Affiliate Marketing benefits – increase traffic and earn money.
Affilate marketing is a very effective way for any website owner to earn money or increase sales of their products and services. Infact, its a very fast and extremely easy way to earn some moolah and there really are no limits to what can be earned. However, it’s not as easy as some would have you believe. You require a degree of skill and must be prepared to put in some effort if you want it to pay dividends.
What is affiliate marketing?
Basically – you place adverts on your website that belong to 3rd party companies or “merchants”. If a visitor to your site clicks on one of these ads, they are redirected to the merchant site and if the visitor makes a purchase from the merchant website then you earn a commission. Conversely, you can be the merchant and companies who own websites place adverts for your products and services on their websites for free. When someone clicks on your advert and you get a sale, you pay the company a small commission for the referral. Either way you win!
Breeze media provide an affiliate marketing service.
So what are the benefits of affiliate marketing?
As an “affiliate” cost is the main benefit and this is either very low* or even zero to you. You register on a merchant’s site for free and place the advert on your site. You don’t have to ship any products, manufacture or design anything – just copy and paste their ad and place it on your website and the merchant handles everything else.
As a “merchant” – exposure and increased sales are the main benefits. You gain extra exposure for your website, your products and your services. Even though visitors on the affiliate website do not follow through to purchase on every click, you have still gained exposure for your company and maybe at a later date that same visitor will visit you and make a purchase.
* Affiliate marketing requires a degree of expertise and skill. Many companies embark on affiliate marketing campaigns without any thought or experience and the majority do not obtain sales or commissions. Companies such as ourselves offer an professional affiliate marketing service which can produce excellent returns for low costs.
Is affiliate marketing easy money?
Yes and no. If you want to succeed as an affiliate you need to ensure that your site is attracting traffic - and qualified traffic at that. You also need to place relevant or themed ads similar to your own industry or sector on your site – clearly there’s no point placing adverts for cuddly toys on your website if you sell nuts and bolts. If your website is attracting decent volumes of visitor traffic and your ads are themed towards your visitors then you increase the chances of clickthroughs leading to sales and commissions.
As above we said…yes and no. It’s a yes if you are prepared to put in some effort or have a professional affiliate marketing company manage the campaign for you. Such a company will manage all aspects of your campaign and provide the best return on your investment. It’s a no if your website is low traffic and the adverts are barely visible or you place them on pages rarely read.
How do you increase traffic to your website to boost your affiliate marketing campaign?
Websites with low visitor traffic do not generate enough click throughs and may only make a few pounds** every month from commissions. For low value products then volume clickthroughs on the advert is the key to making good commissions. To obtain the volume your site needs to be attracting good visitor traffic. This traffic can be by way of the search engines, community forum websites or social networking websites. To attract good traffic from the likes of Google and Yahoo your website needs to have undergone search engine optimisation. Community forums and social networking groups tend to grow by word of mouth, email and group interaction.
**There are very rare cases of low traffic websites earning commissions of several hundred pounds on a single click through but these are high value products or services. Clearly if the site is attracting high traffic volumes then such adverts can pay excellent dividends.
Breeze Media provide expertise in the key areas of internet marketing and search engine optimisation and have a proven track record of success. Please contact us to discuss any projects you may be considering.
Hi there,
Do you think affiliate marketing works for B2B? I can see the value for B2C but just interested in your opinion.
Craig
Hi Craig,
I think that B2B online selling is slowly taking off. There was a time about 7 or 8 years ago when B2B selling was perceived to be the be all but it never really took off as anticipated. Possibly this was due to the procurement or decision making processes involved in completing B2B sales.
What we have experienced [albeit rarely] is affiliate lead generation. Leads that turn into sales are given extra rewards or commissions – I am eager to see this develop but many problems need to be ironed out.
One advantage – the commissions could be considerably higher if some type of “standard” structure could be worked out and adhered to. A disadvantage could be in the tracking of the sale and a degree of transparency and trust would need to be in place.
It’s certainly interesting to see how things will pan out.
[...] Original post by stuart [...]
Great blog. Gives a great information on affiliates and affiliate marketing.
Affiliate marketing does work for for B2B. to set up affiliate marketing is very easy as it does not need much start up cost.
I think, affiliate marketing will be more easy, if we can implement Google Adwords ppc marketing. Since we can drive more targeted customer with the help of pay per click adwords marketing and i hope it will be an added beneficial for the affiliate marketing.