What Is Affiliate Marketing And How To Get Started

What Is Affiliate Marketing And How To Get Started? As an online novice who’d crashed out of ‘old School’ offline Network Marketing, these were 2 questions I asked myself when I came across concept of affiliate marketing while I was looking on the web for a better alternative.

If you’re an aspiring but inexperienced online ‘Wantrepreneur’ looking at Affiliate Marketing like I was without much prior knowledge, you are probably asking yourself the same questions.

Don’t worry, it can be confusing at first but in this post I will hopefully give you some clarity and answer some or all of the other questions that you may have in your mind.

My name’s Richard Brennan and my aim in this post is to give you a comprehensive overview of the Affiliate Marketing industry in easy to understand layman’s terms.

I will also show you how you can get started straight away with your own Affiliate Marketing business and learn how to do it properly with essential, high quality but simple to follow training.

You can read all about it here.

What Is Affiliate Marketing, Exactly?

Put very simply, Affiliate Marketing is promoting someone else’s products or services in return for a commission, without actually ‘selling’ anything.

Have you ever bought a product or service through a personal recommendation, or have you recommended a product or service to someone else?

Let’s say, for example, your friend tells you about this amazing new restaurant that’s opened in town, so you decide to go and try it out for yourself.

Did your friend get a percentage of your bill paid to them as a commission?

And because you liked it so much, you go and tell another of your friends, who also goes and eats there.

Did the restaurant give you a commission on their bill?

No, of course not!

However, you got that restaurant some extra business they would not have got had you not recommended to your friends that they go and try it out, just like the person who recommended it to you did.

The Affiliate is the link between the Supplier and the Customer.

You, as an Affiliate, promote a product or service – and it can be by word of mouth, social media or via your own blog – a Customer buys the product or service and the Supplier pays you a commission.

They also hold the stock and take care of the shipping and delivery so that you don’t have to!

And that, my friend, is the essence of Affiliate Marketing. Simple, isn’t it?

You And The Online Retail Revolution

The World Wide Web has really revolutionized the way people shop and how retailers get their products in front of Customers. As a result, Affiliate Marketing has evolved from being merely a way companies expand their reach online to being the very essence of their brand!

The most obvious example of an online retailer is, of course, AMAZON.

It is highly probable that YOU will have bought something via the Amazon website at some time. When you did this, it is almost certain that you were taken to the sales page via an ‘Affiliate Link’ and the Affiliate would have earned a percentage commission on your purchase.

Amazon now have around 500,000,000 (yes – half a billion!) products and a network of thousands of Affiliates throughout the World promoting those products via their Affiliate program ‘Amazon Associates’. And it’s not only Amazon. They’re just the first one that springs to mind.

Check out the snapshot here of how Americans shopped in 2018.

And it’s not just happening in America – it’s Global!

Roughly half of Smartphone users currently make purchases through their device and the trend is moving rapidly upwards.

In fact, all major online brands – Apple, BestBuy, Hotels Combined, Trip Advisor, Virgin and many more are now being built by Affiliate Marketing!

 

There are literally hundreds of thousands of affiliate programs to chose from which pay commissions of up to 75% for sales of products which are then shipped directly from the Supplier to the Customer. The Affiliate doesn’t actually handle the product at all!

The advantage to the Retailer is that most of the expensive overheads associated with the traditional Retail Supply Chain, such as Sales & Marketing ‘middle men’, expensive advertizing and of course High Street shops which have to be rented, staffed, heated, lit, stocked, etc, have now been replaced by individual independent, home based Affiliates who are paid on a Sale Only basis.

This saves the Supplier a fortune, which can then be used to keep prices down and pay commissions to the Affiliates who bring in the sales.

The Advantage to YOU as an Affiliate is that you can own and run you own business, set up for you at source, and earn commissions without having to develop, produce, stock or ship your own products or services or cope with any of the headaches that come with a traditional ‘bricks and mortar’ business.

And you can do all of this from the comfort of your own home, when it’s convenient for you!

The Affiliate Marketing industry is set to be
worth over $7 Billion by the end of 2020!

That is going to be a huge tidal wave. Just imagine yourself being stood in front of it and being picked up and swept along! There are products and services that YOU use every day whose Suppliers will have their own Affiliate programs.

Some of these will relate to your own interests, so why not turn your passions into profit?

Find out how you can do it FOR FREE here!

Why Affiliate Marketing Is Here To Stay

Companies are always looking for ways to reduce costs and overheads, such as expensive Middle Men, etc.

Since Affiliates are paid on a sale only basis, they do not cost the company anything and it’s for this reason that they won’t actually get fired if they don’t bring in any sales!

How much or how little you do is entirely up to you. Conversely, an under-performing Sales Person in the Corporate World certainly would not have that luxury!

For example:

If a company’s affiliate program pays 30% sales commissions on a product costing $100 (it varies from program to program and this is just to illustrate the point), and you make 1 sale, you will earn $30. If you make 10 sales, you will earn $300. If you make 100 sales, you will earn $3000. And the company’s profit margin will always remain the same.

This is why, at no point will a Company’s CEO say ‘Whoa….steady on. You Affiliates are bringing in far too many sales. We’re going to have to let some of you go’!

Why would they? The more they are paying out to their Affiliates in sales related commissions is a direct reflection of how well their business is doing – all thanks to their Affiliates – so what you’ve got here is the complete opposite of how things work in the Corporate World of ‘down sizing’, ‘re-structuring’, ‘right sizing’, call it what you like.

Active Affiliates are considered valuable assets and therefore companies are looking to recruit more of them all the time. More active Affiliates bring in more sales, which increases the Company’s profits and doesn’t create competition between Affiliates as the Market Share increases.

It turns the whole Corporate business model completely on its head!

So How Do You Get Started In Affiliate Marketing?

Just like with anything, if you start something with no knowledge of what you’re doing and nobody to show you the way, you’re not going to last very long.

Our online affiliate marketing education program gives you FREE starter membership with NO TIME LIMIT and has been around since 2005.

It has a global Community of over 1 million Members and gives you all the tools, training and support you need to start and build your own lucrative Affiliate Marketing business which you can run from home, full time, part-time or spare time, as you like.

They are the World Leaders in the online marketing education space.

To read my full Wealthy Affiliate Review, click HERE.

Thank you for taking the time to read this article which I hope you’ve found interesting and informative.

Please feel free to comment or post any questions in the box below and I’ll do my best to get back to you within 24 hours.

Your friend and Mentor

Richard