Affiliate marketing is actually a very simple concept – you (the affiliate) promote someone else’s product or service. If a sales is made you get a commission which could be a small or a large percentage of the sales price.
This means there are 3 main players in affiliate marketing:
- The seller (or as they are more commonly known – the merchant). These are the people who own and sell the product or service. They are also responsible for customer service so if there is an issue with the goods it is the merchant that deals with it not the affiliate.
- You – the affiliate (or as they are sometimes called – the publisher). Your job is to market the merchant’s products or services. You have done your research, found something you think will sell and for which you will receive an acceptable commission. As the name implies the affiliate does the marketing through a variety of means – websites, social media, adverts etc.
- The customer without whom no one makes any money. The affiliate’s job is to get the customer to buy. Now it is important to note that if you are selling as an affiliate you must tell the potential customer before they purchase which is why you will see statements like – If you purchase items on this site, I may earn a small commission.
Having said there are 3 key players there is possibly a 4th component to the process and this helps the affiliate find products they want to promote. That is the affiliate network. These organizations, like JVZoo and Clickbank, bring together the affiliate the merchant. They allow affolâtes to search through lots of products to find the one they want to promote and then for the merchant they handle the tracking and payment of commissions.
Affiliate marketing is not the same as network marketing. In network marketing the objective is to sell product but more importantly build a team of people who will also sell the product and you then get commission on your sales and theirs.
Affiliate marketing is very easy in theory – pick a product, market it and get commission.
Here is an example of an affiliate link for which I will get some commission. It is set up via Clickbank and is for a webinar you might find interesting if you liked this blog post. Click Here to see the details.
