What is Affiliate Marketing & How Does It Work?

Written by Rahul Gupta  »  Updated on: January 03rd, 2024

What is Affiliate Marketing & How Does It Work?

While blogging, most of the bloggers when it comes to earning, usually think of Google Adsense as a way to generate income. Many of the bloggers tend to think that the main and major source of income can only be via Google AdSense, However, it is not true.  Firstly, Google AdSense usually has quite stringent policies before accepting and approving a blog site. And the disappointment might make you lose hope.

But here's the Good News!!

Affiliate Marketing is your golden Key to earn a penny through blogging. So what really is Affiliate Marketing? How does it work and How can you get started? Are the questions that might cloud up your mind, so here are the answers to all your queries and worries.

What is Affiliate Marketing?

When it comes to affiliate marketing to many, it could be a part of major passive income. However, this kind of marketing might require a lot of patience,  willingness as well as dedication to making something out of it.  In order to make the most out of it, you should beforehand understand the basics and the steps deeply, process of implementation, the steps to start, and how it really works efficiently. 

In simple words, Affiliate Marketing can be seen as a process through which a person can earn a commission by the promotion of other company's products.  For example, you could choose a product you think can be promoted well, and by promoting the same you could earn a piece of gain for every sale you make. 

This kind of marketing is not new in the business. It has been prevalent as a form of marketing for quite some time now, which has led earning many people increasingly high profits. The most simple and easy example to understand this could be, the advertisement shown in Tv shows in breaks, they advertise and promote a certain product, and the same show is given a piece of the profit for promoting the company's brand. 

This form of marketing through affiliation involves you to recommend a certain or many products, commodity, or any kind of services to your viewers in order to earn credit.

HOW DOES AFFILIATE MARKETING WORK?

There are ways to know and track down the affiliates in these times, and the golden and the most direct way is if the customer or the surfer accepts the cookies!

You might find while surfing the websites, many sites ask you if you accept the cookies, Cookie is a small file that is stored in the user's computer, so if the customer buys a commodity, the seller can be aware of the reference that was used by the customer. Hence, Cookies are the most special link to track down the affiliates these days.

Another advanced way can be quite complex and technical like methods that shall be using email id or the IP address of the customer who bought the product.

HOW TO GET STARTED?

1. Firstly you need to create a website or a blog. Yes, obviously you need to the same, and if you already have let us move to the next step.

2. Now as you have chosen the correct hosting company for your blog, you need to now select a certain niche or topic you are interested to write about. This step is important as that would lead you to the 3rd step of reviewing the product.

3. Once you have selected your niche down, you now should research the products under your niche that is reviewable by you.

4. Sign up for some of the best affiliate marketing programs, you can find some of the best that could review the product you wish to.

5. Similarly,  find other and different affiliate programs for the products you have chosen to be reviewed.

6. The most importantly significant part is step 6, now you need to create relevant content that could be in any form for instance, in the form of tutorials, review posts or resource pages, and thereby use your affiliate links.

7. Now, Optimize your page and website, you can check in your ranking level on Google.

8. Read, Remember, and Repeat! And hence, this whole process can lead you to earn quite well through affiliate marketing from your blog.

HOW MUCH CAN YOU EARN THROUGH AFFILIATE MARKETING?

This part is where many people might get attracted and get impatient at the same time.

Affiliate Marketing is a type of marketing that requires a lot of patience and dedication. The money you can earn from this kind of marketing can be highly extreme- it can fall somewhere between a hundred bucks to earnings in 7 to 8 figures. This is the reason why it is necessary to ensure that you learn and know the most basic and tricky skills deeply. Your income can increase incrementally based on

The offers you are promoting and the traffic that your site generates. More the traffic, more the clicks that could lead to incremental change in your income. Therefore, blogging requires you to learn and implement many different ideas in order to earn. You might need SEO and marketing skills in order to generate traffic and that it is how you can afford to create organic traffic on your websites.

THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW BEFORE PROMOTING A PRODUCT

While you are in the process of choosing products that you decide to promote, there are a set of things you should think and keep in mind.

1. Do you as a viewer will be interested to buy the same product?

2. On a larger level you should ponder upon the fact that will the vast majority of the viewers click to buy the product, in simple terms, will the readers or viewers benefit from this product?

3. The affordability of the product, for instance,  is the product easy to be bought by the reader.

4. the commission that shall be provided is a good amount? Though it usually is not,  Regardless of that you have to start from somewhere.

So if the answer is yes of all the thought-provoking questions that were asked above, you are good to go and promote the same. 

One of the important steps to keep in mind is to fixate yourself to make a list of products that could benefit the audience and that might attract them to use the same. It is necessary to promote relevant and realistic products that your audience would likely be ready to buy.

A creative way to engross the audience via your article can be, for example, if you write about travel, you can choose to promote ads of the products like luggage, backpacks, clothing, or any other miscellaneous used for traveling purposes. There can be a high chance that the reader might click and buy the same.

HOW WILL IT IMPROVE YOUR BLOG?

Talking about your blog, the process of Affiliate marketing can improvise your blog up to a great extent. 

For instance, While you are in the process of promoting a certain product, commodity or service through your blog site, you also get a large number of audience. The marginally higher traffic that is generated via Google searches about a certain affiliated product, you as a blogger and a customer as well are more aware about the brand.

By the building of brand awareness, you as a blogger can also incredibly increase your market share. Generating an audience via the brand awareness is proved to be of much value than direct sales for more than 70 percent of brand managers. 

This builds a bond of trust between you and your readers. The readers  begin to acknowledge you as the person to seek reliable information from, they can make use in your specific niche. Whether it’s a  previewing of a product , life hack, or a content written for the  best ways to post to social media, your traffic increases exponentially because your brand is being seen by some who otherwise wouldn’t have visited your blog.

Final Thoughts

Affiliate marketing is one of the exceptionally successful ways to make money through blogging, but if you wish to be successful and build yourself as a great blogger in your niche, you must create highly  creative and reliable content and build a relationship of trust with your readers . 

Monetizing your blog through affiliate marketing can aid in growing your reach while creating a lucrative and passive source of income.


Rahul Gupta
Founder & CEO @ IndiBlogHub

A Techie, Blogger & Entrepreneur by heart. Rahul Gupta is founder of IndiBlogHub.com, MentalHealth+ platform and build multiple streams of income via Blogging.

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