Affiliate marketing is one of the easiest ways to make passive income. Social media is more than just a platform to meet people and keep in contact with friends and loved ones; it is a potent tool anyone can utilize to build tremendous wealth. By using your social media presence, you can become an affiliate marketer and earn money.
What is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing is a marketing strategy where companies pay third party individuals, mainly owners of websites or social media influencers who are able to generate traffic and purchases of businesses products and services.
These third-party individuals are called affiliates. These affiliates get paid a commission, which generally ranges from zero to ten percent for every product or service that was sold by the company because of their referral.
Businesses have seen how effective affiliate marketing is when it comes to driving sales and generating revenue for their goods and services. It’s has been very beneficial to both the companies and affiliate marketers.
In the United States alone, affiliate marketing spending grows by 10.1% each year, and by this projection, these figures will reach a whopping six-point eight billion dollars by the year 2020.
Who is involved in Affiliate marketing?
There are three persons/parties involved in affiliate marketing. These include:
- The seller or service/merchandise creator
- The affiliates
- The consumers
The seller or service/goods creator are the parties involved in the process of creating a good/service. The seller or service/goods creator can be a large business or an individual. These creators share a portion of the profit with the affiliate marketers. Examples of sellers include Fenty, Puma, and so on.
The affiliates are the parties involved in the marketing/advertising of the product or service. An affiliate has the responsibility of making sure that traffic is generated to the seller’s website where goods/services can be purchased. They share a percentage of the profit. An affiliate can market several brands of services/goods on their website or social media page.
Most of the famous social media influencers are affiliate marketers. These include Kim Kardashian, Jeffree Star, and so on. Most affiliates marketers only work with products and services that are specific to their audience.
The consumers are the people that buy the service/product marketed by the affiliate marketer. Without a consumer purchasing a product, there will be no profit to be shared by both the seller and the affiliates.
Affiliates get paid in three ways:-
- Pay per click (PPC)
- Pay per sale (PPS)
- Pay per lead (PPL)
Through clicks (PPC)
Affiliates are paid by their ability to drive traffic to the seller’s website. The more they are able to increase traffic to the merchant’s website, the more they get paid. With this program, an affiliate is majorly concerned about redirecting traffic to the merchant’s website.
If you are an affiliate that gets compensated through this method, you have to engage your audience to be able to click the link from your social media page to get directed to the merchant’s website.
Through Sales (PPS)
With this program, affiliates are compensated based on the number of sales they were able to drive. With this program, an affiliate is not paid until a consumer completes the purchase of a product/service.
This can be achieved either through specially created links that redirect the consumer from the affiliates’ socially media page or website or through codes the consumer puts in before purchasing a product. This is the most popular affiliate compensation method.
Through leads (PPL)
This program allows you to get compensated by the number of successful leads you create for the seller. This program is a lot more complicated than other programs. An affiliate that gets paid this way has to be able to persuade a consumer to complete an action on a seller’s website. An example is signing up to become part of the mailing list.
To become a successful affiliate marketer, you need to be able to understand and carry out some tips.
#1 Build Your Social Media Presence
In the world of affiliate marketing, the more followers on any of the platforms you have, the increased likelihood of you making more money with affiliate marketing.
To build your social media presence, you need to be consistent with posts and engage with a lot of your followers. Engaging with a lot of your followers involves following users back and replying to comments and feedback. You can make use of sites like The Word Point to translate some of your follower’s comments.
#2 Identify the Interest of Your Niche Audience
This is an essential tip if you want to be a successful Affiliate Marketer. If you just promote all types of products or services, a lot of your followers may not be interested in any of that. For you to make a lot of money; therefore, you should promote particular kinds of products/services that the majority of your followers will be interested in.
An example will be an affiliate marketer trying to sell Barbie dolls to teenage girls. The majority of them will not be interested in this product, which translates to you not making money.
#3 Review Products and Services
Reviewing certain products and services to your identified niche gives you a reputation for being an expert on particular kinds of products. Leveraging on this reputation, you can easily convince your followers to purchase a specific good or service.
It is important to give genuine and honest reviews of products. Examples of products/services that can be reviewed include software, makeup, toys, and so on.
#4 Stay Updated
Staying current with trends increases your competitive edge. There are a number of products/services being invented every day, which turn into significant trends. By staying current with trends, you are making sure you don’t go out of style, therefore, increasing your revenue.
Benefits of Affiliate Marketing
- Work from anywhere: This is the perfect job for people that don’t like a nine to five job. You can work from the comfort of your home, a friend’s house, or anywhere you prefer.
- Earn passive income: You can earn money while you sleep. The work you put in initially will continue generating more revenue for you.
- Very cost-effective: You save money commuting to and from work. Most sellers also don’t require any initial fee to become an affiliate marketer.
Conclusion
Affiliate marketing is a business strategy that is growing and will keep growing in the foreseeable future. Most of us are avid users of social media; therefore, it makes perfect sense to leverage this platform and increase our earning potential. This is an excellent start for those who want to have different sources of income and build their finance.
