This is lesson (4) affiliate marketing concept.

In this article:

•  the online shop
• affiliate marketing concept
• affiliate marketing scheme /channel
• how an affiliate site works
• affiliate links for product selling
• income from advertisement
• challenges for an affiliate site
• keyword research tool
• common property of all mass media
• conclusion

The online shop

An online shop is a market where products are offered through the internet medium.
Due to its electronic transaction /dealing property, it makes it much easier for the producers /distributors to create a promotional scheme for site owners.

Affiliate marketing concept

An affiliate marketing is a method where a website (called affiliate site) promotes products using articles /videos or advertisements to help selling the products. The site owners gain income from sales commission or advertisement fee. The site owners are called affiliate marketers.

nike.com, a seller’s own online store, selling or providing information about own products.

amazon.com, a third party’s online store, usually providing many products, many also have affiliate marketing programs.

Affiliate marketing channel

To market products through affiliate marketing, producers /distributors may provide their own affiliate marketing scheme.

Another way is through another party, such as an affiliate network. The affiliate network provides marketing schemes for companies /producers who do not have their own affiliate marketing schemes, or who want a better or more complex affiliate marketing management.

Cj.com, an affiliate network, providing affiliate marketing schemes for product sellers /manufacturers.

How affiliate site works

An affiliate site makes money through sales of reviewed products or advertisement space. Since only fraction of visitors will actually make purchase through the site (or click the advertisement), the site must have a significant amount of visitors. The site must be interesting to visitors. Visitors will be attracted to the site due to its significant, useful, and beneficial content.

Affiliate links for product selling

For product selling, the affiliate site content may include reviews of products. The visitors can read the articles and then make purchases through the provided product links.

The links are the affiliate marketer’s unique link given by product sellers or an affiliate network. It contains unique ID of the affiliate marketer that tells the producers /affiliate network who makes the sales and gains the commission.

This is a popular way an affiliate site collects revenue.

Income from advertisement

An affiliate site may also gain income from advertisement in the site. The advertisement may be direct from product manufacturers, or from an advertisement agency or from Google itself (called Google AdSense).

So in short, here is what an affiliate marketer does: The affiliate marketer owns a useful, interesting website which attracts a lot of visitors. When the visitors make purchase through the site, the affiliate marketer collects commission. The affiliate marketer can also collect revenue from advertisements on the site.

The challenges for an affiliate site

The first challenge for an affiliate site is to create a site that covers a topic or subject that must have significant number of prospective audience.

Then the site must show up (be found) when people search for information (specific words) in search engines. To be statistically effective, which is to be read by many visitors, an affiliate site link must show up as top search results in an internet browser. A site must collect as many visitors as possible (a significant amount of traffic) to gain a feasible result, since only a fraction of the visitors will end up making purchases from the product links or advertisements.

Keyword research tool

To get significant visits (traffic), an affiliate site must show up as search results in search engines.

An internet user who looks for information will  input specific words (keywords) in his search engine. To allow an affiliate site to show up in the search results, the site must include the searched words or phrases. An affiliate marketer must do a research to find words to include in his site’s articles to make the site visible in search result. The easiest way to do such research is b using a keyword research tool.

A keyword research tool will make it much easier to find phrases or terms with the highest searches. The affiliate site content should be tuned to match the keywords to make the site show up as search results on search engines, which lead to clicks and visits.

Common property of all mass media

There is a very similar property for any mass media to succeed, including an affiliate site. Its content must be useful, relevant, and engaging. The visitors /readers /viewers shall be turned into the media lovers or consumers. A media with a lot of lovers will also be loved by advertisers.

Conclusion

So here is a brief conclusion of this lesson.

1. Affiliate marketing works in the online market.
2. It works on an affiliate website.
3. The site must have a significant number of visitors who will make purchases through the site.
4. Revenue is acquired through sales commission or advertisement run on the site.

So a website is required, and an affiliate marketer need to do the following work:

• Building a niche website.
• Creating helpful, relevant content.
• Getting rankings and traffic.
• Only, then, can make money.

We’ll see more details in lesson 5, things in details required to run an affiliate business.