What is Affiliate Marketing – How Does it Work

March 18, 2018
/ By Steve

What is Affiliate Marketing – How Does It Work

Affiliate marketing can be confusing to someone not familiar with the term. What is affiliate marketing, how does it work?

If you are looking for a way to make money online becoming an affiliate marketer is one of the best choices you could make. Now, just in case you don’t have a clear understanding of what an affiliate is, I’ll explain…

An affiliate can be described best as any group, company or person attached to or affiliated with another solo entrepreneur or larger organization.
In internet terminology an affiliate is a person who agrees to promote, and market products created by a larger entity or person for a share of the revenue.
Breaking it all down into simple terms means the affiliate is paid a commission for selling a product or products created and made by someone else.

How Affiliates and Business Work Together

How does this work? To keep it simple let’s refer to “Entity” as the creators of the product or products. Entities are often referred to as merchants, retailers, manufacturers, vendors, sellers or solo entrepreneurs. Entities benefit from their affiliate programs by leveraging their product sales and brand through a partnership with affiliates or affiliate groups.

This can be a very lucrative venture for the “Entity,” by greatly extending their sales force capabilities and brand advertising exposure. The reduced expenses of adding employees, employee benefits and increased advertising expenses are avoided through implementing successful affiliate programs.

The affiliate benefits from building a good relationship with the “Entity” and receives profitable commissions for contributing to the overall revenue of the “Entity” resulting in a win, win situation for both parties.

Why people Fail with Affiliate Marketing

In all honesty, a newcomer or beginner coming into the business of affiliate marketing without proper training and skills will usually experience failure after failure in just about every case. Here are just a few of the reason’s unskilled affiliates fail repeatedly by making these same mistakes.

Failure to stay in control of their business trying to make more money by extending their business beyond the point they can properly manage it. This over site often results in losing control of their business. Customer support becomes non-existent.

Note: Creating multiple streams of income requires discipline and discretion. Know your capabilities before overloading your cash cow!

Failure to develop an interactive website with good content, layout and easy navigation. Web pages plastered with sales graphics, Indiscernible writing and faulty links fail to earn the customers you need to survive.

Note: Good page content, easy navigation and page layout will. The visitor should enjoy the experience and receive something of value for the time spent at your website. Keep your website clean and not cluttered for your visitors.

Failure to help the customer’s buying decision. Have more interest in fast sales and making money rather than helping potential customers make a better buying decision. Assuming you know what the customer is looking for and wants is a big fail.

Note: Your goal should be to Help the customer make a better buying decision. This is another priority you can’t ignore. You should know where your customers are at in their buying process so you enjoy increased sales and satisfied customers.

Failure to be honest and have integrity. Making false claims about the products they market. This is essentially lying to your customers and yourself in the attempt to make a sale.

Note: False claims destroy your credibility forever. Don’t trade your integrity for a few bucks because it is never going to be worth what it will cost you down the road.

Failure to remain focused. In desperation or greed the marketer loses focus when selecting and promoting their products. Instead, they chase after every new product and gadget that comes along, another big fail.

Note: Focus on one product and get it right before moving on to the next product. Research the product before putting your name on it. Poor choices have bad consequences.

Failure to make good reviews or comparisons. Lack of a clear choice between their products and competitive products can cause confusion in the customer’s buying decision process. The result? Loss of sales.

Note: Comparisons, reviews and testimonials are the essentials needed to help your customer decide to purchase. Free test drives to try out the product also work well by removing the risk to the customer. Why do you think so many businesses use them?

Failure to test the Entities product, support and follow through to the sale before becoming an affiliate for the Entities product. This leads to slow sales, unsatisfied customers and more lost sales.

Note: Go thru the Entities sales process yourself to see if the Entity is following through to delivery and customer satisfaction. Research the demand and quality of the product before committing.

Failure to have a tracking system in place for their advertising and email marketing. They have no idea what ads are working or where their customers are coming from. This failure results in loss of repeat sales and new customers.

Note: Tracking your emails and sales is an absolute necessity if you want continued up sells to established customers who have purchased from you before. Stay in contact with your customers!

Failure to educate themselves. The common denominator of all the above failures is caused by not having the basic, but essential affiliate skills or better yet advanced affiliate skills mastered before you start.

Note: Training is the number one priority for your business to succeed. It is an integral part of being successful and is essential to your affiliate business. If you want to be successful don’t avoid learning the necessary skills.

What do You Need to Become an Affiliate Marketer?

Finding and participating in a training program that is interactive and well-established is your first and foremost priority. Above all, you should avoid falling into the rabbit hole of unethical marketers trying to up sell you into debt. Avoiding these scam artists can be difficult.

Contrary to everything you may have read, seen or heard from people who are trying to get into your wallet or purse, a large amount of money is not going to be needed to get started. Spending huge sums of your hard-earned cash doesn’t guarantee you success, but doing things the right way will.

Some people will tell you everything you need to know is online and free. This is not entirely true but does have some merit. The downside to this is gathering all the information you are going to need and organizing it into a useful and complete working system would take years.

This would be an over whelming, time-consuming effort and would not result in a proven system you could rely on. Although some information you will find is often quite good, much of it is plain, untested and simple useless jargon. “If” you were to make the wrong choices, the results could destroy your chances for success not to mention your monetary loses.

When you are serious and ready to begin your marketing career as fast as possible, you need to consider using a trusted and proven training platform with a solid interactive training program. Master your affiliate skills and then go to work. I’ve already explained why you need such a program?

How to Get Started if You’re Ready to Earn More Income

Complete your affiliate training
Find one or more niche affiliate products
Build your website
Attract traffic to your site
Earn Income

If you are at a point now where you are ready to start, I will share this with you. It is easier than you think to accomplish all of the items listed above if you will spend the time and effort. Don’t worry about how much any of this will cost you, because you aren’t going to spend one penny.

You don’t need a credit card either because you can start with the free membership. You get real time experience inside the best available interactive hands-on affiliate training platform online. What’s better than that? You can build your first two websites absolutely free while you learn.

If you don’t take action, nothing will ever change and years from now you will be doing the same old thing you are doing today, working for someone else. You may be struggling to pay bills, working two jobs or working long hours, spending less time with family or friends and missing out on life.

This affiliate training program has been voted the # 1 training platform online.

You get to test drive the number one online training program for as long as you want for free. This includes asking technical questions, getting support from thousands of experienced and successful online marketers, two free websites with free hosting, phase one training and tested and proven marketing information. There is absolutely no obligation or risk to you.

You have the option to invest very little, less than the cost of a soda a day for premium benefits and membership later when and if you decide marketing is your cup of tea.

Maybe you can’t afford the premium membership, that’s fine too, just continue with the free training until you can. I am absolutely convinced you will be more than happy with the experience either way.

After you have had time to personally check out the Wealthy Affiliate training platform, I believe you will agree, there is nothing else online that can compare. This is the reason, I became a Premium member. Join us today, take your FREE test drive and let me know one month from now if I was right.

Summary of Everything We Have Covered

I’ve discussed the definition of an affiliate and how the affiliate is associated with affiliate marketing programs. We covered the advantages to the affiliates and to the Entities who wisely choose to use affiliate marketers to leverage their business. Hopefully you now understand how affiliate marketing works and have a new desire to become a part of it all.

You have learned the most common reasons why affiliates fail and brief summaries at the end of each failure explain simple steps and methods the affiliate should have taken to be more successful. Good mentors and education are the key to a faster success and I’ve discussed the path you will need to follow for a successful marketing adventure.

“If” you are anything like I imagine, you are desperate like many are today for a way out of an unfulfilled day job. You could be looking for ways to supplement your income to meet your families needs. Maybe you need a way to supplement your retirement income.

Why not take advantage of this free offer, one proven to be successful and at least give it your best shot? Whatever you decide I hope you will continue to visit my website.

Click here to learn how to become an affiliate marketer

To your success!

Steve

Steve@affiliateskillsmastered.com

What is Affiliate Marketing – How Does it Work