I’ve been in affiliate marketing for years, but whenever I explain it to someone that isn’t in the same biz it always takes a bit of explaining. Here i’ve tried to cover everything – i’ve generalised things, but if you don’t really understand the whole model behind affiliate marketing hopefully this guide will help you. I’ve made up two people – Fred and Jane. They don’t know each other. Fred runs his site (like me), Jane is a random person who found his site (like you, reading this page).
DigitalProductsDB.com Complete Noob
Guide To Affiliate Marketing
1: The Basics
Just what exactly is affiliate marketing? Lets get the very basics out of the way first, in the form of an example:
Meet Fred. He has a website – www.example.com.
He wants to make money from it.
He has noticed on one of his favorite online stores (conveniently called ‘His Favorite Store’, and for the sake of example just pretend they sell just about everything. Very similar to Amazon) they have a link at the bottom of their page saying ‘Affiliates’.
On that page on ‘His Favorite Store’ it is explained that if he signs up he can make $$$ if he can send people to their site and they buy something.
He signs up as an affiliate on his favorite online store. They give him a URL and banner to put on his site. The code may look something like this:
<a href=’http://hisfavoritesite.com/?from_affiliate=fred’><img src=’banner.jpg’ /></a>
Fred goes and puts that url and banner on his site so visitors to his site will see that banner, and they can click that link if they want. Notice the ?from_affiliate=fred – we will come to that later.
To recap at this stage:
- 1) Fred signed up as an affiliate to ‘his favorite store’. They promised to give Fred $$$ for each sale that he sends to them
- 2) Fred was given a certain URL (with ?from_affiliate=fred in it) and a banner
- 3) Fred has put that banner, linked with the URL given, on his site
- 4) Fred is now waiting for the $$…
Now lets pretend there is a girl called Jane. She searched for Freds site and has landed on his site. She sees the banner that he put there for ‘His Favorite Site’.
So the guys that run ‘His Favorite Site’ (which is an online store) know that she came from Freds site because the URL includes ?from_affiliate=fred.
Jane now buys something at ‘His Favorite Site’. She buys something for $100. Fred has referred Jane to this site, so he sent the sale. And his comission? 10% (typically for non digital products the % will be around 1-4%). So Fred just made $10, and all because Jane saw the banner, clicked it and decided to buy something from the site she ended up on.
I’ll recap what Jane did and how Fred got his 10% comission for sending her to ‘His Favorite Site’.
- 1) Jane was on Freds site, and she clicked the banner to ‘His Favorite Site’
- 2) When she clicked it, she was ‘tracked’ because the URL had ?from_affiliate=fred
3) Jane bought something from ‘His Favorite Site’ – and because Fred had ‘sent’ her there (well, he was the referrer… she decided to click the banner and go there, then she decided to buy something) they knew that he is owned 10% of however much she spent
Does that make sense? Now lets talk about the one other important bit. This bit is easy.
Fred can login to his affiliate account on ‘His Favorite Site’. There he will see a list of all referred sales, and how much comission he is earnt. Then when it reaches the payout date (affiliate programs often payout once a month) they will send a check out to him!
(Of course it is slightly more complicated. Most affiliate programs will hold on to money earnt for 60-90 days, in case customers do refunds etc)
Now, lets get into some examples of how you can actually make sales by being an affiliate. I’ll assume that right now you don’t have any website. (If you do, find an affiliate offer that is similar in niche to what your site is about, and put some banners/links up and try and get people to click your affiliate link and buy something at the site they end up on!
DigitalProductsDB.com Complete Noob
Guide To Affiliate Marketing
Part 2: Content / Web sites
This section is going to be smaller, but just to give you some ideas.
Reviews
Say you are an affiliate with Amazon – they give you links to put on your site and if someone buys something after clicking your link you get a % of the sale. Amazon sell everything, so its a handy example to use.
Now, lets say you had a blog (you can make a free one at blogspot.com. I don’t recommend using WordPress.com for affiliate blogs – they don’t like them. (WordPress.COM is where they host blogs for free. The script WordPress at WordPress.org is HIGHLY recommended – but i’ll get onto that later).
If you bought a toaster from Amazon, you could write a review about it on your blog. Some might end up on your site looking for ‘Toaster-Name-Model Review’. If you go to Amazons affiliate area and get a link to their product page for that toaster, and at the end of the review put ‘Buy the toaster through this link’ people will probably click it. As long as it is a decent product etc.
If they buy the toaster after clicking your link you will get a % as commission.
Just adding random links won’t work very well. Adding reviews is one of the easiest ways to get into affiliate marketing.
Then once you have your site + links up, you need traffic (visitors) to your site. One way to get visitors is through search engines. To get hits in search engines you have to optimise your site for search engines. This is called Search Engine Optimisation.
DigitalProductsDB.com Complete Noob
Guide To Affiliate Marketing
Part 3: SEO
coming soon
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