What is Affiliate Marketing? Step by Step Guide

Affiliate marketing has helped hundreds and thousands of ordinary people to become millionaires. It has been one of the very successful businesses of modern day. The successful marketers who have mastered the art of affiliate Marketing have earned a lot. But the question remains, what is affiliate marketing? And what are the terms you should know about affiliate marketing before starting your own business as an affiliate marketer, either as an affiliate or a merchant.

What is Affiliate Marketing? Step by Step Guide

It is the process of promoting someone’s products or services by introducing them to the potential customers, generating big sales for organization and earning commission on these promoted products. 

In this article I am going to discuss with you a step by step guide to Affiliate Marketing. For an online affiliate marketer, mainly four things combine to make a cycle of affiliate marketing.

A Website

A website containing products and their reviews called an affiliate website is the first requirement for an affiliate marketer. The website doesn't really have to have product reviews in it but does have to be product related so you can generate sales.

If your product placement is not good you might not generate sales. Also, if your placed product and website genre, you might not get sales and leads. Don't know what these advertising terms mean? Read this.

Related: Beginner's Guide: Define Ad terms and Ads definitions

Ad Suppliers

Firstly what are Suppliers in Affiliate Marketing? Suppliers are people who supply these product to you so that you may sell them. In online affiliate marketing, ad suppliers are websites that give away ad code for a certain product that you place on your website.

These websites maintain a track record of ad activity through cookies. They are basically called an affiliate network.

Related: Websites to help you earn from your Blog

The Affiliate Networks are the one that drop cookies on buyer’s browser to keep track of products sales and purchases. When any client clicks on any advertisement published on the affiliate's website, it sends record of that customer's sales to the affiliate network. The affiliate network maintains a record of sales and clicks of every purchase made by that affiliate's website.

Related: Biggest Ad networks for Publishers

Buyer

The one who buys the product called buyer. He does it by clicking the ad on your website and making a purchase on the subsequent link.

Affiliates

The commission receivers who receive commissions for sales generated are called Affiliates or Affiliate Marketers. The affiliate owns the website and allows different people from different affiliate networks to make sales by using that website.

Two main rules of affiliate marketing

• Only recommend that product to a buyer whose quality is best and you being an affiliate marketer, are aware of it. This will build a trust level between you and your client.
• Never force someone to buy the product, just give good recommendations based upon your experience.

The best way is to describe the product's use and write a few lines of reviews from different sources. However, writing your own review will help a lot. It builds trust among you and your client.

Affiliate Marketing is not about becoming an affiliate, you can even become a merchant and make your own products and sell it through your own sources or different affiliates. Here's a step by step guide for you to become an Affiliate Merchant.

Related: Biggest Ad networks for Publishers

Step by step guide for becoming an Affiliate Merchant

An affiliate merchant is a person who creates a product and sells it online. They are usually called merchants. As affiliates get a commission for each sale made, merchant get a bulky sum for each sale. For a merchant there is always a pool of affiliates waiting to sell his product.

If you want to become an affiliate merchant, you must make a nice and worthy product to sell. To create a worthy product follow these steps:

You must possess whole knowledge about your product

Having little know-how or incomplete know-how of a product you are making and selling online will not only be a major let down but it will also damage your reputation as a merchant. Having complete knowledge of a product will give you a better chance of selling it to the right type of audience.

You must validate your idea among people

You must validate your idea among people, make the concept about your idea in peoples mind crystal clear, so that they can support your idea. Get reviews for your product from your close ones and make appropriate changes so your product becomes worthy of selling online.

A physical product must exist

A physical product must exist against your idea. Either it is something physical or a coded file which you programmed. In online market usually it is a software which consists of a series of codes that are executed to perform a specific task or something physical like a lighting lamp or a table, etc.

Selling fake products will get you into trouble and make a problem for you if you want to become a long time affiliate merchant.

You need to promote it among people

Once you have created your physical idea now you need to promote it among people. You can do it using an affiliate network but you should also use your own networks to get more sales. Here is a list of biggest ad networks to sell your product.

Tips for becoming an Affiliate Market Success

Becoming an affiliate marketing success requires hard work and a lot of technical know-how. These are some basic tips for becoming an affiliate market success for both as an affiliate and a merchant.

There are a lot of people on the internet buying new products everyday. You need to make marketing strategies for your product for it to perform outstandingly against other products of the same category. You need to follow the following steps for becoming an affiliate market success.

Related: Biggest Ad networks for Publishers

Generating ideas for physical products

Ideas are always easy to generate because they are random. However, if you want your idea to be unique it must be validated among your clients. You need to ponder and think slightly hard and brainstorm ideas as much as you can before starting to make a product happen.

You can also ponder upon what products are already in market and how you can improve them and make something that helps users from all over the internet.

Validating your idea

With the help of the internet you can easily validate your idea about business products. You need to validate your idea before you start working on it.

You can use social media and other websites or make a youtube video to spread the idea of your product. Make a youtube video, SEO it and post it on your social media. This way you can spread your idea easily. Interested people will contact you. Just fix the product according to their requirements.

Don't forget to write terms and conditions with required amount before selling your product.

Creating the actual product

Now there are tons of ideas throughout the internet. Also there are so many tools which can help you generate your product. You can take crash courses that will guide you on how to create that product. Also its variations which will be accepted among people as a different version of your original product.

For example you can create e-books, write any research paper or make any software. It all depends upon your skill set.

Finding your affiliate partner

Now find your affiliate partner in market who can actually promote your product and fix his commission. You don't always have to go to a high profile affiliate network. You can use freelancing platforms and social media groups to find the ideal candidates for spreading your product among people of your product's niche.

Related: Biggest Ad networks for Publishers

However if you want to do it yourself and also have someone else spread your product. Follow these steps:

Steps for becoming an Affiliate Market Partner

If someone calls you personally on your freelancer gig or contacts you through your social media accounts asking for help regarding a product that isn't selling as well as it should. Here's how you can help him as an affiliate.

• You need to review all your products under the niche by using YouTube or your blog/website or any other source or even social media. 
• Prepare a list of emails of your contacts so that you can email product related information to them about the product.
• Once you start getting sales and start growing you can create links of your own “paying per click advertisements”.

Conclusion

I hope you know what is affiliate marketing now. I have written a lot of different post regarding affiliate marketing here on Ali Khan Blogs - SEO Blogger, you can search for them if you want to. I will be writing more on these sorts of articles and don't forget to follow my blog on facebook.