AFFILIATE MARKETING

MOHK SAINI
Mar 28, 2021
2 min read

“Marketing is no longer about the stuff that you make, but about the stories you tell.”

Affiliate marketing is the process by which an affiliate earns a commission for marketing another person’s or company’s products. The affiliate simply searches for a product they enjoy, then promotes that product and when someone buys through your affiliate link, the affiliate gets a commission. The sales are tracked via affiliate links from one website to another.

A typical salesperson only sells products from one company. As an affiliate marketer, A person can promote products from many different companies and earn commissions from all of them.

HOW DOES AFFLIATE MARKETING WORKS?

The merchant gives each affiliate a unique link so they can track who was responsible for a sale.

An affiliate link is a specific URL that contains the affiliate's ID or username. When someone clicks that link, a small file called a cookie gets stored on their device.

An affiliate cookie does two things:

It helps the merchant attribute the sale back to the right person;
It (usually) holds an expiration date, so you get paid even if the buyer delays their purchase.

If they purchase the product or service, the e-commerce merchant credits the affiliate’s account with the agreed-upon commission, which could be 5% to 10% of the sales price. The goal of using an affiliate marketer is to increase sales—a win-win solution for the merchant and the affiliate.

HOW DO AN AFFLIATE MARKETERS GET PAID?

The consumer doesn’t always need to buy the product for the affiliate to get a kickback. Depending on the program, the affiliate’s contribution to the seller’s sales will be measured differently.

The affiliate may get paid in various ways:

1. Pay per sale.

This is the standard affiliate marketing structure. In this program, the merchant pays the affiliate a percentage of the sale price of the product after the consumer purchases the product as a result of the affiliate’s marketing strategies. In other words, the affiliate must actually get the investor to invest in the product before they are compensated.

2. Pay per lead.

A more complex system, pay per lead affiliate programs compensates the affiliate based on the conversion of leads. The affiliate must persuade the consumer to visit the merchant’s website and complete the desired action — whether it’s filling out a contact form, signing up for a trial of a product, subscribing to a newsletter, or downloading software or files.

3. Pay per click.

This program focuses on incentivizing the affiliate to redirect consumers from their marketing platform to the merchant’s website. This means the affiliate must engage the consumer to the extent that they will move from the affiliate’s site to the merchant’s site. The affiliate is paid based on the increase in web traffic