Here are some of the common terms associated with affiliate marketing:
- Affiliates: Publishers like you and me who are using affiliate program links to promote and make sales.
- Affiliate marketplace: There are many marketplaces like Shareasale, CJ, and Clickbank. These work as central databases for affiliate programs in different niches.
- Affiliate software: Software used by companies to create an affiliate program for their product.
- Affiliate link: Special tracking link offered by your affiliate program to track the progress of your affiliate promotion.
- Affiliate ID: Similar to the affiliate link, but many affiliate programs offer a unique ID which you can add to any page of the product site.
- Payment mode: Different affiliate programs offer different methods of payment. Example: Cheque, wire transfer, PayPal, and others.
- Affiliate Manager/OPM: Many companies have dedicated affiliate managers to help publishers earn more by giving them optimization tips.
- Commission percentage/amount: The amount or percentage you will be receiving in affiliate income from every sale.
- 2-tier affiliate marketing: This is a great way of making money from an affiliate program. With this method, you recommend that others join affiliate programs, and you receive a commission when a sub-affiliate makes a sale (similar to MLM or multi-level marketing). This income is also known as a sub-affiliate commission.
- Landing pages: A unique product sales or demo page used for the purpose of increasing sales. Most of the programs that you will be promoting have many landing pages, and you can run A/B testing to see which pages convert best for you.
- Custom affiliate income/account: Unlike a generic affiliate account, many companies offer custom affiliate income to people making the most affiliate sales for them.
- Link clocking: Most of the affiliate tracking links are ugly. Using a link clocking technique like URL shorteners, Thirsty Affiliates, etc., you can turn ugly links into links that can be read and understood by your readers.
- Custom coupons: Many programs allow affiliates to create custom coupons which are also used to track sales. Custom discount coupons help you to increase affiliate sales as well.
For companies offering an affiliate program, this is one of the best ways to receive free promotion, thus saving substantially on advertising.
For example, whenever you see coupons or discount links, most of the time these are affiliate links, and when you make a purchase, webmasters make money.
Every affiliate program has a set TOS.
For example, payout condition, cookie policy and so on.
Let me explain cookie policy as it’s an intermediate-level topic but will give you an idea about the possibilities of affiliate marketing.
Many of the affiliate products offer a 30-150 days cookie period, which means that if a visitor clicks your affiliate link to land on an affiliate product, now even if they don’t buy anything immediately but re-visit the site in the next 30-150 days, you will earn an affiliate commission.
How to find a new Affiliate Program to join?
Finding a new affiliate program is challenging, and if you do it right, you will increase your chances of earning huge.
Here are a few ways to find new affiliate programs:
- Affiliate Network and marketing platform: There are affiliate networks and marketplaces that would help you find new affiliate programs.
- Affiliatizer: This is a chrome addon that would help you find the new affiliate program.
- Competitor analysis: Analyze the top websites in the niche you are targeting, and make a list of affiliate products they promote. This will help you find high-value and profitable affiliate products.
Moving on…
