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Affiliate marketing is the process by which you earn a commission by promoting the products or services of others.
There are many affiliate marketers making a lot of money, and you can too. You can market both physical and digital products.
We want you to succeed as an affiliate marketer, and in order to accomplish this, you need to be familiar with the most common affiliate marketing terms used in this industry.
Before we get into the most commonly used terms, let’s take a look at what affiliate marketing is all about.
You can skip this part and go straight to the terminology section if you already know this.
Getting Started Is Easy
One of the primary reasons why affiliate marketing is so popular is because getting started is relatively easy.
To become an affiliate marketer, you don’t need any prior expertise, and you can get started for almost nothing.
You don’t even need a website, but we strongly advise you to have one.
A domain name will cost you roughly $10 to $20 per year, and you will also require a web hosting service.
Depending on the package you choose, web hosting will cost you between $3 and $15 per month. This is required to get your website active on the Internet.
Many people prefer not to have their own website because they believe it is too complicated to build. This is not the case because you may use the free WordPress blogging platform and a free theme to customize the appearance of your site.
Depending on the package you select, web hosting will cost you between $3 and $15 per month. This is required to get your website active on the Internet.
Using the WordPress platform, adding new content to your website is incredibly simple.
WP Affiliate, on the other hand, is a great solution if you want a completely done-for-you WordPress theme loaded with content.
Once everything is in place, you can start earning affiliate income in no time.
There are many online resources, like YouTube videos, that will show you how to set up a profitable affiliate marketing campaign.
You may, for instance, choose to promote your affiliate offers on sites like Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, and others.
If you go this route, you don’t need a website. The issue is that for whatever reason, a social network might remove your content leaving you with nothing.
How Does Affiliate Marketing Work
A typical affiliate marketing transaction involves 3 parties:
1. The vendor of the product or service (the person or company that owns the products)
2. The affiliate marketer (you) who promotes the products or services in exchange for a commission
3. The customer who purchases the product or service
The product or service vendor is responsible for the following:
- Creation of a product or service
- A persuasive sales funnel for selling the product
- All customer service assistance
- Providing each affiliate a unique link
- Giving affiliates access to marketing resources
- On-time payment of affiliate commissions
Your role as an affiliate is to find clients for the product or service.
Using unique affiliate links, you will drive visitor traffic to the offers you promote.
Any purchases made through your unique affiliate links will be attributed to you and you will receive a commission.
If the customer who buys the product or service has any support issues, they will deal with the vendor directly.
Common Affiliate Marketing Terms
Ad Blockers
Ad blockers are pieces of software code that individuals install in their browsers to prevent ads from displaying on websites.
The usage of ad blockers has increased substantially over the years, with an estimated 15% of Internet users using some type of ad blocker.
Affiliate marketers are negatively impacted by ad blockers. If your ad does not appear, you will not earn any commissions.
Unfortunately, a large number of unscrupulous marketers have resulted in the development of this technology. There is currently nothing you can do to combat ad blocking.
Advertiser
An advertiser is a company or person with products or services to market.
They are the vendors. These advertisers understand that by hiring affiliates, they will increase the visibility of their offers.
An advertiser is willing to pay commissions to affiliates for sales and/or leads.
Affiliate Campaign
An affiliate campaign is one in which you, the affiliate, advertise a product or service to a specific audience. Often, the seller of the product or service will have a sales funnel that you may promote.
You will get an agreed-upon commission from the merchant for each sale you make.
Affiliate campaigns are primarily concerned with directing targeted visitors to an affiliate offer. You have the option of running a free or paid affiliate campaign:
1. Free traffic via social media platforms, search engines, and other sources.
2. Paid traffic through a search engine or social media ads.
All good affiliate campaigns will show how many people you sent to the offer, how many of those people bought something, where the traffic came from, and more.
You can review the analytics of your affiliate campaigns and then make modifications to boost conversion rates.
Affiliate Disclosure
An affiliate disclosure is a statement that you publish on your website to clarify that you are an affiliate for some or all of the items and services that you advertise.
This is where you’ll let your website visitors know that you could get paid a commission if they click on one of your site’s links and buy something.
In the United States, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has mandated that all affiliate marketers publish an affiliate disclosure on their website.
Failure to do so might result in significant fines.
Affiliate Link
An affiliate link may also be referred to as an affiliate ID or a referral link. When you become an affiliate for a product or service, your unique affiliate link sets you apart from the other affiliates.
This is critical since some affiliate networks have thousands of affiliates.
The merchant must be able to link a sale to you. The best method to accomplish this is to use a unique affiliate link.
When you sign up for an affiliate program, you are usually requested to give a unique username. This is then included in your individual affiliate links.
Your distinct affiliate link is essential for your commissions. You don’t want to put in a lot of effort advertising a product or service just to have your sales attributed to another affiliate!
Nowadays, affiliate networks and programs offer a feature that enables you to easily copy your specific affiliate link. Make sure you’re using it properly.
Affiliate Network
An affiliate network is a website that gives you access to different affiliate offers. Clickbank.com is one of the most well-known affiliate networks, providing access to thousands of different affiliate offerings.
The majority of affiliate networks will give you key stats regarding their affiliate programs. You can generally see how popular a product or service is, how well it converts, how much commission you may earn, and other information.
Affiliate networks connect product and service sellers with affiliates. If a vendor doesn’t have an internal affiliate program, they will use an affiliate network to let affiliates know about their offers.
Some affiliate networks provide automatic approval to promote goods and services.
Others will need you to obtain consent from specific product vendors.
Affiliate Offer
An affiliate offer is a specific product or service that you may advertise in exchange for a commission.
Most affiliate networks will show the affiliate offers they have available and include important stats such as sales volume, conversion rates, and more.
You will normally have a unique affiliate link available for each affiliate offer. When one of your visitors clicks on this link, they will be directed to the product or service’s sales funnel, and you will be compensated for this.
You will receive a commission if they make any purchases.
Affiliate Program
An affiliate program is a way for sellers of goods and services to find affiliates to promote their offerings. The merchant can decide how much commission they will pay on each sale.
Affiliates will use the program to sign up and get their own affiliate links.
Average Order Value
Here, the affiliate network will provide information on the average order value for each affiliate offer. Upgrades are available for many goods and services, allowing consumers to enhance their purchases.
These are known as “back end” offers, because they are provided to customers after they have purchased the “front end” product or service.
These upgrade sales will be factored into the average order value. You will see the average amount of money spent by consumers when they buy a specific product.
This is significant since you will often receive commissions on both upgrades and front-end sales.
Bonuses
Affiliate marketing can be very competitive, so if you can offer customers related bonuses that other affiliates can’t, you’ll have an edge.
In the make money online or Internet marketing arena, bonuses are frequently provided.
For example, if you are promoting an affiliate offer that teaches how to build an email list and sell to it, you might include your own email swipes as a bonus.
These are emails with high conversion rates that you have used in the past.
Customers who believe you are providing the finest bonuses will use your affiliate link to make their purchase, earning you a commission.
Click-Through Rates (CTR)
The click-through rate (CTR) is an important metric that tells you how often people click on the link to your affiliate offer. It is shown as a percentage and is based on how many times your link is seen.
If you can get a high CTR, you will be more likely to make more commissions.
Let’s say you have 10,000 email subscribers. You send an email including your affiliate link, and 5,000 of your subscribers open it.
This means that 5,000 people have seen your link. Your CTR is 10% if 500 of your subscribers click on the link.
Conversion Rate
This is another really crucial metric. Using the click-through rate example from earlier, you drive 500 visitors to the affiliate offer you are promoting.
The number of people who make a purchase is used to figure out your conversion rate.
So if 50 of those 500 people buy something, your conversion rate is 10%. Like click-through rates, conversion rates are better when they are higher.
Affiliates can try out different offers to see how well they convert. They can use paid traffic to find out how many of the links people click on lead to sales. If the rate of conversion is high, they can spend money to get more traffic and make more money.
Cookies
A cookie is a small bit of code that tells you who clicked on one of your affiliate links.
Cookies are used for tracking, and networks and affiliate programs often accept them for a set period of time. Let’s say the offer you’re promoting has a cookie period of 30 days.
This means that if the visitor returns to the sales page for the product or service within this time frame, the affiliate who sent them there will get credit for the sale and the commission.
Cost Per Action (CPA)
Cost-per-action (CPA) marketing is when affiliates get paid a commission when someone clicks on their link and then does something specific.
This could involve putting in their email address, filling out a simple form, putting in their zip code, and so on.
A lot of affiliate marketers like CPA offers because they don’t have to make a sale to get paid.
CPA offers tend to have much higher conversion rates because the visitor doesn’t have to buy anything. Most of the time, though, commission rates for CPA offers are lower than those for making sales.
Cost Per Lead (CPL)
Cost-per-lead (CPL) advertising usually requires a site visitor to give their email address, call a certain phone number, or give the advertiser some other way to get in touch with them.
With CPL offers, an affiliate marketer doesn’t have to make a sale in order to get a commission.
Cost Per Sale (CPS)
The most common type of affiliate offer is the cost per sale (CPS). Each time a customer they suggested buys something, the affiliate is given a predetermined commission.
Most of the time, commission rates for CPS offers are higher than those for CPA or CPL offers. But this isn’t always the case, so make sure you do your homework.
Earnings Per Click (EPC)
This is another vital metric that you should be aware of. EPC data may be provided by the affiliate network or program for all of its products and services.
An EPC, which is represented in monetary terms, such as $10, is a measurement of the commission amount that every affiliate will earn for each click of their affiliate link.
Impressions
Impressions are the number of times your ad or affiliate link is displayed. Some websites charge advertisers on the basis of “cost per thousand impressions (CPM).”
Your impressions in email marketing are the number of times a subscriber opens your emails and sees your affiliate link.
Landing Page
When your visitors click on your links, they are directed to a landing page. This might be a link to the product or service’s sales page, for example.
Instead of just connecting to a sales page, savvy affiliate marketers are increasingly referring their visitors to their own landing pages.
Obtaining the visitor’s email address is a prime motivation for doing so. Once you have their email address, you may send them to the vendor sales page automatically.
You may also utilize a landing page or a bridge page to pique your visitor’s interest before they reach the vendor’s sales page.
Sending users straight to a sales page is prohibited by several advertising networks. Both Google and Facebook will need you to design an informative landing page. It is up to you where you redirect the visitor after that.
Leads
If you want to be a great affiliate marketer, you must pursue both leads and sales.
By employing a landing page to gather your visitor’s email address first, you are building a valuable lead with whom you may engage repeatedly.
Some of the leads may make purchases through your affiliate link, which will result in more commissions. Email leads are valuable since they allow you to communicate with your visitors anytime you want.
If you just direct a visitor to the vendor’s sales page, you risk losing them permanently if they do not make a purchase.
Not everyone will buy the first time they see an offer. By collecting email leads, you can get in touch with your site visitors again.
Niche Markets
The most successful affiliate marketers concentrate on certain niche areas.
They build a website centered on their chosen topic and deliver value to their viewers through content. To earn commissions, affiliate offers relating to the niche can be promoted.
Picking the right niche is essential. You must make sure that the niche has a large enough market and that it is profitable.
The following are the most popular money-making niches:
1. The generation of wealth (e.g. make money online)
2. Health and fitness (e.g. weight loss)
3. Personal growth
These are constantly in high demand. In these three areas, there are several affiliate offers available.
However, due to their high levels of competition, it is wise to search for other lucrative sectors.
Use keyword research to gauge demand, and affiliate offers to prove money is passing hands in the niche.
Pay Per Click (PPC)
Search engine traffic from Google and Bing is frequently regarded as top-tier. This is because consumers use a specific search phrase (keyword) to locate what they are looking for.
As an affiliate, you may buy PPC traffic from Google or Microsoft to deliver targeted visitors to your offers.
PPC traffic used to be extremely inexpensive, but it has gotten much more expensive over the years. Traffic from Microsoft properties such as Bing and MSN is typically less expensive than Google PPC.
You’ll have to do some math here. Paid traffic is an excellent technique to test conversions for offers because you can often begin receiving targeted visitors within minutes.
Return On Investment (ROI)
If you are investing money in affiliate marketing activities, you must understand the return on investment. Subtract all of your campaign expenses from your net revenue (your commissions).
This will tell you quickly if and how well your campaigns are working. You want to obtain the highest potential ROI.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Targeted traffic is the best kind of traffic for your affiliate offers. This indicates that the visitor is interested in the niche you are targeting or the particular product or service you are promoting.
If you can get your content to rank high on Google and YouTube (for videos), you can get a lot of free traffic to your offers.
You must optimize your content if you want to have the best chance of receiving top search engine rankings.
You must conduct keyword research and ensure that the best keywords appear in your title, description, and content.
SEO is a highly complicated subject, and there are several online training courses available.
Split Testing
Split testing, often known as A/B testing, compares the performance of two or more adverts for the same affiliate offer.
Split testing may be carried out using paid traffic solutions from Google, YouTube, and other big sources.
Use the many metrics offered to determine which advertisement is doing the best.
Tracking Links
A tracking link will tell you where your visitors are coming from. You could be implementing many traffic sources for your affiliate efforts and need to know which ones are producing the greatest results.
Some affiliate networks will supply you with tracking URLs for this purpose.
Top affiliate marketers frequently use external tracking systems like Click Magick since they offer a lot more information.
Two Tier Affiliate Programs
In a two-tier affiliate program, in addition to receiving a commission for any sales you generate, you will also receive a share of the commissions generated by the affiliates you have brought on board.
The more affiliates you recruit, the more money you are likely to make.
Summary
In order to begin with affiliate marketing, you don’t need any prior knowledge or expertise.
It offers a very low barrier to entry, and you can start generating money right away.
It takes effort and commitment, and you must treat it like a real business to achieve optimum results.
There are several affiliate networks that you may join for free. They provide a lot of affiliate offers for you to promote.
Some of these networks, like Clickbank, allow you to promote their products without approval, so you can start right away.
Although you may use affiliate marketing to generate money without any prior experience, we strongly advise that you gain the appropriate knowledge to get the most out of your efforts.
One of the most effective training programs available is the 15 Day Challenge from Legendary Marketer. You can check out this incredible training here.
We hope that you are able to achieve tremendous success with your affiliate marketing!
