What is affiliate marketing?
Affiliate marketing is a monetization model through which content creators earn money or commissions by promoting another brand’s products.
Normally, the brand pays the affiliate for trackable sales. But some brands also reward affiliates for leads, free trial users, and getting downloads for an eBook or app. Whatever the metric is, brands only pay affiliates for trackable results. In marketing, this is called a cost-per-action or pay-for-outcome model.
Affiliate marketing is the process of making money online every time a customer purchases a product based on your recommendation. This is an online sales tactic that allows you – ‘the affiliate’ – to earn a commission and helps the product owner increase sales. At the same time, it makes it possible for affiliates to earn money on product sales without creating products of their own.
There are two sides to affiliate marketing:
Affiliates: Individuals promoting your business and earning commissions for their referrals. Affiliates can be anyone from your existing customers, bloggers, influencers, industry experts, etc. They promote via websites, social media, and blogs using referral links and discount codes to send traffic to your site.
Merchant & Brands: Businesses looking to promote their products and services. Affiliate marketing works for almost any business with an online presence, regardless of size or industry. Merchants & brands will manage their affiliate program, provide affiliates with tracking links to their site, and pay commissions.
Let’s use the fitness industry as an example of how affiliate marketing works:
A brand selling at-home fitness equipment starts an affiliate program to promote its products. They partner with fitness vloggers to become affiliates for their brand. These affiliates create video content featuring different workouts using this equipment and include a link to the site where they can purchase everything from in their video.
Why Use Social Media in Affiliate Marketing?
In fact, over 80% of brands are running affiliate marketing programs to reach more customers. Instead of spending time and money looking for new customers, you can get others to do it for you. As a result, you can get more sales and grow your business in no time.
When it comes to affiliate marketing, social media is actually one of the best places to do it. Right now, more than 4.62 billion people are using social media and the number is only growing. With the help of affiliate marketing, you can reach these people and turn them into customers.
Here are a few more reasons why social media is a great place for affiliate marketing if you want to grow your business:
- Social media has tons of popular personalities that you can work with to get more customers.
- You can also boost your brand’s social media presence and get more people to check out your site.
- Since there are lots of social media platforms, you can just focus your marketing on the platforms that fit your brand.
- When popular social media users are promoting your products, people will have a much better impression of your brand.
- If you want to start affiliate marketing as a beginner, social media can be a great option since it’s free to use.
As you can see, social media affiliate marketing is a fantastic way to promote your business and get more sales. For more information about affiliate marketing visit the site
Who can benefit from affiliate marketing?
Affiliate marketing is a symbiotic relationship — it benefits both brands and content creators.
For brands, affiliate marketing allows them to work with content creators while only paying for trackable business results. For creators, it’s a way to earn money from their content and work with reputable brands, no matter the size of their following.
E-commerce brands and merchants
When brands partner with content creators with an established audience, they’re able to reach a wider audience without running paid ads. Affiliates only earn a commission on trackable business results (based on the business’ conversion requirements).
Apart from popular content creators, brands can also partner with nano-influencers through affiliate marketing programs. Although nano-influencers are not very popular, their follower base is usually specific and very dedicated. In fact, some brands see better results with nano-influencers than with mega-influencers.
Content creators (or influencers)
Affiliate marketing is a way by which content creators or influencers can earn money on products/services they already use. This way, they can recommend relevant products to their audience without reducing the quality of their content.
If there are products you’ve always wanted to partner with because they’re beneficial to you, check if they have an affiliate program. If they do, you can apply for it and start earning money by recommending them to your audience.
How to find affiliate programs?
If you’re wondering how to get your feet wet in affiliate marketing, you’ve got a few options. Not every company offers affiliate programs—some businesses manage their own affiliate programs while others use an affiliate network.
An easy way to find affiliate programs is to visit an affiliate marketplace or platform. Browse your niche to find top-performing affiliate platforms.
visit the websites of the products and services you use and like, to see if they have an affiliate program. Brands like Juicy Chemistry, selling organic skincare products have their own affiliate programs up and running. So if you are a user of their products or knowledgeable about skincare in general, this affiliate opportunity might be right up your alley.
