Affiliate marketing: The powerful way to increase the revenue for ecommerce sites

Getting your products into people’s hands and generating new sales is tough as a new eCommerce business. And eCommerce marketing involves testing, tweaking, and making sure your message entices customers to act, all while being ROI-positive. For many entrepreneurs looking to build an online business, or marketers looking to monetize their web traffic, affiliate marketing is often how they got started with generating income.

The term of affiliate marketing, should you have heard somewhere, or you are familiar with it, we will never know. Yet, maybe you would still like to hear more before embarking on your affiliate marketer journey. So now, we – MageSolution would like to introduce to you guys the ultimate guide of affiliate marketing – one of the most powerful ways to increase the revenue for your eCommerce sites.

What is “affiliate marketing”?

affiliate-Marketing

There ate tons of definition of this method on the internet. And some of them are misconducted, or misunderstood. Based on the latest research of our team, we would like to inform you guys with the finest definition of the term “Affiliate Marketing”:

Affiliate marketing is a performance-based marketing tactic in which a retailer, typically an online one, rewards a website with a commission for each customer referred via the website’s promotional activities. The website, often called an affiliate, will only get paid when their promotion results in a transaction. In short, this is the process of earning money by promoting another website’s products.

There are typically four parties involved in affiliate marketing:

  • The affiliates – the promoters of the product
  • The product creators – the creators of the product
  • The networks – the networks managing the affiliates
  • The consumers – the end-users of the products

Some benefits of affiliate marketing

The internet has become a very collaborative place and the more websites you work with, the wider your reach and potential website visitors. Here are some of the key benefits you’ll receive if you get started with this marketing method

#1. Having advanced social proof 

So, with this term, the more positive experiences the buyer reads, the more inclined they are to make a purchase. By adding your products to review and lifestyle affiliate sites, you‘ll be found organically for terms that they rank for, and will get more recommendations and exposure relatively quickly. TL;DR: By partnering with trusted influencers and high authority websites, you can improve your reputation and build consumer confidence.

social proof

#2. Strong ROI (Return On Investment)

One main benefit of affiliate marketing is that it is all performance-based, and you set the rules. So, your income will be on your hand (which will be inevitably high). Affiliate-related spending accounts for 16 percent of all online orders. According to a recent study in 2019, consumers will spend more cash when following an affiliate’s recommendation for purchase compared to buying an item of their own choosing.

#3. Generate user content

When people love your brand, they want everyone else to know about it. On Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, your brand will be everywhere. Product photos, videos, and product reviews can all generate revenue for your eCommerce business organically. So, you should encourage user-generated content on your site. When your fans and followers mention your products, feature that content everywhere and use it as marketing power.

#4. No major investments

You don’t need to make any significant investments with regard to money or time. Once you set up your website and join the affiliate marketing world, all you need is unique content and your referral links. Getting started doesn’t require you to be a marketing professional with many years of experience under your belt. Moreover, if (maybe) the method doesn’t work out for you, the loss will be much less than the average of a normal investment.

#5. You can focus on selling specific, high-value products

Hướng dẫn làm affiliate marketing cho người mới bắt đầu

Focus on selling high-quality products

When creating affiliate offers, online store owners can have affiliates promote all of their products or just a select few. It’s a good idea to have affiliates promote your high-value products with strong profit margins. Plus, if you have a low turnover rate on certain products, that won’t be a problem. You can use inventory management strategies to promote your excess inventory, improving your sell-through rate.

Steps to find success with affiliate marketing

Being an affiliate marketer means joining the most promising affiliate programs you can find, inserting your referral links to your content, and waiting for your commissions. However, if you want to be put on the map, here are some steps for you, using affiliate marketing.

Step 1: Find your niche

How To Discover Good Niches For Affiliate Marketing

Find your own niche to sell

The first step involves finding out which affiliate products to sell. To do that, you need to start with the bigger picture. Decide which topics you feel passionate about and narrow it down to a specific niche. To make sure that your business is sustainable in the long term, choose a niche that you’re already familiar with so that you have some expertise to offer for your audience. Focus on unique, valuable content that provides a solution to a problem.

Step 2: Create your website for affiliate marketing

In case you already have a website, you can skip this step. Otherwise, you should start by choosing a domain and buying hosting services. These two often come in the same package as a bundle. Make sure that your domain is memorable and easy for people to spell. After this, all you have to do is choose the right platform. The easiest option is to install Magento and pick a suitable theme for your website.

Step 3: Build a loyal team of audiences

You cannot expect your visitors to convert if you haven’t offered them any value. It’s important that you build a loyal audience before starting to monetize your content. You should think about affiliate marketing as an exchange. You provide valuable content to your audience, and in return your audience might consider any offers that you present. Of course, provided that these offers bring value to them by solving a problem they have.

Step 4: Think about monetization

Now, if you’re reaching this step, you should have thought about how the method can bring the best profit for your business. Whatever you choose to write about needs to bring you money in the long term. There can be a conflict between your passion and profitability. But since your primary goal as an affiliate marketer is to make money, the monetization aspect is important. Make your research to confirm that your niche has enough monetary potential.

Step 5: Choose between affiliate programs and networks

Affiliate networks are more suitable for you if you have no particular strategy or clear idea about your niche. In other words, Maybe you just want to try your hand at affiliate marketing and see how it works out. If, however, you consider this strategy on a larger scale, it’s better to consider, for example, SaaS affiliate programs. Software as a service (SaaS) has the potential for higher profits since the value of such software is higher.

Step 6: Create and publish top-notch content

Even if you’ve got the right niche and a flawless website, you need something to build your audience. And creating content is one of the final steps of your affiliate journey. In that way, it’s also the gateway to the start of your affiliate marketing efforts. It doesn’t matter if you’re blogging or publishing ads, when you’ve hit this phase, you’re in the home stretch of learning how to become an affiliate marketer.

Step 7: Monitor your affiliate marketing program

When you partner with affiliates to market your brand, you learn more about your audience. Through evaluating your affiliates with affiliate tracking software, you gain insight into where your audience hangs out online and which affiliates have the largest impact. Having affiliates and having effective affiliates are two entirely different things, so you’ll want to monitor your traffic and conversion rates to determine if and when a shift is needed.

Final words

That should be it! Here is the ultimate guide on everything related to affiliate marketing. After reading this article, you should have the basic knowledge of this module. You’ll take part in a mutually beneficial marketing tactic and increase your eCommerce revenue in a predictable and scalable way. We – MageSolution offers tons of themes and extensions that can skyrocket your revenue and increase conversions. Check us now: MageSolution