By The Way, What Do You Know About Affiliate Marketing?

It seems that most readers are asking this question of what was previously thought.

In a recent poll here at ProBlogger I asked readers if they had done any affiliate marketing on their blogs. The results revealed that:

29% of regular readers do
24% do so occasionally
27% have never done affiliate marketing in blogs
6% used to, but not more
14% do not know what affiliate marketing

There are some interesting results there, but it was the last category (bloggers do not know what affiliate marketing) I wanted to write this post hoping to answer the question. It's pretty basic and very focused for beginners, but for 14% of you who do not know what affiliate marketing is - here is a brief introduction.

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Perhaps the easiest way to explain affiliate marketing is that it is a way to make money online by which you, as an editor are rewarded for helping a company by promoting your product, service or site.

There are a number of ways these types of promotions, but in most cases involving a publisher to earn a commission when someone follows a link to your blog to another site where you buy something.

Other variations of this is where you earn a referral fee for a visitor who has some kind of action - for example when registering for something and give an email address where you complete a survey, which leave your name and address, etc.

Commissions are often a percentage of the sale, but can also be a fixed amount for each conversion.

Conversions are generally followed when the publisher (you) use a link with a unique code used by you to be embedded in it that allows advertisers to track conversions where they come from (usually by cookies). Other times, an advertiser can give a publisher a "coupon code" for your readers to use that helps oversee conversions.

For example, when I recently dropped 31 days to build a better book blog also people an opportunity to promote the book with an affiliate program through which they could earn a 40% commission on each sale. When you register to become an affiliate is given a special code unique to you, allowing you to promote the book and make $ 7.98 per sale. The top affiliate earned over $ 2000 in the first weeks after its release through these commissions.

Advertisers prefer affiliate marketing as a way to promote your products because they know they only have to pay for advertising when there is a conversion. I knew when I started this affiliate program, although I paid less for each sale that has a network of affiliate promotion is almost certain to increase the levels of total sales.
The editors often prefer affiliate marketing, because if they find a product that is relevant to your niche that profits can go far beyond any cost per click or cost per impression advertising campaign.

Why affiliate marketing can work well on blogs

Affiliate marketing is not the only way to make money with blogs and are not adapted to any blog / blogger (more on that below), but there are some reasons why it may be profitable in our environment. Perhaps the greatest of these is that affiliate marketing seems to work best when there is a relationship of trust between the publisher and his readers.

I found that as confidence deepens the readers are more likely to follow recommendations made by a blogger.

Of course, this can also be a refusal to affiliate marketing - promoting the wrong product and trust can be broken (more on that later).

Affiliate Marketing - Easy Money?

While affiliate marketing can be very lucrative, it is important to know that affiliate marketing is not easy money. Most people who try to do very little, since it depends on many factors, including:

traffic (traffic helpful)
find relevant products
find quality products
building trust with your readers
have an audience that is in a buying mood "
to be able to write a good sales letter (and more)

There are also some risks associated with affiliate marketing if you press too hard or the promotion of low quality products that can actually burn the readers and hurt your reputation and brand.

It is also worth noting that affiliate marketing does not work on all blogs. Some blogs are about topics that are hard to find products to promote - other blogs attract audiences that are not in a buying frame of mind and for other blogs that just do not fit the style of the blogger or focus.

Tomorrow I want to continue with the focus on affiliate marketing with another message - this one on how to find affiliate products to promote.

Posted in: Affiliate Programs