In the rampant world of Digital Marketing, Affiliate Marketing is an another technique to fuel Sales and Publicity.
Affiliate marketing, though a concept up in its years, achieved its prime recently when it was adopted by various famous players in the market like Amazon.com, eBay, ClickBank and many more.
Affiliate Marketing is the fancier term for the added benefits(whether monetary or otherwise) for the Affiliate who refers customers to the Advertiser. The compensation methods adopted by the advertiser according to the recent trends of the market are:
- Pay per Sale (PPS)
The Affiliate gets paid for the sales directly generated by the advertisement endorsed by the Affiliate. This method of compensation is widely adopted. - Cost per Action (CPA)
The Advertiser defines the action for which the Affiliate will be paid. It can be a click, sale or even a form submission (the actions vary according to the target of the Advertisers). This is a revised version of Cost per click program. - Cost per click (CPC)
The Affiliates are paid according to the traffic generated by them for the given Advertiser’s site. All that is required of the customer is to click on the given site link. This type of marketing is easily prone to scams. - Cost per mille (CPM)
Under this compensation method, the affiliate gets paid for thousand impressions of the advertisement. Here it doesn’t matter whether the ad is clicked or not; each time when the ad is fetched from its source, it is counted as an impression.
The methods of Compensation seem to be easy enough for implementation. But, as we know that Appearances can be deceptive, it does not harm to look before we leap.
What Affiliates should look out for (before leaping)?
Though Affiliate marketing may sound like easy money to wanna-be Affiliates, it comes along with its disadvantages. Here are some factors to consider before becoming an Affiliate for any Advertiser:
- As easy as it may sound, Affiliate can get mixed up in legal matters easily due to insufficient knowledge. Read the contract before going onboard. It is also advisable to get in touch with a lawyer equipped with Internet Marketing Laws.
- One should be aware of the Taxation policy of their country for Affiliate Marketing and whether the compensation is inclusive or exclusive of taxes.
- An another Affiliate’s Adware leads to depletion in leads of a legit Affiliate. When an Adware has infiltrated a customer’s device, it misleads the Advertiser by claiming itself as the source of referral, instead of the legit Affiliate. Thus, robbing the legit Affiliate of his revenue. Cookie Stuffing also cheats the legit Affiliate of his revenue.
- With ever changing structure of compensation methods, leads get retracted. For an instance, an Affiliate Marketer might have $100 in his account under CPC revenue model. After some days, the company decides to change their revenue model to PPS. Now, the marketer has only $10 in his account.
Thus, it is important to know about the revenue models beforehand. It is also advisable to adapt to a fixed model of revenue.
What Advertisers should look out for (before affiliating)?
Adopting Affiliate Marketing does not guarantee immediate success. Advertisers need to connect with the correct pool of Affiliate Marketers to get themselves going. Here are some tips to avoid bad collaborations and subsequent losses:
- Selecting Affiliate Marketers is more of a trial and error process; one never knows what might work and what might not. So, it is always a wise decision to collaborate with heterogeneous marketers.
CallHippo, a virtual telephony service provider agrees with this thought. Finding niche with your target audience is a progressive process; once done perfectly, it bags amazing results. - One should collaborate with vetted Affiliate Marketers to be safe from Spams, false Advertisements, forced Clicks, Email Spams and Search engine Spams.
- Advertisers should be aware of Adware too. These malicious viruses defame your brand amongst the Affiliate Marketers. Moreover, You end paying the wrong person !
- With lack of training and certification, there no industry standards for Affiliate Marketers. One needs to go with a better sense of judgement while selecting the Marketers.
Conclusion:
There are risks involved for both the parties when it comes to Affiliate Marketing. The key lies in playing it Safe and Smart. Putting yourself gradually out there, helps understand the market.
With small Steps, comes greater Insights. And with greater Insights, comes renewed Success. So, pave your way to Success with Affiliate Marketing with these Insights !
