Affiliate marketing is a type of selling in which you promote someone else’s products or services and receive a commission each time your efforts result in a sale. It is a commission-based process in which you only get paid when a sale is made. The advantage of this sort of marketing is that, once you have created your marketing system, it can result in a stream of passive income which earns you money without and additional effort on your part.
There are a huge array of products and services for which an affiliate marketing program is available in which the owner of the product or service agrees to share the revenue from each sale with an affiliate marketer. This is advantageous to the owner because they can reach a much bigger audience using a team of affiliate marketers each of which will bring their own approach to marketing the product and is an effective way for them to scale their marketing efforts while only paying for sales that are made. There are generally three parties in the affiliate marketing process: the affiliates, the customers, and affiliate marketing programs.
An affiliate marketer is sometimes referred to as ‘the publisher’ in this type of marketing because they produce content that promotes products to potential customers by outlining their features and benefits. This can be done in a number of ways: through websites that review products or list their features, through video marketing, social media, podcasts, and so on. It is up to the affiliate marketer to find creative ways to promote products to potential customers and this is where their value lies.
The customer makes the affiliate system work because without sales there can be no income and no one gets paid. Affiliates today tend to be transparent when they are pitching products and services so that customers know they may receive a commission for their recommendations and take this into account when consuming content.
Affiliate marketing programs are central to the process since they bring product creators and affiliate marketers together in a marketplace where they list the amount of commission product creators are willing to pay and any conditions they may have about the way their products are marketed. These programs also provide mechanisms for verifying and paying out commissions to marketers when they make a sale. While affiliate marketers can arrange a direct share of revenue with product creators, most use affiliate marketing programs and networks because they handle the management and administration and in many cases, this is the only way they allow their products to be promoted by affiliate marketers.