Affiliate marketing is a way to recruit an army of online promoters with very few out-of-pocket costs. It can be an excellent marketing strategy for retail and informational products. Affiliate marketing works best for ecommerce websites, home-based businesses, exclusively internet-based businesses, and self published authors.
What is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing involves using a marketing system that tracks unique links to your web pages and products. The affiliate is often called the publisher and the business being promoted is often called the advertiser. Usually the affiliate or publisher can join the program for free. The advertiser may have to pay a fee to join the program unless they have their own system. Each affiliate gets their own unique links, or an identifier within their affiliate links. When someone clicks on an affiliate’s link and buys your product, then you’ve made a sale based on the marketing efforts of the affiliate, and the affiliate receives a commission.
Affiliate advertising is the reason why anyone can sell virtually anything online. Many major retail corporations, like Wal-Mart, Target and Kohls, have affiliate programs. Even the largest internet retailer, Amazon, has an affiliate program, which is called the Amazon Associates Program. If you have a website with high traffic, then you could even make money by becoming an affiliate yourself.
Affiliate Commissions
Generally for retail transactions the rate for affiliates is between 1% to 5%. Digital and informational products, like ebooks for download, paid access web pages, software, and videos may have commissions as high as 75% for affiliates. This is still profitable for the author/advertiser because there are virtually no costs per goods sold, no overhead in an internet-based business, and no shipping fees.
Other Options Similar to Affiliate Programs
Affiliate marketing mostly involves link tracking and commissions. Other options for recruiting sales people with little out-of-pocket costs include reseller programs and white labeling. White labeling is an option that allows your sales people to market your product under their own brand.
Can Your Business Use Affiliate Marketing?
Contact your Mirex Marketing representative for a consultation to determine if Affiliate Marketing is a good option for your business.
