If you don’t know what Affiliate Marketing is and how to take advantage of it, join the ever-decreasing crowd. Whether you know what it is or not, chances are that you have participated in the realm of affiliate marketing if you’ve made any online purchases.
You have more than likely contributed to Affiliate Marketing (A-Mark for short) if you’ve ever…
- Read a product review, clicked a link within the review, and purchased something.
- Read a blog post or article, clicked a link, and bought something.
- Read an ad on a Google search page, clicked its link, and bought something.
- Seen an ad on a YouTube video, clicked on a link, and bought something.
- Seen an ad on Facebook…, Instagram…, Twitter…, Etc., Etc.
Affiliate Marketing in a Nutshell
“Affiliate marketing is a marketing model through which publishers earn a commission for every sale they generate for a merchant or retailer.”
– Neil Patel: neilpatel.com/what-is-affiliate-marketing
“Affiliate marketing is a marketing arrangement in which affiliates receive a commission for each visit, signup or sale they generate for a merchant. This arrangement allows businesses to outsource part of the sales process.[1]”
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/affiliate_marketing
Affiliate Marketing is a business relationship between an Advertiser (A merchant selling goods or services.) and a Publisher. (A person or business who promotes one or more Advertisers’ goods or services, by various means, for compensation.)
RL Williams Author Learn Affiliate Marketing/Affiliate Program Investagator
Content Marketing
One of the most common forms of A-Mark is Content Marketing (C-Mark)…
“Content Marketing is a form of marketing focused on creating, publishing, and distributing content for a targeted audience online.”
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/content_marketing
C-Mark is one of the most prevalent forms of A-Mark on the internet as it is used by most businesses as well as Affiliate Marketers. The most common forms of C-Mark are articles, how-to guides, blogs or vlogs, podcasts, and social media posts and/or ads.
This type of internet marketing needs to have new content published consistently and old content updated regularly in order to stay relevant and at its peak efficiency.
Who Is Affected By Affiliate Marketing?
A huge percentage of internet sales are conducted through A-Mark. One of the reasons why this form of online marketing is so successful is because of “Smart Shoppers.”
A smart shopper doesn’t go online and recklessly make a purchase. They prefer to make an informed decision. They gather information about a product or service they are looking to buy, by first performing an online search.
Conducting an Online Search
When a smart shopper conducts an online search, they are searching for information (content) about the goods or services they are wanting to purchase or subscribe to. They begin by entering their query into the search bar of their favorite browser.
These queries, AKA keywords or keyword phrases, are utilized by Affiliate Marketers and other online businesses to attract potential customers to their sites. They do this by performing Keyword Research, which you can learn more about in another article.
The typical result of any online search returns millions of online website sources which your browser has determined are a close match for your query using a complex set of algorithms.
More often than not, the result that seems to be the best match to the smart shopper’s query, or the one that is more skillfully crafted by a talented Affiliate Marketer, utilizing rich snippets and other SEO tactics, will be the one on which they click. The smart shopper will not rely on a single article or product review unless they consider it to have fully satisfied their curiosity.
The Transition From Searching To Buying
After they have satisfied their need for information, the smart shopper will click on a link usually within the last article or product review they visited via their online search. When the smart shopper clicks on a link, known as an Affiliate Link, within said article or review, they make a purchase.
Each affiliate link has a unique identifier built into it identifying the affiliate marketer who will be compensated. The affiliate marketer to whom that link is assigned will be compensated with a portion of the purchase price. The compensation percentage or amount paid to these affiliate marketers varies across the board.
Affiliate Marketer’s Commissions
The amount of an affiliate commission ranges anywhere from as low as 1 percent of the purchase price up to 200 or even 300 percent of the amount of the initial sale.
You generally only see the larger percentages paid out for things like subscriptions or where there are one or more “up-sells” where the merchants are playing the numbers game knowing there will be enough further sales to compensate them for the higher payout. And then there are recurring commissions.
What Are Recurring Commissions?
Recurring commissions are those that keep paying the affiliate marketer a commission month after month until the purchaser ends the subscription and/or service. These are usually for subscriptions like magazines or membership in a program or club, etc.
For instance, I am a member of an online training program that can be paid for month by month or annually. The affiliate marketer whose link I clicked still gets compensated for my membership so long as I’m in the program. And I’m not going anywhere soon as the training is some of the best in the business.
Now, I am an affiliate marketer who is promoting this very same opportunity to others so they can benefit from the very same training that I’ve had. Before I had this training, I didn’t know anything about A-Mark! And look at me now… I’m helping others find their path to personal enrichment with this business model.
Once a person is trained in the art of A-Mark, they can go on to promote just about anything that can be purchased on the internet. Every major retailer has an affiliate program these days with more and more following suit. One of the largest A-Mark programs out there is Amazon’s Associate program, which is what they call their A-Mark program.
Amazon’s Associates’ Program
Amazon has one of the largest affiliate programs on the internet. The average affiliate marketer (or Amazon Associate) within the United States earns about $55,000 per year ziprecruiter.com/Salaries/Amazon-Affiliate-Salary. There are XXXX Amazon associates in the US alone and over 900,000 worldwide according to Amazon… See the screenshot below for worldwide. As for within the US, I contacted Amazon via email for that figure.
Amazon pays its associates from 1-10 percent per sale depending on which category the sales item(s) fall within. With the exception of Amazon Games for which they pay a 20 percent commission.
How much money you can make with Amazon’s Associates Program all depends on how many sales your affiliate links drive to their website. As with any affiliate program, it’s all about the numbers. The larger the numbers, the more you make.
It’s All a Numbers Game
The average affiliate commissions aren’t that large. The way the affiliate marketer makes a living (very lucrative in many cases) is by playing the numbers. In order for them to make much money, they must attract a LOT of people to their website or other online media and send them to a merchant via affiliate links.
And not just ANY people. It’s quite easy to get a TON of the wrong people to their site. Generally, only an extremely small percentage will actually convert to income. This is why you want the right people to visit your platform of affiliate links whether they be on YouTube, Facebook, a blog, etc.
The trick is to attract a “targeted” audience to their site. And a HUGE one at that. This is done through the use of “targeted” keywords. Once the affiliate marketers attract a large enough targeted audience, the percentages work in their favor for earning more revenue. As with any brick-and-mortar business, the more people who walk through the door, the more sales can be expected.
A talented affiliate marketer knows their audience and how to market to them using well-researched keywords, social media, and other forms of online advertising. They develop a rapport with their audience and tend to gather a following.
Who Are These Affiliate Marketers?
Affiliate marketers come from all walks of life and virtually anyone can become one. They are generally people with a passion and purpose in life. They are people who want to help other people. They are people who are tired of lining other people’s pockets with their seemingly unappreciated labors. They are people who want time freedom and freedom from the constraints of a typical job or career.
They are your brother, your sister, your aunt or uncle. They can be anyone… even you! There are millions of them online and many more joining them every day. They are the man or woman down the street. They might even be your co-worker… and in that case, they may not be your co-worker much longer!
They are people with an entrepreneurial mindset who have taken it upon themselves to create a sustainable online business that will pay them for pursuing their passion in life. Read on to learn how you can become one of these extraordinary trend-setters.
What Does It Take To Become An Affiliate Marketer?
It takes a lot less than you think to become an affiliate marketer. All it takes is a website (not absolutely necessary but is the best way to start), putting content on that website, and a bit of training, preferably from someone who knows the business.
There are many great training programs out there that teach you how to become an affiliate marketer. Most of them will offer you a limited amount of basic training for free and then charge for the advanced training. I am a member of one such program. And I promote it as an affiliate marketer. How to learn A-Mark is one of my niches.
It is best if you have a passion for a certain subject or “Niche”. This way you will be able to create a lot of content, which is needed for this type of online marketing, and you won’t get easily bored and/or frustrated and give up like too many newbie, would-be affiliate marketers end up doing.
You may have several niches you are passionate about or a very broad niche that can be broken down into a few or several smaller niches… EVEN BETTER! You can branch out into more than one website or have one website with a very large audience.
The Bottom Line
A-Mark isn’t for everyone…
- If you can’t sit down at your computer or your laptop anywhere you can find an internet connection, do some article-related research, and spin out the two or three articles per week it takes to create a website, then this business probably isn’t for you.
- If you can’t spend a few months and possibly up to a year or two waiting for your website to become profitable (This depends on how much content you create within any given time period, how active your niche is, and how well you learn the craft.), then this business probably isn’t for you.
- If you can’t invest a few weeks or months and $50-100 a month to learn the necessary skills, then this business probably isn’t for you.
- If you are the type of person who can’t make a commitment and believes that you can never change, then this business probably isn’t for you.
But…
- If you are tired of the same old crap every day, never finding a way to make ends meet or
- you’re just tired of the day-to-day grind of your job or career, or
- if you simply want to create a second or multiple streams of income, or
- If you have an entrepreneurial mindset and love facing new challenges, or
- If you have gotten excited by this article and can’t wait to get started learning how to become an affiliate marketer, then…
This business is exactly what you need!
So, don’t waste any more time! Begin your Affilita Marketing Training and set off on a new path in life.
If you’ve gotten this far, I want to congratulate you for reading all the way through my explanation of what A-Mark is and how you can benefit from it. And I would like to take this opportunity to ask for your opinion and/or insights into this brave new world of internet marketing. Drop me an email and put your 2 cents in at: RLWilliams@affiliateprograminvestagator.com
Visit our main blog @ AffiliateProgramInvestagator.com