About Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is one of the most popular methods to ensure some passive income. The main idea is to promote products and services created by other people, and earn a commission every time these products or services are bought based on your recommendation.
When done properly, online affiliate marketing can soon become not only an additional income source but even your full-time job. The job that you can do from anywhere you like. The job that will finally help you get the freedom to travel, live in other places for a while, and spend more time doing things you like.
That’s why in this article we’ll dive into the topic, and see some tips on how to start affiliate marketing and make money with it.
Why Affiliate marketing?
Affiliate marketing is one of those very few business models that break the eternal “time=money” formula. It’s always time that limits your chances to produce more products or services and sell them to get progressively more money. With affiliate marketing this is not a problem, as you no longer need to produce anything to make money. Instead, you can automate the process of telling the world about products or services others have created, and earn more and much faster.
Independent surveys state that affiliate marketing is going to reach $6.8 billion by 2020 on in the U.S. only. 90% of brand owners say that affiliate marketing is an important part of their overall marketing strategy. In 2017 16% of all online orders in the U.S. were generated with the help of affiliates.
With this in mind, we can expect web publishers reach their most ambitious monetizing goals and we’ll soon read some great affiliate marketing success stories. At the moment 20% of affiliates’ annual earnings are formed by the affiliate commissions, and the number is expected to grow significantly by the end of 2018.
All these factors demonstrate that it’s the perfect time to join affiliate marketing and start working on earning your referral commissions.
Benefits of Affiliate marketing
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Easy and low-to-no-cost start. Most referral programs are free to join, and you can decide yourself whether to use costly promotional methods or stay with the free options
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Passive income. Once you put your referral business on rails and depending on the referral program you choose, your earnings can grow without your constant supervision
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You don’t need to create a product. Like we said before, affiliate marketing gives you access to gazilions of products you can promote without having to lift a finger to produce them
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Remote work. Though in 2018 it’s not a wonder anymore, still, having some physical freedom of working wherever and whenever you want is a pleasant spice to your meal
Disadvantages of affiliate marketing
(and what we did to eliminate them in our referral program)
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You don’t have control over the things you advertise. But you can easily protect yourself from low quality services or online products by testing them beforehand. When it comes to our Referral Programs, there are thousands of happy users of LinksManagement, MageNet, Adsy, and other projects, and you can read stories about their success
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Some untrustworthy companies may avoid paying their affiliates. GainRock offers 100% payout guarantee, and the payout is made on a regular basis, so you can be certain to get your commission
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It takes time to generate an affiliate ad that will draw people’s attention, which turns your passive income source into a full-time job. To save your time we have a collection of creatives to make use of, so you only need to share them.
3 key practices that’ll help you succeed in digital affiliate marketing
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Selecting a limited number of projects to work with. Having too many products from too many companies to advertise only distracts you. You have to work too hard, monitor your referral earnings on different platforms, and you soon stop noticing the real value behind your actions.
Instead, it makes sense to choose a couple of reliable products or services of good quality and promote them. With GainRock it all gets simpler, as you can work with many projects in one place. See you referrals, commissions for each of them, make use of the creatives for every project without leaving the website. -
If your website is your primary place for sharing affiliate links, use plenty of ways to attract traffic to it. PPC, Email Marketing, free ads online - they all can work at different stages of your website’s growth. Of course, it’s not only about traffic, but also about the right traffic, so make sure you know who’s coming to your site.
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Test your promotional methods and try out some new ones from time to time. Finding room for improvement and the ability to fill this room is one of the primary quality of successful affiliates. They are constantly testing the slightest changes to the tactics that can bring them thousands in revenue. Be aware of the results you achieve by gathering the statistics, and adapt fast when there’s the need to modify your strategy.
Extra Affiliate Marketing Tip - Make use of all the channels you have access to. We developed GainRock with a great variety of channels to your service:
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Banners - Of different sizes and shapes, they are proven to perform even better than videos. They demonstrate your care about users when you choose not to bomb them with pop-ups. Banners provided by GainRock are extremely easy to set up - you just copy & paste the link and you’re all set to enjoy your passive income boost.
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Content - If you have an audience of devoted readers, this can be a really powerful tool that will bring you hundreds of referrals. Be persuasive in your reviews on the services you’re promoting, and don’t forget your unique referral link!
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Relevant forums - Forums dedicated to the business field of the company you promote are the perfect place to share your opinion (and the referral link as well). The best thing about forums is that they are full of enthusiastic and interested in the topic people who are eager to try out new products and services you’ll be telling about.
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Social networks - These can be an endless well of new referrals for you if you share the info about the companies you promote using the creatives we’ve got for you. Articles, reviews, useful blog posts are there to draw people’s attention.
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Broadcasts - Just like posts on your websites, broadcasts will do a great job for you if you have established close relations with your blog readers, for example. A couple of convincing phrases, some info about the product, and you have new referrals!
Affiliate marketing trends of 2019
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Niche targeting
The most successful affiliates say they will focus their efforts on the niches they know best and have something valuable to say in. The most powerful advertisers say they will focus on the niche-targeted affiliates. If you still try to reach each and everyone, chances are, you’re missing out some huge opportunities.
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Data Transparency
Affiliate marketing strives for transparency on many levels. Advertisers tend to share the data on their customers’ preferences to assist affiliates in bringing the most suitable and involved clients. Affiliates on their part are to demonstrate the reports of their work and its results to help brand owners make any decision on corporate levels.
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Email collection
Email marketing is currently demonstrating the highest ROI among all the methods in digital marketing. That’s why affiliate marketing experts will do their best to leverage it to build relationships with the target audience. Email campaigns will also help them use the relationships to encourage more purchase from the same people instead of looking for new audience every time.
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Budget shift from less productive channels
As marketers realise the potential behind affiliates, they start investing more in them. The performance rates of affiliate marketing prove its effectiveness, and when some other channels demonstrate some fluctuations and decreases, it’s time to make a change.