Affiliate marketing can simply be described as a pay-by-performance kind of business in which you get paid for each visitor or customer you bring, the product owner makes money from the delivery you make and offers you commissions for you effort.
To become an affiliate marketer, you need to officially join or become attached to an affiliate business you wish to work with even without having your own product or service to sell by simply signing up which is often for free. In doing so, you need to be certain you can actually strategize a game plan on how you will be able to work with the remaining three core players, the retailer, the network ( where you find the products to choose from and promote, also to receive payment) and customer( the person you will be promoting your products to).
Being successful and making a great deal of money in affiliate marketing is strictly based on your marketing effort and promotional approach accordingly. You need to use the different methods of advertising methods to your own advantage like the search engine optimization (SEO), email marketing and some sense of display advertising. Having a website of your own is not absolutely necessary, although in many situations, it’s advisable to have a blog at least. If however you focus on promoting ‘for sale’ products as an affiliate, there is one undeniable truth that you must always bear in mind. No matter what market you operate in, you must always promote products or services that people need or want to buy. If you are selling in a market where there are already thousands of buyers, you will always make money with every campaign. It is therefore essential to establish where consumers are spending money before launching into any affiliate marketing campaign. In other to do that, you need to come up with a marketing strategy and I happen to come up with a list of the four basic ingredients involved in advertising strategy;
1. The strategy must offer consumer benefit or solves the consumer problems. Ask- what is this strategy promising the consumer? Here Ad appeals are the solutions to consumer problem.
2. The benefit or solution must be appropriate. That is, it must be relevant to the consumer.
3. The brand or product being presented must be tied to the solution.
4. The benefit or solution must be communicable in advertisements.
With this knowledge, how do we develop good advertising strategy? And here are four steps involved in advertising strategy you could definitely work with;
1. Advertising plan: the starting point of every advert or promotion strategy is the formation of a plan that spells out clearly the diagnosis of the problem as well as a suggestion of solution. Ad plan shows what objective you would set for the promotional campaign and indicate the method and technique you will employ in creating a persuasive message, as well as the positional approach.
2. Unique selling proposition (USP): no advertising strategy will be complete without statement about the product attribute. USP shows how different is the product from other competitive products. It must contain strong points relevant to the problem definition and solution.
3. Brand image: through advertising, it is possible to create distinct impressions in the mind of people with respect to certain products or services. Such awareness is arrived through personal experience, interpersonal discussion and the common media. You need to be clear about the kind of image you want to create about the product or service.
4. Positioning: positioning is creating a point of difference about a product or service in the mind of the consumer. That is Ad is used to rent a space in the mind of the prospect consumer. It is important to show the class of product.
There are literally hundreds of different product and service manufacturers, creators and suppliers who are looking for active, professional affiliates who can market their products and services for them. You need to consider which affiliate program management you wish to register with. You will want to work for the best, most reliable company and in wanting to do so, you simply have to review all the companies at your disposal but the major concern on everybody’s mind is “Will I get paid?”, and because of that you will actually want to dig deep into the financial status of the company. Who would not want to work for the big guns?
Over months of researching the different affiliate marketing programs on the internet, I would say there are a lot you could choose from and actually earn big commissions from.
I have generated a list of some of the top affiliate programs on the internet with their financial status report for your own review and startup…
Clickbank.com
Daily revenue: $18,920
Monthly Revenue: $567,600
Annual Earnings: $6,811,200
Worth: $67,233,267
Daily Visit: 2,741,972
Monthly Visit: 82,259,147
Yearly Page views: 4,540,704,910
linkshare.com
Daily revenue: $9,194
Monthly Revenue: $275,820
Annual Earnings: $3,309,840
Worth: $32,120,520
Daily Visit: 1,332,475
Monthly Visit: 103,881,615
Yearly Visit: 479,691,170
Daily revenue: $391,622
Monthly Revenue: $11,748,660
Annual Earnings: $140,983,920
Worth: $1,409,134,210
Daily Visit: 56,756,842
Monthly Visit: 1,702,705,263
Yearly Visit: 20,432,463,150
Affiliatefuture.com
Daily revenue: $965
Daily revenue: $965
Monthly Revenue: $20,950
Annual Earnings: $347,400
Worth: $1,804,750
Daily Visit: 139,857
Monthly Visit: 4,195,70
Yearly Visit: 50,348,474
Freelancer.com
Daily revenue: $11,873
Monthly Revenue: $356,190
Annual Earnings: $4,274,280
Worth: $41,947,704
Daily Visit: 1,720,714
Monthly Visit: 51,621,429
Yearly Visit: 619,457,143