Affiliate
Marketing is the promotion and sale of company's product(s) in exchange for a
commission, provided certain conditions are met. It's a Cost Per Action (CPA)
marketing method: you make money only if clients buy from your links.
Since
affiliate marketing involves the embedding of links
, html and/or javascript
codes in a website, which requires access to a website source code, a privilege
reserved exclusively for webmasters or website owners, most companies won't
entertain an affiliate relationship with you unless you own a top domain
website (mysite.com, for instance, instead of a sub-domain such as
theirsite.mysite.com). If you are serious about your affiliate marketing
business, in addition to the free content-publishing platform, you need to possess
your very own platform, id es your website to promote your affiliate products.
Most companies, however, allow you to embed their affiliates links in sites you
don't own, provided they (websites) are not sleazy; because no companies want
to associate their positive images with disreputable websites.
If
you are interested in affiliate marketing, checkout the following affiliate
marketing networks:
·
Konga
·
Jumia
·
Club080
·
Market Health
I
don't want to bore you with a long list of affiliate networks, just cling to
the ones that have proven themselves over the years. I am an affiliate to all
four listed above. You can joined them through the banners on my blog (please
do me a favour).
It
is always a good policy, as an affiliate marketer, to disclose to your readers
that you (we) may earn compensation from transactions conducted through your affiliatelinks (which
we've just disclosed), specially if you extol the virtues of, tout, endorse or
write reviews about the products you are promoting.
As you can see, affiliate marketing
is a relatively trouble-free way for bloggers and other website owners to earn
money. In fact, these days, even social media sites can become lucrative
platforms for affiliate marketing campaigns.
Because
affiliate marketing doesn’t require affiliates to offer their own products or
services for purchase, but only to place promotions on their sites for other
merchants’ products, it frees affiliates from many of the responsibilities and
complications of traditional sales models.
Affiliate
marketing programs typically work by having the merchant handle all the
logistics involved in selling products or services, processing customer orders
and payments, and shipping merchandise—all while the affiliate sits back andcollects a commission for each agreed-upon action completed by the visitors the
affiliate sends to the merchant’s website via an affiliate link. As long as the
affiliate has done her homework and chosen a trustworthy affiliate program, she
needn’t worry about non-payment.
Affiliate
networks administer programs for individual merchants, handling all the work
involved, while generally providing tracking and reporting capabilities to
their affiliates to help them keep tabs on their revenues and determine which
products or services are producing the best returns. These tools can be helpful
to an affiliate in fine-tuning the line of products she decides to promote on
her site and, ideally, increasing revenues as a result.
However, all
affiliate programs are not created equal. Which are the most popular programs
available today? Join one now.