Could affiliate marketing work for you?
If you haven’t heard of affiliate marketing before, it’s a form of internet advertising that pays people for directing traffic towards an advertiser’s site.
For instance, you could write a blog post about reviewing a book, then direct people to purchase it from Amazon. In this example, the advertiser pays to have links to their website on your website; it’s essentially a commission-based system.
Affiliate marketing has its ups and down. It can be difficult if you don’t have the right information and technical ability. Read on to get a better understanding of how it all works.
Some of the reasons why marketers may choose to go for affiliate advertising include:
1. Cost
Starting your own business can be daunting, but with affiliate marketing, you don’t have to spend as much to make more. By incentivising people by paying them for a link to your site that results in a financial transaction, it’s a win-win situation.
2. Inventories
On the other side, there are no inventories or products that need to be managed by affiliate marketers. Any products or services are all dealt with by the merchant. So, for instance, if you run a book review website with affiliate links to book vendors, all fulfilment of the books you ‘sell’ is done by the vendor.
3. Income potential
With a regular job your income can be dependent on whether you go to work or not. Affiliate marketing enables you to set up your affiliates with your ads and links and let them direct traffic without any input from you.
Alternatively, you can create a website of affiliate links that work for you while you sleep. While its not guaranteed, the potential is there to make decent money.
4. It’s global
The internet is worldwide. You could be setting up advertising for businesses anywhere, with a multitude of different products just by providing the necessary tools to affiliates and letting them do the work.
5. Low Risk
Affiliate marketing has a much lower risk factor than other forms of marketing, especially for those with smaller budgets set aside for advertising.
6. 24 hours a day/7 days a week
The internet runs 24/7 and so will your business.
So, ensure that you have everything set up initially before stepping into advertising.
“All of these benefits are easy to achieve with the right content, product and tools to make it work. For instance, you must ensure your website is optimised for searches, is fast loading and fulfills what potential customers are looking for in other ways.”