The most important facts in brief:
- Performance marketing for products with an internet-based affiliate program
- Business affiliate partnership with the advertiser
- "Affiliate" (publisher) refers visitors/buyers via affiliate link to the partner program
- Percentage remuneration on sales
- Different commission models
- Promote services and e-commerce products in the affiliate network
What is affiliate marketing?
Definition: In affiliate marketing, a form of online marketing, publishers earn commissions by presenting products, goods or services to their audience on their own websites and referring visitors via links, whereby the advertising material such as banners, links and images is often provided by the partner (classic example: selection in the Amazon partner network).
How does affiliate marketing work?
In affiliate marketing, partners (affiliates) of companies advertise their products or services as website operators on their own platforms. Affiliates receive a commission for every purchase that is made in this way (pay per sale). This takes place in affiliate networks via special links or codes that assign the sale to the respective affiliate.
This way of working benefits both the companies through increased reach and sales and the affiliates through additional income. Thanks to the flexibility and scalability of affiliate marketing, companies can effectively optimize their marketing and save costs at the same time.
Affiliates, in turn, can generate passive income with comparatively little effort. This win-win situation has led to a real boom in affiliate systems in recent years. More and more companies are relying on affiliate partners to advertise their products or services in a targeted and cost-effective manner.
Typical examples of affiliate marketing strategies
A typical example of affiliate marketing is the blogger who integrates an affiliate link into their blog. If a reader clicks on the link and buys the product, the blogger receives a commission from the supplier of the product. Another variant is banner advertising on a company’s website, which visitors can click on and then possibly make a purchase.
The payment of affiliate partners
There are two ways to pay for clicks on affiliate links:
- Pay/Cost per Click: Every click on the link is paid for
- Pay/Cost per Sale: Payment is only made if a purchase is made
- Influencers with advertising links for their social media channels
- Partner programs from online stores
- Bloggers with product descriptions and reviews
- Online magazines with product placements
- YouTube influencers with links to partner programs
Bloggers often create a classic website and recommend the products of their advertising partners via an advertising link. This naturally results in a commission if sales are generated.
These are the first requirements
In order to do affiliate marketing, you first need a website or a blog on which the affiliate links can be placed. You also need affiliate programs where you can register and generate the corresponding links.
To be successful, it is important to advertise products or services that match the theme of the website and are relevant to the target group. It is also helpful to have basic knowledge of online marketing and SEO in order to increase the reach of your own website.
Another important prerequisite for successful affiliate marketing is to build up a good relationship with your own followers or readers. Because only if they trust the affiliate’s recommendations will they actually click on the affiliate links and, in the best case, buy something.
It is therefore crucial to be authentic and transparent and only advertise products or services that you yourself are convinced of. On top of this, it can be useful to regularly publish interesting content to keep readers active and strengthen loyalty. In this way, you can build a loyal community in the long term that will become loyal customers and thus ensure the long-term success of this business model.
