Benefits of Affiliate Marketing For Businesses

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is a form of marketing in which the affiliate(publisher, blogger) publishes the product of a company or entrepreneur in exchange for a commission.

Example of Affiliate Marketing:

What are the benefits of affiliate marketing for a business?

Affiliate marketing is an effective way for business owners to grow their business with the support of third parties known as affiliates(people, publishers, blogger). These affiliates are rewarded with a small percentage of commission per sale.

This kind of business model is an interesting option for bloggers who want to monetize their site and earn passive income by promoting the advertisers products.

Suppose if your are providing paid online IT Courses and you decided to promote them with the help third party affiliates and enrolled in an affiliate marketing program, now if someone already had a blog about IT Courses with good traffic has published your product on a banner and if the reader sees it and buys the product, the real producer of the product gets the sale easily without much effort and blogger gets a commission just by placing a banner on his blog page.

Affiliate Marketing is the most effective marketing method for monetizing your web content and an important digital marketing technique that bring profits to all the parties involved.

Normally affiliate marketing plans involve three different parties:

There are 3 different participants involved in a successful affiliate marketing process.

·   Advertisers: 

Businesses, companies, and individuals who want to promote their products, services, and content using an affiliate markting program are called advertisers.

·   Affiliates: 

website owners, bloggers who promote advertisers’ offers, products are termed as affiliates.

·   Consumers: 

Internet users who browse websites and click on affiliate links or advertisements. Normal internet users look for information on websites and click on ads or affiliate links.

For example, Amazon Associates the largest affiliate marketing operator in the world which allows webmasters and bloggers to earn a commission by promoting the products that are being sold in Amazon Stores.

Advantages of Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is beneficial to all the participants that are involved.

Advantages of Affiliate Marketing For Advertisers

Even though the advertisers share a part of their gains to affiliate networks and affiliates(publishers). Still, the benefits to your business with this technique are more because of low costs involved.

These benefits include:

·   Low cost to acquire customers: 

No unnecessary costs because advertisers pay only when the sale is completed.

·   Fixed costs: 

Affiliate commission fee and networking fees are fixed and these fees can be included in the final price of the product convincingly

·   Better brand visibility: 

Your company’s brand visibility will be improved and reach will be more as your ad appears on your affiliate’s blog pages.

·   Potential customers: 

Affiliates show relevant ads that blog readers are interested in. so these readers who click on affiliate links can be regarded as potential customers.

·   SEO improvements:

Finally, all the visitors who click on affiliate links on the publisher’s site land on the advertiser’s site bringing the referral traffic to a website and improve SEO rankings.

Advantages of Affiliate Marketing For Affiliates

· No investment costs

· Passive income with websites and blogs as they are available all day.

· No risks as there is no investment

Advantages of Affiliate Marketing For Consumers

·   Good recommendations: 

Bloggers recommend only useful and likely products which they use.

·   More information: 

Many affiliates create special pre-sale pages, which contain a lot of information about products and high quality images. Blog Publishers create a page for the products with lot of information and high quality images.

·   Discounts:

Based on the relationship with the advertisers, affiliates may provide discounts to their visitors.

Affiliate Marketing Networks or platforms

These Affiliate Marketing Platforms connect advertisers to affiliates using complex algorithms and earn a commission for each sale.

Types of commissioning for Affiliates:

There are many commission formats for Affiliate programs. It is upto the advertiser to pick the suitable commission format for their product and their business goals.

Cost Per Click (CPC)

In this model, the affiliate is paid each time a user clicks on the ad shown on his blog, social networking sites, website.

Cost per Action (CPA) 

In this model, the affiliate is paid only when the user performs a desired action like sign up, registration, making a purchase.

Cost Per Mille (CPM) impressions.

In this model, the affiliate is paid a fixed amount if the advertising banner is viewed by 1000 users.

Cost per Sale (CPS) 

In this model, the affiliate is paid only when the sale is done.