What is affiliate marketing?
Affiliate marketing is a way for businesses to increase sales and promote brand awareness and for content creators to earn referrals.
The principle is simple:
- Publishers (content creators) earn money by promoting products and services through links to another seller’s website.
- On the other side sits the seller or advertiser, who pays the creator for the results achieved.
The goal of affiliate marketing is usually a sale, but sometimes the publisher receives a commission for other conversions, such as downloading an app or filling out a form.
The link between the publisher, advertiser and affiliate
In practice, what happens is this: the publisher (creator) creates interesting content into which they place a link to another website (affiliate link). The link can be inserted into a post on social media, in a blog, video, e-book or podcast.
The possibilities are endless. What’s essential is the presence of a unique link that redirects the reader to a website with products or services.
Out of the number of people who click on the link, a few will actually buy the product. These are completed purchases from which the advertiser (online store, website, organisation) pays the creator a commission. Popular forms of content for affiliate marketing include reviews, comparisons, product lists and how-to articles.
Affiliate marketing for online stores
If you have an online store, you can use affiliate marketing to increase sales. The advantage is that you only pay for actual purchases and not for clicks as is the case with PPC advertising. At the same time, thanks to affiliate links, backlinks from other sites will direct to the website, which will support your SEO (search engine optimisation).
To start affiliate marketing, you need an online store with either your own solution (affiliate program), or join one of the affiliate networks as an advertiser (Affial, Dognet, eHub, CJ, etc.).
However, the purchase is not only determined by the publisher and its content, but also by the website on which the reader lands. Therefore, affiliate marketing is most suitable for online stores that have a fine-tuned UX website design, correctly set pricing strategy and fast and straightforward shipping.