What is affiliate marketing?
Firstly, let’s start with what is affiliate marketing? Affiliate marketing is essentially being paid a commission for sales you make. Let’s just take the brand Nike for example. You become an affiliate for Nike and they give you an affiliate link, embedded into that link will be your own unique code. Now when you start promoting and advertising Nike, anyone that clicks on your link and makes a purchase, you will be paid a commission.
This can go for pretty much any brand that has an affiliate scheme set up, and trust me, almost every major brand does. Why? Because there is no loss at all for a brand when it comes to affiliate marketing. They do not pay a single penny for marketing UNTIL the sale has been made. Trust me this is huge for brands, and it a major reason why the affiliate marketing industry is now worth over 17 Billion, yes B for billion. And that figure is only growing. There is no saturated market, anyone can join and it’s never too late to get involved and start earning extra cash.
And the best thing is, you will be getting paid for things you were advocating for anyway. It really is a win win for everyone involved. Even the consumer, they don’t pay anything, only for the product they want to buy. They are never charged any extra for making a purchase through your link.
PPC (Pay per click)
Now you might be thinking but what if I don’t sell any products, and yes conversion is a tougher game I agree. However a lot of affiliate programs pay per click, you will see it as ‘PPC’. If you are apart of a program that pays PPC, you’r onto a winner. This means that you will be paid even if someone clicks on the link, because essentially you are still driving traffic to the website. Although it’s not a lot, the pennies can add up.
Brands will also pay for leads. Which means that for every person that signs up to that company, perhaps it’s a newsletter or creating an account, the company will pay you for it.
The best things about affiliate marketing is that once you have done the work and added your link, it’s evergreen. Which means it will keep working and earning without you having to do anything else. The work has already been done. You just do it once and leave it, and even in years to come that link will still going (providing you are still apart of the affiliate program and nothing has changed)
Understanding cookies and cookie day duration
Okay when I first started affiliate marketing and I heard the term ’30 day cookie duration’. I thought to myself ‘how am I going to remember to change all these links every 30 days?’ And guys, if you think this too, don’t worry we’ve all been there. That is NOT how it works. Basically, each affiliate code will have a cookie day length.
Let’s take the 30 day cookie duration for an example. Let’s say Susie clicks on your Nike link one day and looks at a pair of trainers, then she closes her browser and exits off the website and did not make a purchase. Then, 29 days later Susie goes back to that same page WITHOUT clicking your link first, and then buys the trainers.You will still get paid the commission because it was within the 30 days.
Basically cookies are there to track users and so the cookie knows susie came to that website originally from your link because it was within the 30 day window. Now if Susie had gone back to that website and bought the trainers after 31 days, you would not get paid the commission, because it would not be trackable.
AWIN
Now that we have covered the basics on affiliate marketing it’s time to get into AWIN and what AWIN is. AWIN is an affiliate marketing platform that thousands of brands use to host their affiliate schemes. Once you have applied for a publisher account with AWIN and get approved, you can start looking at what brands fit your own brand and niche, and start applying. Brands can also invite you to join their affiliate programs and you will get notified on your account, as well as receive an email. The good thing about AWIN is that they become the kind of ‘management’ for your affiliate marketing. Everything is tracked, payments are automatic and you can set your payment preferences.
You can also see all of the terms, commission amounts, payment terms etc before joining programs. You can also contact brands beforehand and speak to them directly if there is something you are unsure about.
You have all of the tools needed to advertise, including images, brands logos you can use without the worry of copyright, and also a link builder so you can create your affiliate links and have your commission tracked.
How to sign up
To sign up to AWIN you will need your own website. And simply click sign up on the home page, where it will take you to a four step verification process. After you have filled in all of your details, it will ask you to make a payment of around £1 to verify your bank. This is completely normal, and once your account has been approved, AWIN will deposit the money straight back into your account. This is just to ensure they are paying the right account and payments will be made easier and quicker once you start earning.
To log into AWIN, you will need to download an authentication app, and type in the code each time. I just use the google authenticator app. You can click for it to remember you for 30 days if you plan on logging into it often.
TIP; once you have successfully set up your AWIN account, you can become an affiliate partner to AWIN just like i have. And you can also start earning commission for referring others to AWIN (just like i have)
Welcome to the times where everyone can be paid for the good old fashioned ‘word of mouth’
Step by step process to creating your link
You won’t be able to create any links until you have successfully joined an affiliate program. So have a browse through all of the companies that you love and support, and genuinely want to promote to your audience.
Once you have joined some schemes, head up the top menu bar where it says ‘Toolbox’ then click ‘link builder’. It should take you to a new page that looks like this
It will say ‘create deep link’ and the first option will say ‘Advertiser’, click in the empty box and a list will automatically show you all of the schemes you have successfully joined. Click on the company you want to create an affiliate link for.
Then move onto the next that says ‘Destination URL’ here is where you want to add the url you are trying to link too. It may just be the homepage, or you might have a specific product or page you are trying to link too, copy and paste it into this space.
Then you can go ahead and click ‘generate link’ . Once you have clicked this, and link will generate below where it says ‘ Your Deep Link’. This is your affiliate link with your unique code embedded into it.
You can go ahead and use this link, or if you want, you can click ‘shorten link’ and it will make the link a lot smaller. Now you can start sharing this link, and all traffic and activity will be tracked and recorded. Any sale you make within 30 days of someone clicking your link, you will be paid commission on.
Payments
To see a quick overview of your earnings, click ‘Dashboard’ at the top of your account once logged in, and it will appear at the top. It will show you what has been tracked, what has already been approved, and what is waiting to be approved from the brand. And you can chose if you want to be paid twice monthly, or monthly. You can also chose a payment threshold, the minimum amount is £20 GBP.
I would love to know how you get on with affiliate marketing, and if you have any questions, please drop them below and I will answer them all!
Good luck!
Disclaimer: some links on my website are affiliate links. This means that should you wish to make a purchase through one of my affiliate links, I could earn a commission at no extra cost to you what so ever.
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