What is an Affiliate Program? [A complete guide]
A complete guide for people who want to become affiliates.
A complete guide for people who want to become affiliates.
Do you know what an affiliate program is? This strategy has become very popular in recent years because it helps people earn extra income working online.
It works as follows: someone with experience or ability in sales called an affiliate, helps promote third-party digital products.
They can market these products using social media, blogs, YouTube, or email marketing, for example. And, whenever the affiliate makes a sale, they receive a commission.
It’s a way to make money online without having to create a product, and you can work from home. That’s why so many people are joining affiliate programs.
If you’re not familiar with the term “affiliate program”, today’s post will tell you all you need to know about this segment that permeates the universe of digital entrepreneurship.
Index
An affiliate program is a marketing strategy that combines the two actors in the sales process: producer/creator and seller/affiliate.
The main idea is quite simple:
You might be asking yourself, “What is the key to success behind the affiliate program?”
The secret is that this system gathers people with common interests and helps them profit. After all, both parties involved in the system are paid after the sale.
Basically, it consists of two main characters, which are:
An affiliate is a person with an innovative mindset, and willing to use the Internet in her favor. affiliates make money by promoting links of digital products made available on a Distance Learning Platform, or physical goods, depending on the niche they act in. And then they earn commissions for every sale made through the links they shared.
affiliates are also known as webmasters, since they constantly research the market and try to find new ways of improving their performance to sell more.
The creator is a person who creates a digital product with the intention to sell it. They create materials in a variety of formats, such as ebooks, e-magazines, virtual guides, video-lessons, lectures, podcasts or software.
Creators understand the profile of today’s consumers, who want to buy digital products because of low cost, quick delivery and sustainability.
But creators want more than just creating products, they want to sell. That’s why they make digital products available on the platform, counting on the help from the affiliates to increase their revenues. In exchange, they offer a commission for every sale made.
The affiliate program is a two-way street that brings creators and affiliates together in a great digital business.
A good affiliate program should be sustained by a company that offers the highest quality in management services. And for that, there are platforms such as Hotmart (to better understand how it works and the benefits Hotmart brings, read our post about Hotmart Club).
If you’ve gotten this far, you’ve probably already understood that the main thing in the affiliate program is to unite people who create digital products with those who want to sell this content.
This requires an affiliate link, which is how the system can understand who was responsible for each sale made.
Let’s explain in more detail:
Once you become an affiliate, the tool of the affiliate program you have joined provides you with exclusive links to promote the products.
These links are coded so that every time you make a new sale, it will be possible to identify that the conversion was completed through your content, and thus, you are paid the proper commission.
But that’s not all!
Besides links, the affiliate program also offers essential tools to make life easier for those who work on the Internet, for example:
It’s important to remember that certain practices are prohibited in affiliate marketing, such as spamming, making false promises.
These practices can lead to the Hotmart account being blocked. If you’d like to know more about it, download for free our material with affiliate success stories.
This question could be replaced by Is it possible to make money by taking part in an affiliate program?
Yes. Many people around the world make a living out of affiliate programs, turning the affiliation of products into a profession.
There are also those who work as affiliates to make some extra money, which can be as useful as building a career as a digital entrepreneur. It all depends on your goal.
However, there are some advantages for those who are affiliates, and we have made a list for you
There are many reasons for signing up for an affiliate program. The main one is the real opportunity to make money in a simple and independent way.
By publishing one single ad, affiliates can reach thousands of consumers and have many chances of making sales. And whenever that happens, the affiliate gets a percentage of the sale value.
In other words, success depends only on their effort: the more the person works, the more are the chances of making a profit.
But there are more advantages to an affiliate program. Actually, the system provides a variety of attractive ways in which an affiliate can make a profit online.
Take a look:
Many people invest their savings in the creation of e-commerce to fulfill their dreams of making money on the Internet.
The problem, however, is that most virtual shops fail due to a lack of planning and experience. But the affiliate program is an alternative that is financially safe. Registration is free, and there is no need for any kind of investment.
You don’t need to create a product to start making money online. Through the affiliate program, you promote links with the referrals of products that were created by other people, and you get commissions whenever a sale is made through the links you promoted.
When you sign up for an affiliate program, you are starting a new business. If you can get good results working as an affiliate, you will be able to enjoy many benefits: you will be your own boss, and you will work from home and make all the decisions about your work.
As an affiliate, you will have many different products to promote. There are thousands of virtual products, in different formats, divided into dozens of niches.
It will be easy to choose the ones that relate well to your audience, and, consequently, have a greater potential for sales and profits.
The creator is responsible for all communication with the consumers – such as customer service and after-sale assistance.
What’s more, the processing of sales and payments is made by the platform. The only thing the affiliate has to do is promote the link, and doesn’t need to worry about anything else.
You don’t need your own website to start promoting digital products. You can use other tools, such as social media and email marketing.
Each creator sets a profit margin for the materials they make available on the platform. They can vary, reaching up to 80% of the total value of the digital product. And affiliates are the ones who choose the profit margin you want to work with.
How do you know if your work is generating good results? After you join the affiliate program, you will have access to the platform and will be able to control the performance of your strategies.
The system will show you how many sales were made through the links you promoted; this leads to good financial planning and knowledge about when you will receive your commissions.
One of the main advantages of the affiliate program is that the payments are managed by the platform. This means the commissions are computed automatically after the sale, which eliminates the risk of default by the creator.
Another essential advantage of the affiliate program is the possibility of growth. Most people start promoting at a slow pace, using social media and blogs with a free domain.
But as the payments start coming in, you can set aside part of the resources to become more professional and expand your business.
Just like in the case of digital creators, any person can become a successful affiliate.
The creator economy is booming, it is possible to find an infinity of products, and you can choose from the ones that best suit your audience’s needs.
Besides, it is possible to find a lot of material on affiliation and marketing techniques to use when promoting.
Even if you decide to work as an affiliate in your free time only, it is important to have some skills to make a sale. Let’s take a look at some of them, so you can put them into practice:
Being an affiliate is a job, too, and to achieve good results, it is necessary to have the discipline to maintain consistency in your strategies. Set a calendar with actions you can execute to leverage your business little by little and stick to your plan.
The more you know about your market, the more professional you will become. That’s why you should be attentive to novelties and study promotion techniques that you still don’t know.
To attract a bigger audience, you need to communicate well, and that means writing clearly, whether it is for ads, social media, or blogs. If you intend to record videos, you will also have to train your abilities for public speaking. Besides good communication skills, good affiliates always build relationships with other professionals in the market. This way, they can exchange experiences, improve their techniques and scale their profits.
This tip works especially for those who wish to have great results and not just make one or other sales.
Short-termism is one of the factors that make people give up their goals and dreams so easily. Make a business plan and stick to it even when there hasn’t been any profit yet.
There is no rule for those who wish to become affiliates. After all, every sales strategy will depend a lot on the techniques you master, the audience you already have, and the audience you still want to reach.
However, you can follow certain good practices to make your life as an affiliate easier.
In an affiliate program, you’ll realize that you can advertise products from the most varied areas possible.
This strategy certainly works for many people. But it’s certainly much easier to talk about something you already know, or to delve deeper into only one subject.
So, if you’re just starting out, try to pick one area, for example carpentry, and create content to appeal to the audience in this niche.
With this strategy, you can cover as many topics as possible related to the market you wish to reach, and thus, become a benchmark in your market.
There’s no point in promoting a product if it isn’t in high demand.
So, when it comes to choosing the product you’re going to sell, do some research to understand if it has a good acceptance in the market.
Also, always try to choose products that already have a well-designed and attractive sales page, and make sure that the product has relevant content for those who will buy it.
A product with a high commission won’t always be ideal for you to promote. After all, this product’s acceptance might not be so good in the market, which will also cause you not to make any profit.
When it comes to analyzing the commissions you will be paid, simulate sales with realistic numbers to see how much each sale should earn you each month.
There’s practically something new on the internet every day. For this reason, it’s necessary that you also stay up to date.
A strategy you used yesterday might no longer be as effective today, just as you might discover something innovative that you aren’t doing yet.
To stand out as an affiliate, you can’t afford to miss anything. So, stay tuned to what’s new and constantly study to improve.
At first, the affiliate program might be the way for you to make extra income.
However, once you start dedicating more time to keeping your strategies updated, and having a higher frequency of product promotion, you will realize the need to dedicate more time to your business.
To help you understand how much time you need to devote to product affiliation, set a goal to understand where you want to go and set specific times to take care of your business on a daily basis.
The creator is responsible for the creation of the digital product, as well as setting the price and the commission to be paid to the affiliate.
Some affiliate programs give the creator the option to leave the affiliation open or closed. When it is open, any person can affiliate to the product. When it is closed, the creator has to approve the affiliates who apply to it before they can start promoting.
Besides, the creator is responsible for all relationships with the client, from the delivery of the material (in this case, some platforms have this process automated to the creator) to the customer support in case of questions.
After reading about affiliate programs, you’re probably ready to join the creator economy and start making money online.
Of course, here, we can’t dive into every topic. But, as you may have seen, there’s plenty of content on the Hotmart blog that can help you succeed in the digital market.
In short, to work as an affiliate, you need to:
Ready to get started?
Join Hotmart, the all-in-one solution for creators to become entrepreneurs.
This post was originally published on August 10, 2016, and has been updated to contain more precise and complete information.