What is an "Affiliate Program", (and How Does It Work?)

blog cover image
35
5.4K followers
Updated

What Is an Affiliate⁷7 Program? (And How Does it Work?)

If you are new to the idea of Affiliate Programs or want to understand more about how they work: Just follow along for a few great examples. The affiliate program tool at Wealthy Affiliate came out this year, and people are using this along with Jaaxy Keyword Research.

This combination of combining tools together or cross-referencing allows discovery of specific details to help prioritize affiliate opportunities. It can also direct visitors with search engine optimization on your writing to your blog, making greater opportunities to gain clients, website followers or blog subscribers.

Along with your investigation, it is a good idea to quickly cross-reference to Ubersuggest and pay a visit to People Also Ask for ideas on creating content to fit your audience. Come up with a method that works the best for your content by trial and error of split testing.

For example, make a process with Jaaxy and a quick cross reference for Ubersuggest to get a look at other posts ranking similarly. Try this method compared to only checking keywords on Jaaxy tools. If the added Ubersuggest makes a difference with the amount of conversions, then continue this proven process.

This thought process may sound complicated if you do not have the baseline understanding of what an affiliate marketer is or how the programs work.

An affiliate program works based on commissions, and sending people with interest. The company offers the affiliate payments, that is a set amount or percentage of the sale made of products or memberships.

Content is made by marketers, although this is not the only kind of affiliate marketer. Relevant content may help website visitors decide to join the affiliate program, if they are interested in promoting it. Otherwise, the intent of the message would be to purchase, sign up or join the email list for getting newsletters.

All of your content has to be written in a way that is easy to understand. This ensures greater understanding by all levels of reading ability.

It helps to be supportive and answer questions in comments or include the answers to popular questions in future publications.

Another consideration is whether a website is needed for affiliate marketing. In short, the answer is yes. While email marketing is an important part of building your brand and getting your work out there, a website ultimately is needed for affiliate marketing.

Affiliate marketing can be performed in various ways, but the best idea is to be transparent. Programs may require a statement that the post contains affiliate links.

On the production and manufacture side, less affiliate commissions may be offered for products which take a larger amount to produce. If it is a digital product, the affiliate commissions are often agreed upon higher rates for the marketer.

The cost of the products and services is considered to have marketing included, so the price does not go up for the consumers.

In order to offer an affiliate program, the business owner may use a plugin to track cost per impression and conversion type advertisement. If it sounds complicated, it can be if you go about it blindly.

To determine whether it would be successful having your own affiliate program, you can do some research for your competition.

But you do not need to feel alone when business coaches can help direct an organized approach.

Jay, the famous gymnast is a Wealthy Affiliate Live Coach and an influencer in the affiliate marketing field. He recently produced a live training to test the water so to speak, and find out if and how others are having luck or what kind of campaigns are working for them.

I highly suggest you see Jay's video: Researching Competition...

While competition is a great resource for information, it can be a great partnership rather than an actual competition. Many brands really complement one another, and duplications are not favorable because the cookie cutter approach is a form of plagiarism. It is not an ethical marketing practice.

You really want to shine a light on what similar companies are doing, as this can help uncover the standard. Such as, it is a universal standard to negotiate on the affiliate marketer side in order to avoid being paid on an unfair scale.

Jay is presenting another live training soon, Getting Started With Instagram.

While getting started is a far cry from influencer status, many of Jay's tools can transfer to be used on other internet platforms. And the education, mentoring and support continue to help achieve influence status. The influencer role frequently precedes large growth in sales. The key is finding where your niche fits, the people whose problem you're solving or needs you meet with your product.

Affiliate program creators can use a plugin for building their program. Many use a marketing network, which can often cost a portion for the affiliate marketer.

It was only 5 years ago, 16.5 $ Billion dollars in sales were driven through the websphere of affiliate marketing. This arena generates 10% growth yearly, but there are various statistics and different projections if you look at statistics.

The overall trend is growth, and there are a number of training programs out there. An affiliate marketer can make an effort to become an influencer on platforms such as:

1) Linked in- Business networking and link sharing.

2) You Tube- Video publications on channels of interest.

3) Facebook- Messenger and posting abilities, free and paid ads.

4) Instagram-This can be a great area to test out your niche for engagement on similar topics.

5) Twitter- Tweeting is the term for posting on this site.

6) Pinterest-a more pictorial platform which engages traffic by visualization. The downside of Pinterest could be accessibility of the community and information for those whom are visually impaired.

Other online networking platforms for affiliate marketers.

You can look for online forums and affiliate networking to find more clients who have interest in your product or service. Many affiliate marketers write reviews, which can be searched for and cited as a reference or link on a similar topic blog.

Regardless of the areas for advertisement, implement the tactics which prove successful in the places you are most established online. When you complete training for Instagram, then also consider which of these methods may work in other areas.

One thing affiliate marketers have to ask themselves is how will I track the sales?

Google Analytics, Bing Webmaster Tools, Ubersuggest, and Google Search Console are great resources to keep tabs on your visitor behaviors. This is a worthwhile strategy to help identify the best marketing strategies and microcultures to cater to. These research efforts help focus advertising on a smaller number of visitors with more liklihood for conversion. Google Analytics and Search console can be linked together and carry data for multiple sites.

Another question to consider: What kind of people do I want to network with? It is not necessary to settle on groups without similar interests because with current searching abilities, existing cohorts can easily be found.

Funny (WTF) About Funnels

The funny thing about sales funnels: Businesses with affiliate programs demonstrate understanding of the anatomy and physiology of these funny things we call funnels also have a higher potential for success.

For en explanation, I will describe the polar opposite of a functional funnel, and call it the whirlywind tornado (WT).

This virtual catastrophe creature WT is formatted to whip out info with no regard to the customer, no point or relevance, it has a splatterspam feature that simply wreaks havoc on emailers who would like to read things which pertain to them.

The unsuspecting victim of WT opens the email, then a loud annoying video like a 3am commercial for bunion bandaids pops up and the cascade of events like chemical reactions takes place.

All of a sudden, they bounce the advertisement or landing page in the blink of an eye, a little disgruntled because you have wasted their time and irritated to the point it left a bad spam after taste, with the backwind of breath smelling like bad underarms and raunchy meatloaf. Of course they don't want to read the other rotten balogna on the badly built unwelcoming website with illegible fonts and freaky blinking banners like a bad neon sign that is flickering out of fashion.

The WT spins out of control, light spiraling like fireworks in the windy nerd forest inspired strobe lights. A WT is not understanding the needs of their visitors and the physiology results in an unsuccessful affiliate program. The only way to salvage is take a look and turn that thing inside out by starting with an intent and strategy for your plan.

The strategy you create can place the business in a position of success. Who know's, you may create the world's first Whirlwind Tornado Funnel (WTF).

Imagine, a WTF built with the knowledge that starting out halfhazardly can leave a bad taste in people's mouth. Those are the people who you need to like your brand in order to achieve success in business.

One of the most recognized constultants in my field told me this morning..."Becca, Don't let that one experience paint your world." (Vickie Milazzo)

I would like to consider One More Cup of Coffee thoughts on a review related to Empower Network. This is a website reviewed by a Wealthy Affiliate member named Nathaniel, who dislikes MLM type companies. An MLM is also known as a pyramid scheme.

A legitimate affiliate program is not an MLM scheme. All kinds of sales tactics use funnels, as in our picture. The graphic depicting a funnel is an idea representing marketers working on a time frame that fits the customer's unique needs. This basically attracts people who can then convert sales by returning for more pertinent information.

I remember it was my first time learning what an MLM scam is all about, and you can take a look at Nathanielle's article to review the details, called Empower Network Review: Last Year's Hottest Scam.

My first experience and discovery of Empower Network occurred while I was going through the impact on my life of the death of my mom.

After she passed, I looking for support, distraction and work on the internet.

I found the Vickie Milazzo Institute, and benefited greatly from reading the book "Wicked Success is Inside Every Woman." This is a great resource, and helped me immensely.

Then started on the career path for CLNC, gaining every bit of knowledge from the best experts, Brittney Wilson-Nerdy Nurse, Pat Iyer, Vicki Milazzo, Janice Dolnick, Erica Leach, and Elle Pierson.

With the education of these resources combined, I highly recommend all affiliate marketers and program builders perform research other niche markets to see what methods of growing a brand influence.

What marketing campaigns may appeal to customers in other niche markets?

The quality insight and looking at popular campaigns for driving sales will benefit every specialty and areas learned in this endeavor are transferrable across other fields of marketing.

I believe that Pat Iyer's podcast demonstrated the 3D marketing mailers and ideas like that can be tranferrable to other kinds online advertising. The premise of this type of campaign is like the interview revealed, people open the lumpy mail because it stands out. It makes a memorable impression.

Wealthy Affiliate is not MLM!

The Empower Network scam gave an experience that made me wonder if Wealthy Affiliate is the same type of sour meatloafy balogna deal where the boss steps out after the scheme is no longer viable.

It is exposed and uncovered to be what it was, and the transparency created the poor reviews. Empower Network was marketed as a way to blog and refer other members, but did not teach the real anatomy and physiology of marketing.

Then they had a public breakdown of leadership.

On the contrary, The owners of Wealthy Affiliate are dedicated to respectable business practice. They are 2 well known influencers, Kyle and Carson. These are the gentlemen who are responsible for an entire 1.8 million large community.

I have seen an accountability for the community demonstrated by this leader on an ongoing basis. In fact, it has even required Kyle's presence in court to fight MOBE who exploited members then filed complaint based on Kyle's reviews. Other Wealthy Affiliate members came to similar conclusions, not recommending a service based upon poor practices which did not protect consumers.

The case was interesting to review and streamline into a teaching inservice based upon integrating knowledge from lawsuits into learning opportunities.

Reading Kyle's Wealthy Affiliate Lawsuit encouraged a transfer of the concept to use lawsuit transcripts in order to create trainings, as you can do with marketing ideas: Ask how it can be used on other platforms or the idea incorporated into your marketing territory.

Kyle also has spent enormous piles of time to work ongoing with this team and community to offer support in the way of live chat, webinars, tutorials, coaching and mentoring. He is constantly curating serious marketers to build relationships with clients based on trust and absolutely the positive experiences of service.

Kyle and Jay, along with many members all build training to help one another in business, reaching out to all members who blog to create them to do so with care for the visitors on your website. Jay has taught email marketing, creating campaigns across all venues in the internet world, how to make SEO and content creation build and monitor streams of traffic.

Subcontracting in consulting is similar in some ways to affiliate marketing. Contemplating this similarity did spark these thoughts to share with you:

The less than fantastic experiences should not paint your world!

If you have had unsuccessful adventures, you will still want to try out Wealthy Affiliate. The bitterness of being a victim of programs created to take advantage of people should not spoil your future adventures.

Crazy Egg Argument

In a blog from a few years ago the author pointed out that we did not have a place for the affiliate programs, and little did they know this identified a need.

Today, that need is filled with a genius design of the affiliate programs feature on Wealthy Affiliate.

Here, marketers can keep track of affiliate programs and find examples from other successful programs. The ability to do this not exist just a few years ago. When online growth keeps expanding, this tool called affiliate program is designed to stay organized. And help approach from the affiliate marketer side of the online world.

Businesses who would like to host their own programs can also have their company listed on Wealthy Affiliate Programs by emailing kyle@wealthyaffiliate.com.

Login
Create Your Free Wealthy Affiliate Account Today!
icon
4-Steps to Success Class
icon
One Profit Ready Website
icon
Market Research & Analysis Tools
icon
Millionaire Mentorship
icon
Core “Business Start Up” Training

Recent Comments

12

More awesome training! Thanks, Becca.

Brian

You're welcome of course Brian

When you walk into a library or a bookstore there are going to be many things and items that you are going to encounter, view, and come in contact with along the way, but there is one thing that you are obviously going to come in content with for obvious reasons. That one thing that you are going to encounter are books, lots and lots of books and in some cases, you many even see mountains of books.

There are lots of people that read and every reads for a different reasons and a different purpose in life

What is the purpose of a book? There is one thing that every book has in common , and that is to provide and tell a story. What type of story is it telling? It all depends on the book.
There are books for entertainment,
there are books for education
there are books for information.
there are books for inspiration
there are books for motivation.
There could be many other stories a book can provide to us, these are just a few examples, use your imagination.

If you will notice that word information and education are separated from one another. That is because they are not the same words. They sound completely identical to one another but they are completely different from one another.

There are many different types of affiliate marketers all over the globe. Every affiliate marketers provides a story, with what they are promoting. The purpose of that story is to provide the audience with the proper feedback for the audience to make their decision to corrective action to take.

There are affiliate marketers everywhere we go in life - in not only the online world but the offline world as well. Take some of your companies such as walmart, kroger, amazon (abviously), best buy, the list is endless, these are all affiliate marketers they are just providing a different way of telling a story.

When you walk in a store or you go into amazon, these are all affiliates. When you look at the name brand, that name brand is who the maker of the product is and they are focused more on product and or services, they let their affiliates such as walmart, kroger, amazon provide the story. How can walmart provide a story? displays, buy one get one free, 30 day money back gar. these types of things provide a story, they just provide that story in a different way of doing so.

When you understand your visitors and you understand what it is they are looking for and how you can provide quality and value in and easy to understand format, you are going to be able to tell your story and draw your audience even closer to you, and you know what happens when you go into a business and you see a groups gathering with an audience, It is a natural instinct to want to walk over to that group of gather to see what everything is about. That is a marketer telling and informing and education their audience with their story.

I want to refer back to the tree analogy for a moment. I love using trees. Why trees? Because trees are of the essentials of the life of the world, they are the life of life. There is a lot of information and education that are in trees, we can learn a lot from studying. Every tree tells a story - which leaf from with tree do you want to start with, but there is one thing to keep in mind, look at the tree before you look at the mountain. Study the tree before you study the mountain.

This works the same way with the library and bookstore. See the book before you see the library. Study the book, before you study the library. Then bring your stories to life, by telling and sharing with others your own. Every story has a gift, and that gift is to solve the problem, or to find the solutions to what your audience is looking for.

Nurse Becca, each and every time you create a post, you tell a story that provides your audience with the proper education to expend and expand their affiliate marketing success stories.

Thank you for your stories!! :)
Sincerely,
Ronnie

Nothing in life is free!! It takes money to make money

Thank you ☺🎁

That's true dude

Wacky and fun article, gotta love your witty writing humor.

😁 thank you dearheart

Ace article, well done

you have given me lots of ideas on how to write the blog.

Now to attempt writing mine!!

That is great! Go for it🙂🙂🙂

Great article.

Thank you!

See more comments

Login
Create Your Free Wealthy Affiliate Account Today!
icon
4-Steps to Success Class
icon
One Profit Ready Website
icon
Market Research & Analysis Tools
icon
Millionaire Mentorship
icon
Core “Business Start Up” Training