Affiliate marketing is an essential part of any marketing strategy. Find out what it is and how you can use it to grow your business or earn commissions.

What Is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is a performance-based advertising model in which third-party content creators promote a brand’s products and get paid when their referrals result in a transaction for the brand. These third-party content creators are affiliates, and the commission fee incentivizes them to promote the brand’s products. These affiliates are website owners, publishers, bloggers, influencers, or others who have a platform with an audience. Brands compensate affiliates to generate traffic, leads, or sales for the brand’s products or services. Affiliate marketing builds brand awareness, drives traffic and sales, and aids consumer decision making. 

How Does Affiliate Marketing Work?

Affiliate marketing is a process where an affiliate, such as a publisher, promotes a brand’s products and gets paid a percentage of each referred sale. The amount of commission the publisher earns is based on a rate card, which varies based on the product category or the agreement terms. The publisher benefits from earning commissions on attributed sales. The brand benefits from reaching the publisher’s audience.

Affiliate marketing has been around for quite some time. Companies have a long history of rewarding people for bringing them new business. However, affiliate marketing on the internet didn’t get its start until the mid 1990s. Before the digital era, it was extremely difficult to track the affiliate’s impact on the company.

Today, tracking and attribution technology has enabled affiliates to accurately track how much revenue they drive for brands. The sales are tracked using an affiliate link. As a result, affiliates can achieve better performance and use real world data to improve their strategies and processes.

Affiliate marketing is a robust industry. According to Statista, affiliate marketing spend in the United States is expected to reach $8.2 billion in 2022.

Different Types of Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing has an impact on brands, affiliates, and consumers. According to Supermetrics, more than 81% of advertisers and 84% of publishers in the United States have turned to affiliate marketing. Also, inc.com says that 84% of people trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations, and 91% of people regularly or occasionally read online reviews. There are many ways for brands and affiliates to get into affiliate marketing. Most brands offer affiliate programs directly for content creators to join. 

One of the largest affiliate marketing programs in the world is the Amazon Associates program, which currently has the largest market share of all affiliate programs at 45.81%. Content creators, such as publishers, can monetize their traffic by promoting Amazon products to their audience and earning commissions on referred sales. For example, a publisher may write a product review article and promote products that link directly to Amazon. When a visitor on the publisher’s website clicks-through and purchases the product on Amazon, the publisher earns a percentage of that sale. The Amazon seller also benefits from this transaction. When a publisher drives external traffic to an Amazon product, the seller’s organic and best sellers rank will improve.

Affiliate marketing varies from agreements between Instagram influencers and small businesses to large Amazon sellers and big publishers. Publishers can write about products that link directly to the brand’s eCommerce or Amazon store. Affiliates need to promote relevant products to their audience, and brands need to work with affiliates that have their target audience. 

What Are the Benefits of Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing creates a win-win situation for both brands and affiliates. The rise of the internet and technology has made this model more efficient and effective. Attribution and conversion tracking has improved the way brands pay commissions on qualified leads or sales. Being able to better track leads or sales allows companies to improve or better position their products.

There are many benefits with affiliate marketing. Brands use affiliate marketing to build brand awareness, increase product exposure, find new customers, drive traffic and sales, and increase social proof. Publishers use affiliate marketing to deliver great offers to their audience, create and build relationships with brands, and earn commissions. Partnering up with an affiliate publisher is perfect for brands in the growth and scaling phase.

How to Do Affiliate Marketing in 2022

There are two sides to affiliate marketing. On one side there are brands looking to reach a larger audience, and on the other side there are publishers looking to monetize their traffic. Publishers can reach out directly to brands and enter an agreement to promote the brand’s products in exchange for commissions. Content creators can join affiliate programs such as the Amazon Associates program and promote Amazon products to their audience using affiliate links to earn commissions. Brands can reach out directly to publishers, but this can be time consuming with low success rates. How else can brands get connected with publishers? SellerRocket can help.

SellerRocket is a performance-based affiliate marketing company that bridges the gap between sellers and publishers. We help you get trustworthy review articles written about your products from reputable, third-party publishers. We have a vast network of publisher partners who write content on renowned, high traffic websites. Some benefits include increasing your brand awareness and product exposure, driving traffic and sales, and influencing buyer decisions. SellerRocket is currently working with 4,000+ brands and 50,000+ products. All you have to do is contact us to get started.

Conclusion

Affiliate marketing is a vital part of any marketing strategy. It’s a great way to engage with a target audience and convert passive readers into active customers one click at a time.