Affiliate marketing is quickly becoming a popular method of increasing traffic or sales for a business. The concept behind it is incredibly simple; your business pays someone (be it an individual or a website) to refer people to your site.
The party doing the referring is known as the affiliate, and their money comes in the form of a commission whenever there’s a successful referral.
Many people are keen to know how to utilize this marketing tactic to try and generate more sales. Likewise, many individuals are interested in becoming affiliates to try and earn some extra money on the side. But, there’s a lot of the affiliate marketing industry that’s hidden from view and kept secret.
Today’s article is doing to help anyone interested in affiliate marketing by revealing some of the dirtiest little secrets from within the industry. Have a read of the information down below to find out everything you need to know:
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1. Time Limits Can Be Set On Commission
Most people believe that commission only gets paid if someone clicks on an affiliate link and then buys the product right away. This isn’t the case, there are actually time limits and complications regarding commission and when it gets paid.
Often, the affiliate link remains valid for a period of time after it’s been clicked. For example, if someone clicks an affiliate link, doesn’t buy the product immediately, then goes back and buys it the next day, the commission could still be paid. There are even cases where the link remains valid for 30 days or more.
Ultimately, it all comes down to the company selling the product, and what they choose to do. There are some businesses that are quite clever with this, and they do set a low time limit.
They do this because once someone has clicked on a link, they’re on the company’s website. This makes them a lead, and there’s every chance they might not buy the product now, but they could come back in a few hours.
So, if you make it so commission only gets paid if the product is bought within an hour or so, your company can save money if it gets bought after the time is up. You still receive the benefit of affiliate promotion, but get away without paying commission.
2. Social Media Is The Way Forward
There are many ways you can use affiliates to promote your products. When affiliate marketing first took off, everyone would seek out bloggers to help with the promotion.
The idea was simple, a blogger writes a post, and includes a link to your product which their audience can click. Seeing as they already have an audience, it seemed like the perfect match. This worked for a while before companies found they weren’t getting many clicks via these links.
Now, the affiliate marketing industry is very much social. What people within the industry don’t reveal is that they do a lot of their work through social media. The rise of the social media celeb has allowed companies to take a new approach.
There are people on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and YouTube, all with hundreds of thousands, sometimes even millions of followers. Consequently, these are the people you can use to get more out an affiliate marketing campaign. By getting social media influencers to sign up and share your links, it increases the chances of getting clicks, which helps increase the potential for boosting sales.
A social media influencer can include your link in their bio, and it’s always there for people to see and click whenever they visit their page. It’s simply the more effective way of doing things now, but not a lot of people outside the affiliate marketing industry know this.
3. Affiliate Marketing Doesn’t Convert Leads
One of the biggest secrets in the affiliate marketing industry is that this method doesn’t automatically convert leads. There are many businesses and individuals out there that get sucked into believing this is the case.
They assume that by getting links and products promoted/shared, it means people will click the link and buy the product right away.
This isn’t the case at all. Everyone within the affiliate marketing industry knows it’s a lead generation tool. Your affiliates promote your products and put them out there to attract leads. Someone can click on a link purely because they’re interested, it doesn’t mean they’ll buy it.
The onus is on you to ensure people buy the product when they click the link. To do this, you need great landing pages that entice the user and make them feel like they need the product.
There should be plenty of high-quality images of the product, and possibly even a video demonstrating it too. Don’t be fooled into thinking your job is done simply by finding affiliates. It all comes down to your landing page if you want to convert.
4. Communication With Affiliates Is Everything
People within the affiliate marketing industry understand that communication is very important. When you look at this whole idea, it’s really the business that benefits the most. You will earn far more money and gain a lot more from it than the affiliate. Bearing that in mind, they can easily walk away whenever they want.
This is where communication comes in, as you have to make them feel valued. You need to spend the time to send out personal emails and messages to your affiliates thanking them for their hard work and updating them with any info.
This almost makes them feel like they’re part of your company, and a connection can grow between you that encourages them to stay. Communication helps you retain affiliates, meaning you don’t have to worry about some dropping out or leaving.
There you have it; four dirty little secrets about the affiliate marketing industry. These are some of the things you don’t get to hear about as they’re kept behind closed doors. By revealing them, you now know some tactics and ideas to help you get more out of an affiliate marketing campaign.
Source: CHARLES LEVEILLEE
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