Do you often find it trustworthy to buy beauty products from your beauty blogger’s site? Or is it easy for you to buy kitchen appliances from the link given in the description on social media rather than searching it on an e-commerce site by yourself? This is nothing but a form of marketing in which a person refers to a product or service by sharing it on his or her blog, social media platform, website, or podcast by giving the product or service links. Then the person earns a commission upon each purchase made by visitors through the affiliate link and recommendations.

Nowadays, smart entrepreneurs understand market competition and are always looking for new ways to grow their businesses. Affiliate Marketing is one such alternative way of generating income for these entrepreneurs by promoting other’s products and services on their own platforms.

What exactly is Affiliate Marketing?

In technical terms, Affiliate Marketing is nothing but a process where publishers can earn commissions by promoting products and services of various brands using affiliate links. Upon clicking on these links, users are directed to the page where they can buy those products or services. This process earns rewards for the publisher mostly in the form of a payout. But there are some retailers and advertisers who pay you in the form of goodies or discounts as well.

Though the typical result of affiliate marketing is mostly sales, some affiliate marketing programs may expect you to generate leads, clicks, app downloads or free trials, etc. through your media.

Affiliate marketing may sound like a high-cost investment but it’s not really so as most of the affiliate marketing programs are free to join and if done right, an affiliate program can turn into a full-time business for many influencers.

How affiliate marketing takes place –

As said earlier, affiliate marketing is simply referring to products or services on the promoter’s social platforms, and in return, the promoter earns money each time a purchase is made through the affiliate links associated with the affiliation.

The process –

1. You showcase an ad link on your website or social platforms for a particular company.
2. A visitor clicks on the given link after visiting your website or platform.
3. The customer or visitor redirects to the company’s website and makes the purchase from there.
4. The affiliate network records the transaction.
5. The transaction is confirmed by the company’s website.
6. You get paid in monetary or other terms

Commission rates are highly dependent on the company and its offerings. Many times, companies run affiliate marketing programs with various options to offer.

Types of affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing may appear plain on the surface but in reality, it has various types depending on the ways people can make money through this form of marketing.

1. Unattached Affiliate Marketing: This is the basic type, similar to the pay-per-click campaign where you neither have any presence nor any authority in the niche of the product or services you are promoting. There is also no connection between the end user and you. All you are doing is placing an affiliate link in front of people via Google Adwords, and social media ads, hoping that the ads will get clicked through the provided links, purchases will happen and commission will be earned.

2. Related Affiliate Marketing: Another form of affiliate marketing is called Related Affiliate Marketing. In this type of marketing, the promoter has some online presence through blogs, social media accounts, websites, podcasts, etc. In this particular type of affiliate marketing, you do have affiliate links to the products related to your niche but you don’t really use them.

3. Involved Affiliate Marketing: Involved Affiliate Marketing is the one where you really use the products and services that you promote yourself through various online platforms. Your own experience and involvement with the products and services make any offer related to them more attractive. But along with the benefits comes the responsibility especially when you have a lot of authority and influence over your followers.

After understanding various aspects of affiliate marketing, one wonders if this form of marketing is really worth it. For this one has to understand the pros and cons of affiliate marketing

Pros

1. Easy execution: It’s easy to execute without involving any hard tasks. Only the digital marketing side needs to be taken care of.
2. Lower risk: It’s a relatively low-risk passive income-generating option for many entrepreneurs as it involves low to absolutely no investment in the beginning. Though for some it might be necessary to put some effort and at times money to generate traffic to your various platforms.
3. Purpose driven: Affiliate marketing can be very specific and target oriented all thanks to the possibility of handpicking companies that you want to do promotions for, you can control the quality of the traffic flowing to your various media. The quality of traffic means those individuals who find your products and services useful and thus are most likely to do purchases.
4. Quite Flexible: Affiliate Marketing is a great way to scale up your business without creating a financial burden as it allows you to make your affiliate program big or small depending upon the market conditions, your budget, opportunities, etc.
5. High Return on Low Investment: As compared to the other forms of marketing, Affiliate Marketing has proven to be high on returns and comparatively low on investment in recent times. This is seemingly possible because companies reach out to their audiences through promoters who have quite an influence over their followers. This makes it easy to have a receptive audience for your products and services and thereby increasing the probability of a final purchase.

Cons

With benefits come disadvantages and Affiliate Marketing too holds a few disadvantages that are necessary to be mentioned.

1. It’s a game of patience: Affiliate Marketing is not a quick encashment scheme. It requires an investment of time and patience to grow audiences and create influence.
2. Commission-based income: There is no monthly fixed income as you get in a job but it’s a commission-based income which is totally dependent upon the final expected outcome (be it leads, clicks, or sales)
3. Control lies in the other’s hand: Affiliates have to adhere to the rules put in place by the companies for their programs. One has to follow the guidelines set to promote their products and services in a certain specific manner and the same applies to your competitors as well making it all depends upon your own uniqueness and creativity.

In a nutshell

Affiliate marketing is one of the best forms of marketing if you want to generate a passive income and are ready to convert it into a business with your patience and creativity. No wonder, it is becoming rapidly popular among the masses. With continuously growing markets, more and more organizations are going to turn toward Affiliate Marketing giving tons of opportunities to interested promoters.