How to Unlock the Huge Potentials of Affiliate Marketing

Marketing is a very important component of any business. The reason affiliate marketing readily lends itself to many ambitious online marketers. Affiliate marketing is a simple performance-based business model involving Product Merchants, Affiliates and Consumers, all involved in a mutually beneficial business partnership. Affiliates only get paid commissions for work done. To unlock the huge potentials of affiliate marketing, you must know the basics, what it is, how it works as well as the benefits it provides for businesses, affiliates and customers.

 
Here is How it Works

Affiliate marketing involves three key players: the product merchant, the affiliate, and the consumer. The product merchant is the business that offers products/services for sale. The affiliate is the individual/company that promotes the merchant’s products/services. The consumer is the end-user who purchases the products/services. All three parties are in the partnership for mutually beneficial reasons. The merchant wants to sell products/ services and the affiliate helps him to do so. The consumer is desirous to purchase quality products and the affiliates helps to make the products available to him. By the arrangement, the merchant gets to sell products and the consumer gets quality products to purchase. The merchant is happy to sell quality products, the consumer is happy he gets quality products to buy and the affiliate is happy that he helps sell quality products and earns commissions for his efforts.
 
For easy sales attribution purposes, a unique affiliate link/code is made available to the affiliate. The affiliate uses this unique affiliate link/code in his blog content to promote the merchant’s products/services. When a consumer clicks on this affiliate’s link or uses the affiliate’s code to make a purchase, the sale is correctly tracked and the affiliate is credited with the sale. The merchant then pays the affiliate a percentage of the sale-amount as commission. The more sales affiliates generate by this arrangement, the more commissions they earn. What an affiliate can earn is limitless as a result of this arrangement and it can be quite huge depending on how good and how hard working the affiliate is in the business.

Ultimately, affiliate marketing is a powerful marketing arrangement that helps to increase sales for a business through cost-effective marketing. It provides affiliates a great opportunity to earn unlimited passive income while at the same time helping to make quality goods/services available to consumers. Businesses can thus leverage the marketing efforts of affiliates to reach many new customers and markets. That way, businesses can directly increase their sales and grow brand awareness.

Here are Reputable Affiliate Marketing Platforms you can Work With

If you’re interested in starting an affiliate marketing program for your business, it is advisable to sign up with reputable affiliate marketing platforms to take advantage of their marketing tools, training, customer care, large affiliate networks and a great pool of quality products/services to promote. You can take full advantage of the many resources available on the platforms to help you get started. Presently, there are many reputable affiliate platforms available that provide the tools and the right support needed to launch and manage an affiliate marketing program.
 
Characteristically, each platform offers its own unique benefits and features. For this reason, it is hugely important for you to diligently evaluate your affiliate needs before choosing the affiliate platform that best meets your requirements. Following are some of the most common and reputable affiliate marketing platforms you can choose from and the benefits they offer.

Strong Future International, SFI: Strong Future International, SFI is the largest affiliate marketing program in the world. You can join it FREE and with no obligations whatsoever. It has millions of affiliates on its program and with hundreds of thousands of quality products/services to choose from to promote. SFI is a global business available anywhere there is Internet on the planet. It offers free marketing tools and training, unique affiliate links for each affiliate, handles customer care, computes commissions and makes pay-outs monthly on or around the 10th of every month. You can start earning commissions almost immediately as soon as you join SFI.

Rakuten Marketing: This popular platform provides businesses with a wide range of tools and resources to help them launch and manage their affiliate marketing programs. It also provides its affiliates with a variety of tools and resources, including tracking, reporting, customer care and payment management. It is quite a user-friendly platform.

ShareASale: ShareASale is a very popular platform with marketers because it helps to connect businesses with affiliates. It offers a wide range of features and tools to help businesses launch and manage their affiliate marketing programs. This includes tracking, reporting, customer care and payment management tools.

Shopify: Shopify is another very popular e-commerce platform. It provides businesses with the tools they need to launch and manage an online store. The platform offers a robust affiliate program in addition. What is really unique about Shopify is that it has an extensive selection of apps. These apps allow businesses to leverage the marketing efforts of affiliates to increase sales and reach many more new customers. These unique Shopify affiliate program apps provide businesses with an easy way to manage and track their marketing efforts and sales online.

Amazon Associates: Amazon Associates is about the biggest and most well-known affiliate marketing platform online. It is uniquely designed especially for people who want to market Amazon products. The platform offers a very wide range of products to affiliates while providing the affiliates with a variety of tools and resources to help them promote Amazon products. These tools include but not limited to text links, banners, and product widgets.

ClickBank: One great feature of ClickBank is that it is one of the most popular platforms that provide businesses with a wide range of tools and resources to help them to seamlessly launch and manage their affiliate marketing programs. Its unique tools and resources available to affiliates include tracking, reporting, customer care and payment management tools.

Commission Junction (CJ): Commission Junction is yet another very popular platform that connects businesses with affiliates. It provides a wide range of tools and resources to help businesses launch and manage their affiliate marketing programs. These tools/resources include tracking, reporting, customer care and payment management tools.

Here are the Main Benefits of Affiliate Marketing

Cost-Effective Marketing: Affiliate marketing is a highly cost-effective way of marketing products/services online. This is because product merchants are only expected to pay affiliates commissions only for the sales they generate. Doing this directly eliminates the need for large upfront marketing costs and greatly reduces business risks for merchants.

Enhanced and Increased Reach: Affiliate marketing allows businesses to reach a wider audience by leveraging the large audiences and marketing efforts of affiliates who themselves are independent business persons. This increased reach can lead directly to more sales and increased brand awareness.

Increased Sales: Increased awareness leads to increased sales. For this reason, affiliate marketing can help businesses increase their sales by leveraging the immense marketing efforts of affiliates. By partnering with affiliates, businesses can reach many more new customers and break into markets. This helps to increase their customer base and sales.

Passive Income Opportunities for Affiliates: Affiliate marketing is an opportunity to take some marketing actions just once and the returns from these actions continue to yield results going forward. It thus provides affiliates the good opportunity to earn passive income. Affiliates achieve this by promoting the products/services of businesses they are passionate about. Doing this allows affiliates to earn money while doing something they enjoy.

Increased Access to New Customers: Affiliate marketing provides businesses with access to many new customers. These are customers they may not have been able to reach on their own without the efforts of affiliates. By partnering with affiliates, businesses can leverage affiliate efforts to tap into new markets and reach many more new customers. This helps to directly increase their customer base and sales.

Affiliate Marketing Earning Potentials

The earning potentials of affiliate marketing are infinite. It is a performance-based business model. This means that the more efforts affiliates put in to promote products/services, the more commissions they earn. They only get paid commissions for work done. Many affiliates as a result earn just a second paycheck from affiliate marketing whereas others earn full-time income from the business. Affiliate marketing is one marketing frontier that is still growing and very rapidly too. That also affects its earning potentials.

Summary
 
If you study the foregoing closely, it is possible for you to understand and unlock the huge potentials of affiliate marketing all by yourself. By knowing what it is, its basics, how it works, its main benefits and how to earn money from it, you’ll be well on your way to unlocking its huge potentials. Knowing the most reputable affiliate marketing platforms you can choose to work with can quickly help you to unlock its potentials.