How does Affiliate Marketing work ?

Here’s a quick recap of affiliate marketing and its basic concepts. It is important to understand affiliate marketing so that you may become successful when using it as a
practical part of your online business or service.

You don’t have to be a technical expert in the field of affiliate marketing to reap the benefits of it. However, it is essential that you understand of the basic concepts so that
you know what to do, when to do it, and why to do it so that you produce the expected outcome. Your aim should be to understand how affiliate marketing works just as you
would aim to understand how a hammer works when you are hanging a picture.

So, how exactly does affiliate marketing work? First, it begins with a product seller. A product seller is person who has a product but doesn’t know how to drive traffic to their
product or how to convert traffic into actual profit. This person integrates (hyperlinks or banner ads) an affiliate program using a special software. This person’s website has a link
to an affiliate program that is set up using specialized tracking software. Alternatively, this person could sign up with an affiliate network. An affiliate network is a special platform where the network owners recruit both product sellers and affiliate publishers.

Affiliate publishers are individuals who sign up with affiliate programs to obtain affiliate links. Then, the affiliate publishers publish varying types of webpages with varying
content to drive traffic to those pages. When driven traffic clicks on affiliate links, the affiliate network pays the affiliate publisher a commission.

Similarly, this process can work with an affiliate program set up directly by the product seller. The affiliate either advertises a link that drives traffic to it’s content or uses its own
website as a “through-way” to make money via earned commissions.

When a product seller begins using an affiliate network it is important that the network drive traffic to the product seller’s product.

Both the affiliate as well as the product seller should benefit from the partnership. Without an affiliate program, a product seller becomes limited in their ability to drive
traffic. Conversely, without product sellers, affiliates have nothing to promote and therefore nothing from which to gain a commission.

The Problem with Affiliate Marketing.

Although affiliate marketing does offer many benefits it is not an effective strategy when used alone.
Also, there are four problems with affiliate marketing that you should both be aware of and address when developing your own business or personal marketing strategy.
To begin, many products or courses claim to have a proven formula for making YOU money. Many of these do address affiliate marketing by claiming that the course will
coach you as you learn the details of affiliate marketing.

Most of these courses are written by individuals who are paid only to write, but not to research or understand the content about which they are writing. Many of these authors
use the copy and paste method to repackage old, outdated, or even incorrect data then resell this same material time and time again. It is important that the reader of these types of repackaged information and gimmicks be savvy to the ways in which to avoid them! First, the reader should find whether or not the author has a proven sales record, good and unbiased reviews of products or courses, and a thorough personal understanding of any topic about which the author is writing. A second problem that the affiliate marketing sector faces are “unactionable ideas”. It is
common for an affiliate marketer to propose a marketing idea that seems clever, user-friendly, and lucrative but is nothing more than raves and banter about “creating hype”
or “pursuing unlimited possibilities”.

To combat this affiliate marketing problem, the product seller should ensure on his or her own that the idea presented by the affiliate network is both actionable and profitable. For
example, if an affiliate network advertises that it will increase your visibility and traffic if you sign up for a premium package or spend money by paying higher commissions to
the network, it is imperative that you analyze the return on investment as well as the risk to benefit ratio. It might make sense for a multimillion dollar company to spend an extra $100,000 to reap
benefits in excess of that amount while it would be simply foolish for an unknown niche market private company to spend this same amount with the only realistic expectation for improved sales to be around a $25,000 increase in profit. It is ultimately the responsibility of the product seller, not the affiliate, to analyze and decide whether a particular idea is worth the initial money and time investment.

A third challenge to the credibility of many affiliate marketing books, seminars, or courses is the presentation of outdated, obsolete, or antiquated methods for increasing
profitability. In fact, some affiliate marketing seminars and membership sites continue to tout the value of article marketing. Believe it or not, there are still affiliate marketing video guru seminars and membership sites out that tout the financial benefits of article marketing. Those who haven’t been living under a rock or did not suffer from suspended animation for several years would
know that article marketing, at least as practiced in the year 2000, no longer works. However, if you do decide to continue article marketing it is imperative that you use a
Google adapted/adopted technology in order to ensure that you are profitable. This is one example of outdated or obsolete advice and it is sadly only one example of the many
outdated forms of advice.

Finally, and most importantly, one of the main reasons why people who buy the typical affiliate marketing blueprint or coaching system fail to make any money is that these
products or services underplay the importance of traffic. Traffic is crucial. In fact, if you do not know how to drive traffic to your online business you won’t have an online business for long at all. In the current online world, traffic is no luxury, it is an important and crucial need that must be met in order to effectively grow an online business in the current technological period.

Although the importance of traffic one of utmost necessity, many of the heavily acclaimed and hyped affiliate marketing guides immensely underserve the reader by not addressing the solution to the problem. In fact, many times the problem is simply repeated many times without any attempt providing a solution. Well, this is not  guru advice instead this guides  will provide a detailed method about how to effectively use affiliate marketing.

Until Next time…

Cheers

Jake Aswani