just be sure to research it carefully to determine if it appears to have long-lasting popularity or a trend that’ll quickly fizzle out after a few weeks.
Select an affiliate marketing program that suits your needs
Besides the niche and products or services you decide to focus on, you’ll also need to examine the various affiliate marketing programs or networks available to figure the right one for your specific goals.
In your research, you might find, for example, that the commission rate offered by one network is quite different from that of another network. These programs may also very well have different schedules for when affiliates receive their pay or restrictions on how their partners promote their offers in terms of wording, visuals, etc.
Keep in mind that if you really want to make money with affiliate marketing, you’ll probably want to sign up with multiple affiliate programs. This makes it possible for you to advertise a greater number of offers and share more affiliate links on your website or other platform. Furthermore, should one company suddenly shut down its affiliate program or significantly reduce its commission rate for affiliates, your earnings won’t take as hard of a hit.
Create high-quality, helpful content for your audience
Unless you’ve opted to use the unattached affiliate marketing model, creating high-quality, helpful content for your audience should be a top priority, especially if you’ve chosen to take a more involved approach. Building trust with consumers will be key to not just earning your first few affiliate sales but also allowing your business to grow and be successful over the long haul.
For instance, on your blog or social media, you might write product reviews or comparisons, share video tutorials on how to use the items you’re recommending, or create Top-10 lists of your favorite products in a certain category to help your audience make better purchasing decisions.
When you include affiliate links in your content, just be sure to be up front about the affiliate partnership, stating that you’ll receive a commission for anything purchased via your links. This is helpful for building trust with your audience, but it’s also the law in many parts of the world.
Conclusion
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