How to make money with affiliate marketing
The IT boom in India is also responsible for opening new and innovative business opportunities for individuals and entrepreneurs. Affiliate marketing is one such business opportunity that promises of a foolproof source of income with minimal investment. Affiliate marketing gives an opportunity to run a successful small business that is powered by the growing popularity of e-commerce and online marketing.
What is affiliate marketing?
Before exploring your possibilities as an affiliate marketing manager here is a brief introduction to the idea.
The possibility of online business has also urged business owners to discover newer and effective ways of marketing on online platform. This had led them to formulate a commission based marketing system to promote their services that will direct more number of targeted audiences to their e-commerce portal.
The process works by creating a network of affiliate managers who direct traffic to the business sites and in return get paid for each successful conversion. It works on a simple business plan and normally the pay outs are good. The affiliate marketers are required to put banner ads for the business and services on the tactical positions of their website that is likely to receive most visitors and therefore, clicks. This allows lucrative side income options with minimum investment of time and resources, which has contributed to its popularity.
Current market trends and scopes
Does anyone can join the business? The answer isn’t simple and definitely it is not for all. Over the last few years penetration of internet in India has been phenomenal. Percentage of internet users in rural India has gone up by 58%, which is much higher than the rise in urban users. The number of population accessing Internet for shopping has also improved. Overcoming the lack of confidence of the past, the number of buyers for online stores has increased in the recent time. People now like the convenience that it offers. This means that scope for affiliate marketing has expanded matching the demand for online marketing in the country. And, blessed by the IT explosion in the country and global exposure, Indian affiliate managers are targeting international client with ease as well.
To summarize the situation, one can safely say that the future for affiliate marketing in India looks promising powered by the following factors.
- As the overall scenario of the economy has changed purchasing power of people has gone up.
- The number of credit card users in India has gone up.
- The total population of internet user has increased and currently India is the third largest internet using population in the world.
- People are gradually warming up to the idea of online buying and mobile commerce.
Competition and risks
Despite the promising situation of the market, competition in the industry can’t be ignored. Companies normally work with a network of affiliate marketers, which intensifies the competition. Aside from that there are few other factors that influence the earning potential of an affiliate manager.
- Lack of control over the number of visitor to site and the services offered by the client.
- In order to track traffic from affiliate site the merchant places a cookie (a coded link) to the provider’s site. The lifetime of the cookie can vary between 24 hours to lifetime. Longer the life span of these cookies, higher is the possibilities of the affiliate marketer to get paid for future sales.
- The third challenge is posed by lack of growth prospect in the field. Moreover, one may also suffer from the lack of control over ones income on a monthly basis.
- Customer details are held by the merchant and not by the affiliate partner, which means that he has no direct way to build relationship with the clients. As a result, they are constantly required to find newer sources of traffic to build a sustainable business plan.
Who can start as affiliate marketing as a career?
To become a successful affiliate marketer one needs to devise a sustainable, scalable growth model. If you are wondering if it is the right option for you, then you can be assured that anyone can enjoy success in affiliate marketing as long they know the right way of doing it. For success, one would need an understanding of the market along with a feasible business plan to strictly adhere to. And, in order to do that, one can’t ignore the importance of proper training that will help them select the right market and provide them with an infrastructure.
A step-by-step approach to affiliate marketing encompasses the following.
- Selecting the niche to cater to
- and hosting websites
- Promoting sites to make it easier for people to find you
- Market research, competitor analysis and keyword research are sources to success
- Choosing domain names
- Branding and promoting
- Blogging ?
- Understanding of SEO and other technical aspects of online marketing
Training and infrastructure
Affiliate marketers need to depend on natural sources of traffic to their websites and therefore they need comprehensive SEO strategy that will increase the number of organic visitors. The greatest challenge faced by affiliate marketers is finding new sources of traffic on a regular basis. It makes knowledge of comprehensive search engine optimization, that will help their website rank high on search results, imperative for their success.
DBS Next Level, which is a Small Medium Business agency, offers industry specific training facilities to small business owners and entrepreneurs. But besides that they also function as their mentors by helping them building a sustainable business plan, planning marketing strategy, web designing and hosting solutions and offering a complete package of marketing tools that will allow candidates kick start their operation.
An all encompassing training session focuses on delivering the following.
- What is Affiliate Marketing?
- Types of affiliating marketing
- Affiliating marketing myth
- The truth about affiliating marketing
- affiliate meeting works?
- Why people do affiliate marketing
- Success mantra
- How to get started (Step by step)
- Set your goal
- Choosing a profitable niche
- Choosing affiliate marketing partner
- Amazon associates
- Clickbank
What next?
- Affiliate marketing with a website
- Affiliate marketing without a website
Let’s do affiliate marketing with website
- Domain name
- Hosting
- WordPress website
- Content writing
- Image
- SEO plug-in
- Adding your affiliate link to web page
How to get traffic (free)
How to get traffic (paid)
- Adfly and Linkbucks
- Buysell
- Soload directory
- Clicksor
- Chitika
- Fiverr
- Email marketing
- Facebook ad
- Google PPC
- Bing Yahoo PPC
- Adhitz
Analyze your website
Let’s do affiliate marketing without website
Same as above practice
Dos and don’t
Tips and tricks
Resources