Affiliate Marketing

When people hear about affiliate marketing, they initially think of an online version of businesses such as Avon or Mary Kay: you receive a product and sell it for commission. Over the years, affiliate marketing became popular and many’s main source of income. As Nicola Smith puts it in her article "Affiliate Marketing: A Good Deal”, “affiliate marketing has long been established as one of the most effective ways of driving sales online, with anticipated sales reaching around 4.6 billion last year, according to eConsultancy". Researching into it dispels initial conceptions - it is not just about directly selling products. It also requires many other skills, such as being able to connect with people and possessing writing skills that were captivating but honest. The best part was that there were millions of markets to choose from. You could essentially make money from writing about anything you liked - whether it was art or fitness. In 2017, affiliate marketing continues to generate revenue for many people. Since it is a concept that is constantly developing, there are certain trends that affiliates need to consider to not only continue making money, but to grow their market - condensing your niche, constantly researching new products and services, mobile technology, and creating your own product or service to compliment your market.

Before jumping into affiliate marketing it is essential to define it. As Dennis L. Duffy defines it in his article “Affiliate marketing and it’s impact on e-commerce”:

"The affiliate will motivate customers to call your customer service number and order these products directly from you. The role the affiliate offers to play involves marketing – nothing else. The affiliate wants one thing in return: a commission on each sale (...) If the marketing efforts do well, the affiliate makes money. There are no parameters or constraints that define how much or how little money the affiliate can spend or earn (...) For every order the affiliate generates it earns a commission (at a rate defined by you. This is, in essence, affiliate marketing”.

In essence, an affiliate marketer obtains permission from different businesses or brands to write or promote their products. If a person chooses to purchase the product or service, the marketer receives commission. Online affiliate marketers receive their commission through a tracking code they place on their content.

To be an affiliate there are several skills that need to be acquired - web development, writing, and affiliate programs. The initial step in affiliate marketing is creating a website and learning about the proper tools to create traffic. There are many free programs that will teach the basics of creating an user-friendly site and tutorials on SEO tools to generate traffic. Affiliate marketing also has a heavy writing component. You have to find a niche, or market, that you feel comfortable and interested in writing and researching about (Birkner). When I first started, I chose urban artwork as my niche because it was a subject that I knew I would enjoy working with. In order to reach your target market, you need to write service and product reviews that are sincere but also catch a person’s attention. It is also essential to blog about interests outside of product and service reviews. Your market wants to know that you are engaging with them in more ways than trying to sell them something. Writing is the primary way to engage your audience and succeed at affiliate marketing (Duffy, 161). The money-making aspect of affiliate marketing comes from finding affiliate programs. Affiliate programs are free and offer links to products or services that you can write about. They will provide codes for these products or services that you can place on your reviews and whenever someone clicks on them and makes a purchase, you gain commission from it.

Because affiliate marketing has grown substantially, it is vital to engage in constant research about products and services in your niche. We live in a time where the release of a new product or service can reach millions of people in a matter of minutes. Being able to know about these new releases as soon as possible gives affiliates a competitive edge. Another concern with a growing number of affiliates is that many market ideas are saturated (Birkner). This means that generic ideas, such as dieting, are no longer generating as much revenue for affiliates because there are so many other people concentrating on the same niche. It is important to choose a niche that is specific. Choosing a specific niche means choosing a specific market, which is essential in lowering your chances of having a large number of competing affiliates.

Aside from researching new products and services that can be reviewed, it is also important to leverage the changes in technology for new affiliate programs and partnerships. This is especially true for the mobile world. New apps are created everyday and can be used not just for specific markets, but also as new opportunities to gain commission. Most affiliates work through websites, but being able to make a mobile-friendly site or to develop a fitting app can create new opportunities to grow your profit. Nicola Smith states, “a survey by One Iota of the UK's top 100 retailers in January found that only one in five has a mobile-optimised version of its website, with many brands relying on affiliate apps or branded apps for their mobile presence”. This finding is beneficial for those trying to leverage on new concepts with smartphones. An example of this is Groupon. Groupon is a great example of the potential of affiliate marketing to grow and evolve. Not only does it have a web base, but it also has a mobile app that is easy to use. Using these technological advances as well as product research can help an affiliate create their own product or service.

Creating an original product or service gives affiliates an edge because it shows their expertise on the chosen niche and it caters to the market with a new concept. For example, some affiliate marketers are looking into ways to be more socially conscious while also making revenue. In her article, “Affiliate Marketing as a source of good”, Rosie Barke writes, “In his latest Marketing Week column, Unilever's Marc Matthieu, who incidentally spoke at the same conference, makes the point that marketing and sustainability should be two sides of the same coin, rather than competing forces”. Marketers are taking the initiative of combining their business with concepts that will benefit the planet. These advances create more opportunities to make money through affiliate marketing.

Affiliate marketing is a continuously growing industry. With any growing industry there needs to be constant research, learning, and application of new concepts in order to make money and grow alongside it. In 2017, the best approaches to take in, forming a business from affiliate marketing, will be to take advantage of mobile technology as well as continuing to research products and services. It is also essential to condense a niche to reduce competitors. With these ideas in mind, affiliates will flourish.