An affiliate is a person promoting another person’s product and getting paid for it. You could be promoting products for big companies for smaller businesses. The purpose of the affiliate is to bring new customers to the vendor.
Everything is online and you can do that from home, on the train, even on your cell phone whenever you have time! It’s a good way to start your online business journey.
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The Business Part
On one side, you have the vendor. It is the person (business) who created the product you are interested in. It can be a physical product (strollers, books, televisions, etc) or it can be a digital product (online course, webinar, e-book, website membership, etc). The vendor has his own website where you redirect potential clients.
Successful businesses pay to advertise their products. There are different ways to get people to buy from them. They can hire sellers to promote their products. They can buy ads, radios ads, television ads, Google ads, etc, where people can learn about their products. It can get really expensive. It can get overwhelming to manage every ad. So what do they do?
They create an affiliate program.
Why? Because it is easier for them to pay someone else to take care of bringing traffic to their site. Imagine hundreds of people working for you, bringing you traffic and increasing your sales! All you have to do is give them their share of the pie. Sounds perfect.
You could make money selling products you already use! So you bring new costumers to their website and they pay you a percentage of the sales that generated from the traffic you sent them.
The Affiliate Part
In the middle, there is the affiliate. You are an entrepreneur. You are creating a business, a brand. Keep it simple when you start. Be the expert people go to when they want the best. You don’t have to be an expert when you start, but get enough knowledge on what you are promoting and what the other companies are doing.
You could be promoting as many products as you want. You could pay for advertising or find a way to send free traffic to the vendor’s site. Your job is to get people to click. You could make money selling products you already use!
So you bring new costumers to the products’ website you are promoting and they pay you a percentage of the amount of money the vendor made from your traffic.
The commission you get paid depends on what you are promoting.
For physical products you can expect 3 to 10% commission.
For digital products you can expect up to 90% (Yes! the vendors want you to bring traffic to their site.)
In the good affiliate programs, most vendors give you ads copy, email swipes (scripts) and even images and banners you can use. Sometimes you can get free training to know how to promote the product, what it is about, who are the target customers. You have everything you need to generate sales and get money in your pocket.
Read Top Words to Know: Online Business
The Buyers
On the other side, we have the buyers. What is great with affiliating, is that the customer will get the same price whether he buys from you or directly on the website. Some affiliate programs offer new customers a discount on their purchase. That can be a plus if you want people to buy from your link.
There are over 4 billion people on internet every day. When you think about that, you know that there are a lot of potential customers waiting to find YOUR offer!
Cynthia
Great information. Your article breaks it down very well about what the differences are between the vendor, the entrepreneur and the buyer. You also clearly pointed out that the buyer does not incur any extra expense in order for the entrepreneur to be paid. Very helpful for people interested in joining an affiliate program.