Affiliate Marketing: A Layman's Guide

Affiliate marketing as most people know it, is a common side hustle which is learnt and completely carried out on the internet and social media. However, the topic of affiliate marketing presents a lot of questions; gurus would like to present it as a one-way ticket to financial independence and a stable income, while others believe it doesn’t generate as much as they would like you to believe, and if you’re looking to get into affiliate marketing you might want to know if it is worth it before investing your capital into that “master” class. This information is what we hope to give you in today’s article.

What Is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is, as Investopedia puts it, an advertising model in which a company compensates third party publishers to generate traffic or leads to the company’s product.

To put this simply, it is a type of advertising where the company pays a person or group to showcase and bring attention, and possible sales to their products. It is all about drawing attention to products by using other people in exchange for a small fee.

Who Is an Affiliate Marketer?

An affiliate is a person who’s officially linked to a business. However, in the context we are familiar with, an affiliate is someone that works with a business to do peer-to-peer promotions and advertisements in order to draw traffic and sales to the business for compensation. That is to say an affiliate does these things for a business and gets paid in return.

Who Can Become an Affiliate?

The barrier to entry is quite low when it comes to affiliate marketing – there are a lot of places to start from and a lot of affiliate programs you can join. You don’t even have to spend that much to begin.

However, starting is not the problem. You not only have to sustain yourself in the market, but you also have to make sure you’re getting some profit to make sure you aren’t wasting your time.

What Do I Need to Become a Successful Affiliate?

If you were led by a guru, then you probably heard that affiliate marketing is easy and anyone can profit from it. Well, as much as we don’t like to be the bearers of bad news, we would like to make it clear that nothing that involves making money is easy, unless you have worked your way to a position where it becomes easy. And being an affiliate, especially if you’re doing it full time is far from easy, depending on your position and resources, you risk not making any progress as an affiliate marketer.

Some of the things you would need to be a successful affiliate are:

· A target audience

· A medium to reach your target audience

· A good understanding of the market

· A good understanding of social media algorithms

· SEO basics

· A social media following

· Knowledge of the products you are advertising

Affiliate Marketers Vs Brand Ambassadors

Some might wonder what the difference is between an affiliate marketer and a brand ambassador, because in a way they both do the same thing by advertising products on social media. However, an ambassador is different in the sense that an ambassador is a someone who not only advertises the product online, but also does that offline.

An ambassador is a person who uses a product, and has a connection with not just the brand but the product. Ambassadors usually have large followings on social media, and they influence people to use the products they are advertising. They don’t track their sales with affiliate links, and they end up being the face of the brands they work for.

Brand ambassadors can also significantly affect people’s perception of a brand and its products. You would easily notice this if you’re into let’s say sport shoes, and your favorite athlete uses and advocates for a specific brand instead of another. Affiliate marketers do not have this kind of influencing ability.

There is also a difference in earnings. Brand ambassadors sign contracts, and agree on benefits they gain from becoming the face of the brand they choose to work. This gives them an opportunity to earn a lot more than affiliates do.