Affiliate marketing is performance-based marketing wherein a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer added by the affiliate's marketing tactics and efforts. This blog will give a basic understanding of affiliate marketing and the best websites. The affiliate earns a commission by marketing other companies products. In short, affiliate marketing involves referring to a product or service by sharing it through a blog, with the help of social media or using a website.
Did you know?
The idea of affiliate marketing was first put forward by William J. Tobin, the founder of PC Flowers & Gifts. Affiliate marketing accounts for 15% of all digital revenue. With email marketing, affiliate marketing is the largest source of online income for over 16% of all e-commerce orders in the USA and Canada.
Also Read: Guide to Starting An Affiliate Marketing Business in India
Affiliate Marketing Websites
The Basics of Affiliate Marketing Sites
Affiliate marketing has grown rapidly since its introduction. People viewed e-commerce websites as a marketing toy in the early days of the Internet. Later it became an integrated part of the overall business plan and, in a few cases, grew more significant than the existing offline business.
By 2006, the most active sectors for affiliate marketing became the adult gambling, retail industries and file-sharing services.
The three sectors showing maximum growth were mobile phones, finance and travel. Soon after these sectors came online, the entertainment (particularly gaming) and Internet-related services (particularly broadband) sectors went into a boom.
Websites and services based on Web 2.0 concepts- blogging and interactive online communities have also intensely impacted the affiliate marketing world. Web 2.0 platforms have also opened up affiliate marketing channels for personal bloggers, writers and independent website owners to enable them to kick start their businesses.
Is It Possible to Do Affiliate Marketing Without Having Any Followers?
Affiliate marketing without followers is next to impossible. In most cases, even posting one picture a day is not enough; one should be posting an Instagram story at least thrice or four times a day. Same as with other social networking sites and frequently commenting on others' posts, using hashtags wisely like #consistency, #blogger etc.
Having a basic understanding of affiliate marketing, one would wonder why one would want to start an affiliate website. The answer is straightforward. One would like to launch a website, and when you have a program ready, you have already established a website for your brand.
Setting up a new platform with your partners for partnerships may seem like a lot of work, but having a different site for different programs can turn productive in various ways. For beginners, it helps you create a pool for services wherein all your partners can go to and find banners, links, graphics and all other materials they need to promote the products you make. It also assists you in managing a program. Making one unique website enables one to monitor the click-through rates by controlling the effectiveness of relationships and partnerships.
The perks talked about above come at a very cheap rate. Using the low-cost platform for the affiliate program is affordable, and it also provides functionality and flexibility using plug-ins.
The Process of Affiliate Marketing
The process of affiliate marketing starts by spreading product marketing and promotion to create responsibilities across parties. Adding the abilities of different individuals helps make the marketing strategy more effective and provides profit to the contributors. Three various parties are involved in making your marketing strategy work smoothly.
Sellers
The sellers of products can be solo entrepreneurs or large enterprises, vendors, merchants, product creators or retailers with a product to sell. The product can be goods or services, and it can also be a DIY.
An Advertiser or Affiliate
An affiliate is any person who promotes the products to persuade the customers to buy the product and convince them about the usefulness of the product an individual is trying to advertise. An affiliate can be a person or a company that markets sellers' products by attracting customers.
The Consumer
Consumers are the backbone of affiliate marketing. With the help of these consumers, affiliate marketing is in its booming phase. The consumers buy the seller's products, and the affiliate advertises. When customers purchase the products, an affiliate and seller divide the profit. At times, the affiliate tells the customer directly about their commission. At other times, the consumer may be completely clueless about the marketing strategies behind it.
Also Read: Amazon Affiliate Program: How to Become an Amazon Associate to Boost Income
Steps to Launch an Affiliate Website
The first and foremost step would be deciding to launch a website and being firm with the idea.
Step 1: Selecting a Platform For the Website
At the initial stage, the owner needs to launch a new website as a Content Management System(CMS) or take the help of a website builder to create a hub for affiliate business.
Step 2: Customising Your Website With Themes and Plug-ins
Once you choose the website, you will require something to distinguish your website from others. One will design their affiliate website and incorporate critical features as they need.
Ideally, one needs to choose a theme in tune with the products or services that one offers so the customers know what they're looking for and find out that they are at the right place. You can use themes and plug-ins that match the branding of your company's website. You can also focus on setting up a systemic payment, performing essential tasks and tracking sales related to your affiliate program.
Step 3: Setting up Personalised Affiliate Dashboards
The most helpful feature is the new website's personalised dashboard. It helps each partner track their individual performance.
Maintaining an affiliate dashboard is vital so that your partners can-
- Download or copy banners/links.
- View their payment history.
- Track their CTRs, sales and commissions.
Step 4: Promoting the Brand
Links are the heart of affiliate marketing programs, and sharing the link with partners is vital to promoting the new website you make. Even though one can crest links manually, having a plug-in is always helpful, and the process can be quicker and easier. One may also require banners or graphics for the affiliates to display the same on their websites and social media for promotion. This would not only assist in promoting the brand but will also provide a kick start in terms of crafting powerful campaigns.
Step 5: Monitoring Affiliates' Success and Issuing Payments
When the website is set, and in use, one needs to visit it regularly to track sales, commission or CTRs of the partners. This turns out to be an essential step to make sure that you pay the affiliates timely, and it also is helpful in marketing strategy.
Tracking the success of partners makes it easy to determine which relationships provide the maximum Return on Investment (ROI) and helps one plan accordingly for the future to maximise profit. In the end, one will also want to manage a payment system for the affiliate business, which would help easy completion and keep a record of transactions with the partners.
Best Affiliate Marketing Websites
Businesses should start by utilising software and tools to make the process more efficient and effective to optimise affiliate marketing outcomes.
1. Affise
It is an effective and distinct platform that helps businesses upscale and upgrade their affiliate business. This platform has unique tools and features for managing and creating one's affiliate network.
It enables third party integration and multi-currency payouts. With the help of the feature of the intuitive user interface, one can easily personalise and configure dashboards based on one's needs for better management of the workflows of advertisers and affiliates.
2. Tune
It becomes a fully customisable interface. Tune helps one design the affiliate marketing program the exact way one requires. You can build your own chosen tools using the vast list of automation tools available here.
It makes onboarding easy and quick and is beneficial in processing payouts hassle-free and in time. In short, it helps one manage everything related to their partnership program at one agile and reliable platform.
3. Refersion
An all-in-all platform that enables you to do everything from onboarding your affiliates to paying commissions. It helps you with various needs from recruiting affiliates, setting commission structures, tracking performance, generating reports and processing payments in one user-friendly interface.
Refersion is primarily for business enterprises looking to drive e-commerce growth through the ambassador, influencer and affiliate relationships. It also simplifies the influencer and affiliate marketing process through automated workflows, data analytics and digital tools.
4. Impact Partnership Cloud
The Partnership Cloud helps businesses make the most out of their partnership programs by clubbing together all the tools one requires. It clubs all the features in one place, so they can easily do so when they need to recruit partners, nurture them and track their performance.
If handling multiple forms of partnerships, one must consider Impact.com's Partnership Cloud. Its unified yet vast framework gives you a holistic solution to managing all types of partnerships, including affiliates, influencers, ambassadors, sponsors and B2B partners.
Conclusion
Developing an affiliate website, even though it sounds intense, isn't really. In fact, with the right approach and tools, building one can be an intuitive process. Having a plan of action can be beneficial, starting on your affiliate website. Building an affiliate business does take a toll, but in the end, it does give more output than the inputs. Having a plan handy and following all the basic steps could help one excel in the affiliate business.
Follow Khatabook for the latest updates, news blogs, and articles related to micro, small and medium businesses (MSMEs), business tips, income tax, GST, salary, and accounting.
