Affiliate Marketing Made Simple
Passive income being the dream of making money while you sleep. This is not about what is and what isn’t passive income, but for many affiliate marketing is their first step into getting started.
So what is affiliate marketing?
The basic idea is that you promote a product or service and earn commission if people buy the product or service. Historically this was only done through affiliate networks of which we will talk about later, but as the industry has evolved many larger service or product suppliers are crafting their own affiliate programmes.
The concept behind affiliate marketing is revenue sharing. If you want to sell more of your product or service, your promoters (affiliates) have a financial incentive through the affiliate program that you put together.
There are 3 component parts to affiliate marketing eco-system that need to work in order for it to be a viable revenue source.
1. The Merchant
The merchant is the party who has created the product or service. It can be a large company that already exists or an entrepreneur who sells an online course. The only requirement is a product to sell.
2. The Affiliate
The person who promotes the product or service to earn the
commission.
The affiliate is where the marketing takes place, to bridge the gap between merchant and consumer.
The key part for any affiliate is that you must have the marketing or the audience available to attract consumers to buy.
3. The Consumer
With this part of the eco-system, you have no-one to purchase the product or service and therefore do not make commission. It is your choice whether to make affiliate links to this audience transparent or not, although the ASA and other bodies have tightened up the regulations on disclosing this.
There is another part that can be included in the affiliate eco-system and that is the network.
You do not need to use a network, but it is the easiest way to start affiliate marketing. Indeed some brands only work through an affiliate network, so you can’t earn affiliate commission if you are not registered with that network.
To begin earning commissions from other products and services, you will need to sign up to affiliate networks. Below is a list of top affiliate networks. Before signing up check which merchants use this platform and check for alignment in the brands/ products/ services you want to promote.
Affiliate Networks
Reward Style https://about.rewardstyle.com/
Amazon Associates https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/
ShareASale https://www.shareasale.com/
CJ Affiliate https://www.cj.com/
Rakuten Marketing https://rakutenadvertising.com/
Click Bank https://www.clickbank.com/
FlexOffers https://www.flexoffers.com/
Peerfly https://peerfly.com/
eBay Partner Network https://partnernetwork.ebay.com/
