3 Major Types of Affiliate Marketing Popular with Affiliate Marketers

Popular among affiliate marketers are three major types of affiliate marketing. What really differentiates these three types is the level of involvement of affiliates with the products/services they are marketing. Yes all affiliates earn commissions by promoting products/services but their level of involvement or relationship with the products/services they are marketing makes the difference on how they promote these products/services. So, one great way to understand and identify these three types of affiliate marketing is to understand the different ways affiliates promote products/services and make money online even though they all earn by way of commissions.

1. Involved Affiliate Marketing

In this type of affiliate marketing, the affiliate is directly involved in the use of the product/service. As the name implies therefore, involved affiliate marketing is a situation where the affiliate marketer has used or is using the product/service and can therefore vouch for the product’s quality and authenticity. Since the affiliate has used or is currently using the product/service, he has the requisite confidence that he can convincingly share to others his positive experiences with the product/service. It is this experience that serves as the real advertisement for the product/service and a trusted source of information. By doing this, affiliates are very much aware that their reputations are at stake with their audience if they provide unreliable or false information to the audience. This can really be a challenge if issues come up with the use of the product/service they are promoting. If they don’t want to compromise their reputation and integrity as very vital ingredients of successful marketing, they need to be real and always come clean with their audience.

The real benefit of involved affiliate marketing is that the affiliate already possesses the requisite knowledge of the product/service he is promoting to drive good traffic. That traffic can however be compromised if the affiliate hasn’t used the product/service himself. In such scenario, he runs the risk of endangering his audience’s confidence by suggesting it. A backlash from such dishonest suggestion can be bad for business.

In involved affiliate marketing, instead of spending money encouraging people to click on banner ads, what the affiliate marketer simply does is to leverage his influence to promote the right products/services that his potential customers may genuinely need. The kind of audience trust needed in involved affiliate marketing requires more effort to develop though. But, it is worth the while because it is essential for creating a long-lasting business relationship built on trust.

2. Unattached Affiliate Marketing

In unattached affiliate marketing, affiliate marketers have no affiliation whatsoever with the product/service they are promoting. They do not have product usage experience and as such cannot make helpful claims about its authenticity. They therefore lack relevant experience or authority in the marketplace about any product/service they have no experience at using.

Unattached affiliate marketing may seem unappealing due to the lack of commitment, but affiliates who simply want to make money without investing in the business or the customer base are attracted to it. They find a way around their lack of commitment by adopting PPC (pay-per-click) marketing campaigns to market their products/services. Doing so may be expensive though but it serves the purpose of affiliate marketers who do not mind spending a bit of money to promote products/services. Such affiliates invest in PPC because the ads are targeted and effective. When these affiliates execute PPC marketing campaigns with an affiliate link, they always hope that interested consumers will click it and make purchases independently.
 
What makes unattached affiliate marketing appealing to marketers is because it requires little to no physical effort on the affiliate’s part. Such affiliates usually have a very high reliance on their online target audience’s reputation and trust which they have built over time. Unattached affiliate marketing is quite suitable for affiliate marketers who do not have the time or desire to develop such mutually beneficial affiliate connections with an audience.

3. Related Affiliate Marketing

Related affiliate marketing entails the promotion of a product/service by an affiliate who has some sort of connection to the product/service. What this means is that the affiliate marketer has some sort of connection to the target market. This gives the affiliate some marketing authority since he already has a well-established influence over an existing audience in this niche. It is this relationship the affiliate leverages to successfully market the products/services in the affiliate’s niche market. The affiliate marketer thus has the requisite inside knowledge to drive good traffic to the products/services he is marketing. The only snag here is that even if affiliates are connected to a product/service, if they haven’t used it themselves, they run the risk of endangering their audience’s confidence if they suggest it to them. But a related affiliate remains a credible source since he possesses the authority and knowledge required to drive good traffic to a product/service. A related affiliate however provides no guarantees on the effectiveness or otherwise of the product/service he is promoting. That is a bit of a marketing drawback though.

Common Affiliate Marketing Channels

You cannot afford to do without affiliate marketing if you want your business to survive stiff competition on the internet. Engaging affiliates as marketing partners is one smart marketing move. This is because you easily leverage the huge audience which affiliates can reach as well as the multichannel available to them to help market your products/services. With affiliates, you can thus widely spread the word about your products/services and expand your reach. This partnership works well because affiliate partners only earn through commissions. Affiliates who have vested interest in maximizing their commissions cannot therefore afford not to put in the requisite efforts to vigorously promote your products/services. These affiliates are also at liberty to use a variety of channels/platforms that work for them to do their promotions. Here are some of such channels.

Large Media Websites

Large media websites are built to concentrate on growing a global audience of millions of people.  They are as a result very good at constantly generating very large traffic. The websites are designed to effectively use banner ads and contextual affiliate links to market products/services to a large audience. This strategy helps to provide your business the much needed exposure which culminates in increased conversion rates. Increased conversion rates directly impact increased earnings for affiliates and product merchants.

Paid Search-Focused Microsites

Microsites are usually promoted on a partner site or in search engine-sponsored listings. These sites are significantly different from the primary stand-alone website of a business. Microsites are important affiliate marketing tools because they help to enhance conversions. This they do by providing more targeted, pertinent material to a particular audience using their clear and uncomplicated call-to-action, CTA. Microsite creation and monetization can result in significant affiliate earnings because of the increased visibility they provide a business.

Influencers

In digital marketing terms, a content provider who has the ability to affect a sizable portion of the public’s purchase decisions is known as an influencer. Influencers are always well-positioned to gain from affiliate marketing because of the huge audiences/followers at their disposal. This is the audience they relate directly with and somehow influences with social media posts, blogs, and other social interactions. They rely on the power of their influence to endorse, recommend and easily point buyers to the seller’s products/services taking advantage of their large following. When sellers make sales through the efforts of influencers, the influencers earn commissions same as affiliates.

Bloggers

Blogging is the most popular form of content marketing among digital marketers. Most affiliate marketers use blog content to promote their affiliate links. The more their blogs attract traffic, the higher the chances that their affiliate links will be clicked and hopefully a purchase is made through such effort. Because blogs have the ability to rank organically in search engine queries, many good bloggers really excel at increasing a seller’s conversions through content marketing. Many good bloggers do sample a product/service and then write a comprehensive review that helps to promote the product/service in a compelling and convincing way. This ultimately helps to drive good traffic back to the seller’s website. Bloggers get rewarded with commissions as affiliates if their blogging efforts help sellers to make sales.

Responsive Email Lists

A responsive email list is a very valuable asset in digital marketing. Many affiliates who have diligently built such lists over time can generate substantial revenue through email marketing. Affiliates can segment their email lists for effective marketing purposes. They can thus use such email lists to spread specialized marketing messages directly to people on their lists who really need such messages. They can directly advertise products for a product vendor using email and earn commissions when sales are made from such efforts. Affiliates can also make use of email newsletters that contain links to a vendor’s products/services and earn commissions as well when purchases are made.