Affiliate Marketing — You must have heard these two words a lot, and you might be wondering: What is Affiliate Marketing? and How to earn money from Affiliate Marketing? You probably have many questions about it. If you’re completely unfamiliar with affiliate marketing and you search on the Internet “What is affiliate marketing?” and “How to make money from affiliate marketing?”, then in this post we’ve brought answers to all your questions. I’ll try to clear all your doubts about affiliate marketing completely
—So let’s begin with TMI.
What is Affiliate Marketing?
Many people ask us this question, so to give a brief answer: Affiliate Marketing is like running a shop without having products. You might be surprised: how is that possible—how can there be a shop without goods?
In affiliate marketing, you do sell products, but not your own; you sell someone else’s products, and for doing this, the seller gives you some money in the form of a commission—this can also be called promoting the product. If you have a good audience, you can do this easily.
Affiliate marketing is a type of marketing where a person promotes a company’s products through a blog or website, helping the company sell them. In return, the company pays that person a commission. Commissions vary by product; it can be a percentage of the sale or a fixed amount. The products can be anything from web hosting to clothing or electronic devices etc.
How does Affiliate Marketing work?
Suppose there is an XYZ company “Amazon or Flipkart“ that manufactures some products. The company needs different channels to reach people, such as advertising and product promotion. The main purpose of both these methods is to make people aware of the products so that someone among them purchases them.
In today’s digital age, as online shopping has grown, people visit physical stores less often. As a result, they remain unaware of new products in the market, and since people spend most of their time on social media, they are moving away from TV too, thus missing out on information about new products. So companies found a way to both advertise their products and increase purchases based on those ads.
That’s why they choose you. If you share product links provided by the company on your blog or social media such as Facebook and WhatsApp, and someone is influenced and purchases the product through your link, then the company pays you some commission for helping make that purchase happen. This entire process is called an Affiliate Program.
If you have a Facebook Page with a good number of likes or have a large number of followers on any social network, or if you have a website or blog with decent traffic, you can earn good money through affiliate marketing. For this, you need to join an affiliate company. You can join the affiliate programs of Flipkart, Amazon, ClickBank, and many other companies.
How to earn money from Affiliate Marketing?
So far you’ve learned what affiliate marketing is and how it works. Now let’s learn how to make money from affiliate marketing?.
If you have a blog or website with a high number of visitors, or a Facebook page where many people follow and trust you, you can earn well through affiliate marketing. For this, you need to become an Affiliate “A person who does affiliate marketing” which means joining an Affiliate Marketplace.
Joining an affiliate marketplace is completely free and registering is very easy. As soon as you join an affiliate marketplace, the company provides you with affiliate links.
Affiliate can share these affiliate links on their Blog, Website, or on Social media through images. When any visitor is influenced by the image and clicks the link, they are redirected to the shopping website.
If they purchase the product there, and since the purchase happened through your affiliate referral link, you get a certain commission credited to your affiliate account. Once you cross the payment threshold, that commission is sent to your bank account as a payment.
To understand this better, see the following terms:
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Affiliates: Just as a person who wrote a blogs is called a blogger, a person who does affiliate marketing is called an affiliate—it can be anyone.
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Affiliate Marketplace: The place/site where you join to become an affiliate.
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Affiliate Link: Product link provided by the company; anyone can click it to buy the product.
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Commission: The amount paid to you by the company for helping generate a sale.
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Payment Threshold: The minimum amount at which the company processes a payout to you.
Now days, many bloggers earn well by leveraging affiliate marketing; by some estimates, it can even earn more than Google AdSense or other ad networks.
This is a very simple way to make money—not just through a blog or website; you can also share affiliate links on your Facebook page, Instagram page, and Twitter. Your earnings largely depend on your number of followers—the more followers, the more potential earnings.
Affiliate Program payment methods
Different affiliate companies have different payment methods for affiliates; most prefer paying via bank transfer or PayPal.
Payment thresholds can vary, though the general payment flow is similar. Most affiliate companies pay you based on product sales, while some also offer CPC, CPM, and CPS. Let’s understand these:
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CPC: Cost Per Click, Money you earn when visitors click on ads placed on your blog or website, through the Link or banner.
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CPM: Cost Per 1,000 impressions, Money you earn based on the number of impressions for the ads placed on your blog or website (Link or banner).
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CPS: Cost Per Sale, If someone clicks your affiliate link and purchases an item, you will receive a percentage of the sale amount.
Benefits of Affiliate Marketing
By now, you understand what affiliate marketing is, how it works, and how to earn from it. Here are some benefits that set it apart from other methods (payment thresholds may vary):
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Affiliate marketing can be done even without a blog or website.
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No approval required for a blog or website for affiliate marketing.
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Registration is very easy and completely free—anyone can do it.
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No investment is required in affiliate marketing.
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Creating and sharing affiliate links is very easy.
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Affiliate links can be shared on Facebook, WhatsApp, or any social media.
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You can also earn based on impressions in affiliate marketing.
Some frequently asked questions about Affiliate Marketing
Q: Which is the best Affiliate Marketplace (Website) for affiliate marketing?
There are many websites on the Internet where you can join affiliate programs, but in my opinion, the better and more trustworthy ones are:
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Amazon Affiliate
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Flipkart Affiliate
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Snapdeal Affiliate
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ShopClues Affiliate
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eBay Affiliate
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ClickBank
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Commission Junction
Q: Is it necessary to have a blog or website for affiliate marketing?
Not at all. You can earn through affiliate marketing without a blog or website. You can easily earn money via your Facebook page, Instagram, Twitter, and WhatsApp using affiliate links.
Q: Can we use affiliate links along with Google AdSense or any other ad network?
This is a common question, and the answer is: yes, you can use affiliate links with Google AdSense or any other network without any problem.
Q: How much money can we make from affiliate marketing?
It completely depends on how many visitors you can attract to the program and how many sales happen through them. Your commission depends on that.
Q: What do we need to join an Affiliate Program?
Joining an affiliate program is very easy; you don’t need anything special. Generally, you’ll need:
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Full name
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Email
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Full address
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PAN card
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Bank details
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Blog or Website
Q: How to find out which companies have an affiliate program?
It’s very easy. To check if a company has an affiliate program, search the company name plus “affiliate” on Google; you’ll get results from where you can join.
Q: What is an Affiliate Program?
There are many companies on the internet that offer some commission to their members to promote their products—such programs are called affiliate programs. You have to promote the product from your blog.
Summary of What You Learned Today:
I believe I’ve tried to give you most of the important information related to what affiliate marketing is and how to make money from it. I hope you liked it.
Friends, please share this information with all your friends who are interested in making money online, so that it can help them.
I always try to help all my friends in every possible way. If you have any doubts related to affiliate marketing, or you think we need to make some improvements here, please let us know; I’ll try to my best to improve. Let us know in the comments how you liked this post so that we can learn from your thoughts and get a chance to improve. To show your happiness and enthusiasm for my post, please do share it on social networks like WhatsApp, Facebook, and Twitter.