Affiliate Marketing, according to Wikipedia, is based on performance in which a business rewards the efforts of one or more commission salesman or affiliates (as they are commonly called) by selling the merchant’s products or services. That being said, the system requires four key players: the merchant or retailer, the network (which contains the offerings, products, affiliate links, banners, articles and the process to take care of the payments), the affiliate, and the customer.
The work efforts of the affiliate is enormous in regards to exposing the merchant’s products into the blogosphere where visitors are searching for solutions to problems or looking for something that touches their emotions due to quality information. For example, if you have created a blog, which contains reviews of products from merchants, the idea is to attach a link at the end of the article that you have written.
So, you create the quality information, add the link and when a customer enjoys your information, he or she clicks on the link and is then taken to the merchants website, which essentially takes over the selling of the product.
The key factor during this whole selling process is to provide quality information and lots of it. In other words, you’re building a loyal customer base not only buying one product but two or three products. This ultimately depends on your marketing efforts to deliver quite substantial information to interested customers typing keywords into the major search engines or attracted to catch phrases within your title which causes the visitor to read your information.
So, affiliate marketing can be defined into 4 easy steps:
1. Education. Is obviously the key to success with affiliate marketing and certainly opens the door of opportunity. Moreover, there is a lot to learn and covers an enormous marketing field of deliverability such as email marketing, search engine optimization, keyword research, link building, social media, niche marketing, video marketing, classified ads, blogging, content writing, goal setting, and personal development.
Notwithstanding, the vast field to expose the merchant’s products and services essentially determines the success of the product. In other words, in simple terms, the more eyes that sees and absorb, the more sales you make.
2. Take action. You can have all the education in the world and a comprehensive knowledge to be successful with affiliate marketing, with every ‘nook and cranny’ covered. However, if this knowledge is not used, then this knowledge becomes worthless. To put this in simpler terms, you can read a manual from cover to cover for the purpose of riding a bicycle, but until you jump on the seat and start pedaling, you will never experience the freedom and speed to travel from one location to another in a matter of minutes, rather than walk the same distance and reach your destination in a long period of time.
3. Stay on course – positive mindset. This has obviously determined the longevity and endurance of a successful online entrepreneur. For example, you can be motivated with all the enthusiasm to create unbelievable products or market products as an affiliate, however, until you experience the first payments dropping into your PayPal account or checks arriving in your mailbox, it won’t be long, (probably in a matter of 1 month, 2 months or maybe 1 year) when your motivation starts to disappear and give up altogether.
This is common among numerous affiliates trying to earn their first sale. They come to the realization that it doesn’t work. Fortunately, by experience and proven many times over, that affiliate marketing does work. The testimonials from successful marketing gurus can prove it many times over like drinking water from a fountain.
4. Test, eliminate, tweak and build. This one is a never-ending dynamo of testing the products that sell and where the ‘fish’ are biting as a matter of speaking. For example, experience webmasters eliminate time-consuming efforts that take too much time and work smart in areas that produce the best, and quick results. This also means expanding the repertoire of your marketing efforts in one area, rather than spending too much time in another area of marketing.
For example, while you may be dynamic in creating quality articles and posting them on directory sites such as EzineArticles.com, you could benefit greatly by creating eye-catching videos on YouTube with your affiliate links embedded below the video or a screen shot of your affiliate link hovering within the video advertising content. This marketing ploy has proven to attract visitors in their thousands. Furthermore, it has also proven to drive traffic into your squeeze page funnels.
As a final analysis, you are exposing and multiplying your marketing efforts in multiple locations on the World Wide Web.
In conclusion, this article has taken about 45 minutes to produce with quality information and hope it has ‘whet your appetite’ in starting or continuing this affiliate marketing journey.
