Is it worth doing affiliate marketing? Do you want to know the main benefits of doing affiliate marketing? If you have been asking yourself these questions, this article has the answers.

If you are new to affiliate marketing, we’ve included an overview and the distinction between affiliate marketing and digital marketing. However, if you are a seasoned marketer, you may skip this introduction to the main content.

So, let’s dive in!

What is affiliate marketing, and how does it work?

Affiliate marketing is the type of marketing where publishers (also called affiliates or affiliate partners) earn a commission after helping different retailers or advertisers sell their products. Whenever the retailers or advertisers earn specific results on the sales of their products because of the actions of their affiliate partners, they reward them with a payout. The results the retailers and advertisers expect are; sales (the main result), leads, website clicks, free-trial users, or increased downloads for an app.

Affiliate marketing vs Digital marketing

Though the two are somehow related, they are not the same. The term digital marketing is broad because it involves numerous forms of advertising using the various available online platforms.

Whereas affiliate marketing is one type of digital marketing where affiliates earn according to the number of customers they attract. The more customers affiliates attract, the more commission they receive.

How does affiliate marketing work?

The main aim of affiliate marketing is to deliver a desired result to the retailer or advertiser. Therefore, as an affiliate, your work will refer to a certain product or service by sharing it on your website, social media platforms, podcast, or on your blog.

By sharing, you will earn a commission each time a person makes a purchase using a unique link associated with their recommendation.

Here are the steps to earn as an affiliate:

1. You partner with a store, say store X, or affiliate platforms, by joining their affiliate programs.
2. You share your affiliate link or an ad on your website, social media, or blog.
3. A customer who visits your blog, website, or social media clicks on the link.
4. The customer makes purchases from store X.
5. The affiliate network records the transaction.
6. Store X confirms the purchase.
7. You receive your commission.

Different companies have varying commission rates that depend on their offers. You may earn at least 5% of the sale on the low end, which vary according to the company’s arrangement. You may also earn up to 50% especially when you are promoting an event, service models, or a class. However, some affiliate marketing programs provide flat rates per sale instead of a percentage rate.

Benefits of affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing can be a fantastic way to make additional income just by implementing the marketing ideas on top of your online skills. Let us have a look at the five major benefits of affiliate marketing:

Flexibility

One of the main benefits of affiliate marketing is that it gives you a great opportunity for flexibility. To make it clear, you are your boss. It is only you who will design your working schedule according to the time you feel works for you.

Here, you can decide to work either full-time, part-time, or be a freelancer. Affiliate marketing is the easiest way to work and earn from home, and all you need to get started with affiliate marketing is just a computer and an internet access.

However, the amount of effort you are likely to put into the job depends on the type of business you are promoting. As mentioned earlier, the time you need to put into this is entirely your decision, ranging from a few hours in a week to a full-time job.

It is also your decision on which specific products to promote and which ones not to promote. So, you will just be an independent affiliate who will earn by recommending products and services from other merchants to the visitors of your website, social media, or blog.

Another good thing is that you do not have to physically purchase and hold any product before recommending them to your potential customers. You can also set your commissions and fees for your work according to your specifications.

Creation of important partnerships

Affiliate marketing is a matter of finding new connections and networking, hence it is an excellent way of meeting new people, connecting with them, chatting, and opening new opportunities for new possibilities. The partnerships you make as an affiliate marketer has the optimum chance of benefitting you in the future.

For example, you can open opportunities to becoming a content marketer for the company that you are working for as an affiliate marker now. It is possible to connect with such companies because, as you are working for them today, you could link with them easily, especially when they realize your capabilities.

Additional income/Passive income

You receive your reward as a commission every time the products you are promoting via your links are purchased. According to ZipRecruiter, affiliate marketers make $154,983/year on average, and the earnings range between $11,000 to $401,500.

You can decide to make affiliate marketing your main source of income as a full-time affiliate marketer, or it can just be your side gig. Either way, you will end up making good money out of it. This will even work best when you are promoting products and services that you know and like.

You will get valuable insights from statistical data

As an affiliate marketer, you will face tons and tons of statistical data on your promotions as you trace their performance. Your main aim is to improve the performance of your promotions so that you can maximize profits. Because you will promote different products and services from different merchants/retailers, you are highly likely to access diverse statistics and dashboards.

Using the statistics, you can easily determine which products and services are performing the best, the advertising costs, audience demographics, and more.

Pro Tip: You can use Dataslayer for Google Data Studio to visualize the performance of your affiliate sales on your website or social media pages.

This data will help you which products and services high interest the audience so that you set your focus on the ones of the highest benefit. So, after working as an affiliate marketer for a while, you will finally be able to invest in profitable areas alone and get rid of the areas that do not earn you any profit.

Affiliate marketing is highly scalable

The expansion of your affiliate earnings entirely depends on your imagination and what your audience is likely to find more value from your affiliate expansion efforts. 

As an affiliate marketer, you don’t have to manage customers or maintain the physical inventory of your products. It is also not mandatory to hire people to promote your affiliate links if you can put in the effort.

Therefore, this makes affiliate marketing more scalable. It is far better than other pursuits that are accompanied by upfront and overhead costs or managing people and services.

What are the disadvantages of affiliate marketing?

Besides the benefits of affiliate marketing, it also harbors some dark sides that’s work checking out. Here are some of them:

Requires patience and handwork

Despite being a great way to make money without the initial investment, affiliate marketing is not easy. You need to put in a lot of energy and exercise patience until you see the benefits. Thankfully, this is a common challenge to all marketing strategies. So, you should not expect a magical appearance of results other than what you have worked for.

As an affiliate, understand that success takes time and requires hard work before you enjoy success.

Uncertainty

Starting affiliate marketing and succeeding as an affiliate marketer are two different things. Affiliate marketing is a challenging path to follow, and to succeed needs you need to first get rid of the uncertainties.

After getting rid of the uncertainties and knowing what works for you and what cannot work, affiliate marketing can be an easy way to make money. And because startup costs are minimal, you won’t experience huge losses if it does not work for you.

So, venture into affiliate marketing because it requires nothing more than your efforts.

Quick tips to succeed as an affiliate marketer

Whether you are getting started with affiliate marketing or you have been doing it for a while, here are tips to help you:

1. Choose a specific niche: You should choose specific and related products of your interest. It may be ok to promote other niches too, but you should not stretch yourself too much because this can lead to low content sites. The niche you choose should also be the best for marketing. Examples of best niches for affiliate marketing in 2021 were technology, health and wellness, and personal finance. 

2. Aim at information provision: Instead of focusing on the reward or increasing sales alone, you should seek to provide useful information to your prospects. Always provide updated information because useful information will always make you a winner.
3. Dedicate your time to marketing: You should always be ready to dedicate much of your time to affiliate marketing. Allocate regular time to your efforts to make them effective.

Read more: Five Best Marketing Strategies For Black Friday and Cyber Monday

Is affiliate marketing worth it?

It is worth doing affiliate marketing? If you’re a publisher, a blogger, or a content creator, the answer is — it is worth it. Even though it is not an easy endeavor as it requires patience, the benefits of affiliate marketing are immense and is highly rewarding. 

If you help more people sell their products successfully, you will create good streams of passive income for your efforts.

There are little or no startup costs, so it’s a good idea to get started and keep pushing yourself until you win. Also, don’t forget — if you need another product to add to your list, consider becoming a Dataslayer Product Affiliate and boost your earnings plus multiple other benefits.