What is Affiliate Marketing?
You’ve likely seen social media influencers create posts and videos about products they love, but did you know that they get paid every time you purchase a product they recommend? This is called affiliate marketing and it’s one of the most profitable marketing methods today.
Many people falsely believe that they need a large social media following or vast marketing experience to become an affiliate, but anyone can make money as an affiliate if they use the right strategies. Here’s how:
Affiliate marketing happens when an affiliate, i.e., you, an influencer, or even another company, shares a product or service with others through a unique link to a company’s website. A percentage of any sale made through the link is given to the affiliate.
For example, if you love a specific t-shirt and want everyone to know how much better it is than other t-shirts, you could become an affiliate for that brand. You would sign up for the brand’s affiliate program, get your own unique link to the product, and share the link with your friends, family, social media followers, etc. Sometimes affiliate programs even offer discounts for individuals purchasing through an affiliate link. You’ll get paid every time someone makes a purchase using your link, and you’ll get the satisfaction of sharing one of your favorite products.
Affiliate marketing requires three parties:
- The company to provide the product or service
- The affiliate to promote the product or service
- The consumers to purchase the product or service
Occasionally there is a fourth party: An affiliate marketplace. Affiliate marketplaces are like the eBay or Amazon of affiliate marketing. Companies list their offers in affiliate marketplaces and affiliates use the marketplaces to compare and choose offers that align with their interests and goals.
Why become an affiliate?
There are many reasons for affiliate marketing’s recent rise in popularity. Here are a few:
- Easy to start
Becoming an affiliate is as easy as finding an offer to promote and deciding how to share it with your audience. Affiliate marketplaces are a great place to start. They make the process of finding offers even easier by listing thousands of offers in one place. This way, you can quickly find companies that share your same values.
- Low-risk
Companies frequently provide a script and the other assets you’ll need to market their product. You don’t have to deal with creating marketing material, working with customers, or manufacturing or shipping products. You simply share the company’s content with your audience, and start collecting your commission.
- Little to no experience necessary
Anyone can be an affiliate! You aren’t required to have a large following or specific training to join most affiliate programs. You can learn as you go with the brands there to support you!
- Wide variety of options
With nearly 80% of companies doing some type of affiliate marketing, there’s an affiliate offer for every affiliate marketer and for every type of product: Digital, physical, service, etc. You’ll never have to worry about being able to find companies you love
- Lucrative
Companies typically offer 25-75% commission for every product sold. Because products are sold in a wide range of prices, affiliates can earn anywhere from $1 to over $1000 for each sale. In addition, affiliate marketing requires little to no capital from the affiliate so it has unbeatable profit margins.
- Passive income
When you share your unique affiliate link in your YouTube videos, blog posts, emails, social media posts, etc., you are giving people a way to buy products from your link at any time. That means you can be making money while you do the dishes, walk your dog, work at another job, or anything else! As you grow your platform, you will be able to promote products and receive large volumes of sales without much work after the initial ad.
- Flexibility
Affiliate marketing can be done anywhere and anytime, so it compliments any schedule.
These are only a few of the incredible benefits you can gain from starting affiliate marketing. It could change your life! Are you ready to get started?
Getting started with affiliate marketing
- Find your niche.
Do you love travel, reading, gardening, or painting? Maybe you’re really interested in cleaning and organization, or fixing up old cars. Just how there are companies who sell every type of product, there are countless people in the world who share your same interests and would love to read and watch content from you. If you already have an audience, great! If you don’t, no problem! Create a social media account, blog, email list, etc., and start creating all types of content. Your audience will come naturally.
- Pick affiliate offers
Decide where you are going to find products and services to advertise to your audience. There are two main options for this: First, go straight to a company you admire and join their affiliate program directly, or second, join an affiliate marketplace and choose from their selection of companies and offers.
- Start promoting
Most affiliate programs already have marketing materials ready for you to send to your audience or post on your platform. Once your affiliate link is created, you can start promoting those materials however you want!
From there, it’s all a matter of tracking your campaigns, growing your audience, and collecting that commission.
Looking for an offer to start with? If you’re passionate about ecommerce, print on demand, and/or making automated income, consider joining Quadra’s affiliate program!
Quadra affiliates promote Quadra’s free masterclass. During the free masterclass we teach the strategies our founders used to create a 7-figure ecommerce business and showcase Quadra Pro, a platform where ecommerce sellers can get valuable and ongoing ecommerce and print on demand trainings, low pricing on unique, customizable products, and a library of high-converting product designs.
To make the process easier for you, we’ve already created the masterclass and all the marketing materials you’ll need to share it with your audience. All you have to do is send them your unique affiliate link.
The auto-webinar has a 41% show-up rate and a 15% conversion rate on cold traffic. This means that 15% of people who have never heard of Quadra watch the webinar and purchase the product. This is a much higher conversion rate than most products in our space which means you have a high chance of making commissions, even if you don’t have a large audience yet.
You’ll earn 50% of sales generated through your affiliate link throughout our entire funnel. That’s up to $662 in commissions for each person who purchases from your link!
Affiliate marketing is a low risk, effective way to have another source of income. If you want more help getting started, click here to check out Quadra’s affiliate program.