What is Affiliate Marketing? How does it work?

Guys, how have you been? Hope you all are doing good and learning something new. So, today we will be learning one of the crucial parts of Digital Marketing. Previously, we have learned about SEO which plays an important role in Digital Marketing. Today, it’s all about Affiliate Marketing.

So, what is Affiliate Marketing? We won’t take much of your time and directly will dig into the basics.

It is a process through which a person earns a commission for promoting another person’s company’s product.

The person who is earning a commission is called an Affiliate Marketer and the way a product is promoted is called affiliate marketing.

How Affiliate Marketing Works?

Did you understand something by the diagram above? If yes, I must say you are really a quick learner. If not, you don’t need to worry about it. We will make things clear for you and explain you.

As I told you earlier, an affiliate promotes a product to get a commission. So basically, there are 3 persons who are involving in this advertising model.

1. Company/Individual

Any company or Individual can run their affiliate program. Moreover, the best part is a company doesn’t need to involve and invest in this marketing.

So what does an affiliate marketer promote for that company? It could be anything: a physical product, digital product, or service.

Let’s have an example of Amazon. We are very much aware of Amazon and its products. So, if a person joins the affiliate program of Amazon and starts promoting the products available on Amazon. Do you think he is eligible for the commission? Big No, is the answer. He will be getting a commission when someone purchases the product through his affiliate link.

Did you get this now? How this program actually works. So, just like Amazon, there are many companies that have their own affiliate program with their rules & regulations.

2. An Affiliate

Here comes the backbone of this advertising model. If an affiliate knows how to promote the product, he will make a good amount of money in form of commissions. Moreover, the company will see significant growth in its sales.

So, who is an affiliate? An affiliate marketer can be anyone. You, me, or any individual. A person who will be promoting a company’s product for a commission is an affiliate marketer. The only skill required by an affiliate marketer is: to convince others to buy a specific product.

3. Consumer/Customer

I don’t think I need to explain this. A customer is a person who will be buying the promoted product. Simple is that.

What is an Affiliate Program?

An affiliate program is also called an associate program. This simply means a company/individual pays a commission to another person for promoting and increasing their sales. Each company has different rules & eligibility criteria for their associate programs.

How much do Affiliates earn?

You must be very curious to know this. Right? I can understand that, I was too. But let me clear you one thing, you will be shocked after knowing the potential of affiliate marketing.

Let’s take an example of the Flipkart associate program commission list:

So this is the list of commissions paid to an affiliate marketer after a customer purchases a product through an affiliate link.

Now let’s move to an example for your better understanding. Let’s say you are promoting different products of Flipkart on various platforms through your affiliate link.

Now an existing Flipkart customer purchases some products through your affiliate link on the website. Below table shows all the data:

So the total earning of an affiliate was 2,480 INR. Isn’t it a good amount? I know this was an example and I can make it look as lucrative as I want.

But did you imagine if you start converting your leads into sales? What will actually happen? You will be earning a huge amount in a short span of time. The purpose of this example was to show you the potential of Affiliate Marketing.

So if you are really looking forward to earn through Affiliate Marketing. I would advise you to learn before you start it. It’s not as easy as it was in the example above.

There are dozens of books available on Flipkart for beginners. Search for the best one and start learning & earning.

Apart from this, you always have free tutorials available on youtube. More to this, you can always ask your question in the comments section below. Hope this article made you learn something new.