Last month in Part 1 we looked at how many of us have already acted as Affiliate Marketers although unknowingly and without being paid for it. We also looked at how Affiliate Marketing as a profession enables the affiliate to earn a commission for marketing another person’s or company’s products. The affiliate simply searches for a product they enjoy, then promotes that product and earns a piece of the profit from each sale they make.
This month in Part 2 we consider How Do Affiliate Marketers Get Paid?
Depending on the affiliate program, the consumer doesn’t always need to buy a product for the affiliate to receive a commission, and some programmes even pay affiliates more than the consumer paid for their product/service in the interest of repeat sales, so the seller will determine how the affiliate gets paid from a number of ways:
1. Pay per sale.
This is the standard affiliate marketing structure. In this program, the seller pays the affiliate a percentage of the sale price of the product after the consumer purchases the product as a result of the affiliate’s marketing strategies. In other words, the affiliate must actually get the buyer/investor to buy/invest in the product before they are compensated.
2. Pay per lead.
A more complex system, pay per lead affiliate programs compensates the affiliate based on the conversion of leads. The affiliate must persuade the consumer to visit the seller’s website and complete the desired action — whether it’s filling out a contact form, signing up for a trial of a product, subscribing to a newsletter, or downloading software or files.
3. Pay per click.
This program focuses on incentivizing the affiliate to redirect consumers from their marketing platform to the seller’s website. This means the affiliate must engage the consumer to the extent that they will move from the affiliate’s site to the seller’s site. The affiliate is paid based on the increase in web traffic on the seller’s site.
Why Be an Affiliate Marketer?
So, what are the reasons to become an affiliate marketer?
Coming from a rural area there’s an interesting saying here; “A farmer’s work is a good one, it carries on when he sleeps”
There is effort for a farmer in preparing the ground, and outlay in buying the right seed, but once the seed is in the ground, it grows and develops without the farmer, even while he sleeps. In other words, there is a start up effort, but the growth is passive 24/7 thereafter until the harvest.
Likewise with Affiliate Marketing, there is a start up effort, but thereafter growth is passive with the automated system working 24/7 for you. In fact our experience with people from around the world accessing our system is most of our growth/sales have occurred while we’ve been sleeping.
Ruth & Stephen’s Dad harvesting potatoes
In summary, these are some of the key reasons why we recommend the Affiliate model:
1. Passive income.
While any “regular” job requires you to be at work to make money, affiliate marketing offers you the ability to make money while you sleep. By investing an initial amount of time and money into a campaign, you will see continuous returns on that investment as consumers purchase the product over the following days and weeks. You receive money for your work long after you’ve finished it. Even when you’re not in front of your computer, your marketing skills will be earning you a steady flow of income.
2. No customer support outlay.
Individual sellers and companies offering products or services have to deal with their consumers and ensure they are satisfied with what they have purchased. In the UK, we have the Competition & Marketing Authority to regulate this, and you’ll have a similar body in your country.
However, thanks to the affiliate marketing structure, you’ll never have to be directly concerned with customer support or customer satisfaction. The entire job of the affiliate marketer is to link the seller with the consumer. The seller then deals with any consumer queries, support questions or returns after you receive your commission from the sale.
3. Choose where you work from.
If you’re someone who sees commuting to the office as tiring unproductive time and cost, then affiliate marketing is the perfect solution. You’ll be able to launch campaigns and receive revenue from the products that sellers create while working from anywhere that has Wi-Fi; the comfort of your own home, your local coffee shop, or a coffee shop the other side of the world.
4. Cost-effective.
Most businesses require huge startup fees as well as a cash flow to finance the products being sold, so many people never get started. However, affiliate marketing can be done at a low cost, meaning you can get started quickly and without the hassle of starting a traditional bricks and mortar business. This is a cost effective and relatively straightforward way to get started in the online world.
5. Convenient and flexible.
Since you’re essentially becoming a freelancer, you get ultimate independence in setting your own goals, redirecting your path when you feel so inclined, choosing the products that interest you, and even determining your own hours. This convenience means you can diversify your portfolio if you like or focus solely on simple and straightforward campaigns. You’ll also be free from traditional company restrictions and regulations as well as ill-performing teams.
6. Performance-Based rewards.
With other jobs, you could work an 80-hour week and still earn the same salary. Affiliate marketing is purely based on your performance. You’ll get from it what you put into it. Honing your reviewing skills and writing engaging campaigns will translate to direct improvements in your revenue. Even if a campaign fails, you take that as feedback and optimise your next campaign for better results. You’ll finally get paid for the outstanding work you do!
Are you interested in learning the skills to develop as an Affiliate Marketer?
Then we invite you to explore the same programme we used to get started from scratch.
Please click this link and Enter Your Details to Get FREE Access to the “System for Selling Online”
So imagine you’re in town with a friend one lunch time and you notice a ‘buy one get one free’ offer at Zest Cafe. You take advantage of the offer then head home. Later that afternoon you’re chatting with another friend who’s looking for somewhere to dine and so you share with them about the buy on get one free offer at Zest.
Your friend thanks you for letting them know and head’s off to Zest with their partner to take advantage of the offer.
You’re happy because you’ve helped a friend, your friend’s happy because they’ve saved 50% on a meal and Zest cafe are happy because your referral resulted in a new customer and income for them.
Does this sound a familiar story to you?
Maybe you’ve even shared about such offers with your friends?
If so, you’ve effectively been acting as an affiliate marketer, albeit in a voluntary sense. So if you can do it in a voluntary sense, when not get paid for it?
If you’re interested, read on…
Affiliate marketing is an increasingly popular option to generate significant online revenue.
The option provides benefits to both brands who engage the affiliate marketers and affiliate marketers themselves, In fact:
• 81% of brands and 84% of publishers leverage the power of affiliate marketing, a statistic that will continue to increase as affiliate marketing spending increases every year in the United States.
• There is a 10.1% increase in affiliate marketing spending in the United States each year, meaning that by 2020, that number will reach $6.8 billion.
• In 2018, content marketing costs were gauged to be 62% of traditional marketing schemes while simultaneously generating three times the leads of traditional methods. In fact, 16% of all orders made online can be attributed to the impact of affiliate marketing.
• In March of 2017, Amazon’s affiliate structure changed, offering rates of 1-10% of product revenue for creators, providing the opportunity for affiliates to dramatically increase their passive income based on the vertical they’re selling on.
• The affiliate marketing of Jason Stone, otherwise known as Millionaire Mentor, was responsible for as much as $7 million in retailer sales just in the months of June and July in 2017.
So, What Is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing is the process by which an affiliate earns a commission for marketing another person’s or company’s products or services. The affiliate simply searches for a product they enjoy, then promotes that product and earns a piece of the profit from each sale they make. The sales are tracked via affiliate links from one website to another.
l How Does Affiliate Marketing Work?
Because affiliate marketing works by spreading the responsibilities of product marketing and creation across parties, it manages to leverage the abilities of a variety of individuals for a more effective marketing strategy while providing contributors with a share of the profit. To make this work, three different parties must be involved:
. The Brand / Seller and product creators.
. The affiliate or advertiser.
. The consumer.
Let’s look at these three relationships in more detail below:
1. The Brand / Seller and product creators.
The seller (like Zest Cafe in our leading example), whether a solo entrepreneur or large enterprise, is a vendor, merchant, product creator, or retailer with a product to market. The product can be a physical object, like household goods, or a service like internet provision.
Also known as the brand, the seller does not need to be actively involved in the marketing, but they may also be the advertiser and profit from the revenue sharing associated with affiliate marketing.
For example, the seller could be an e-commerce merchant that started a drop-shipping business and wants to reach a new audience by paying affiliate websites to promote their products.
2. The affiliate or publisher.
Also known as a publisher, the affiliate can be either an individual or a company that markets the seller’s product in an engaging way to potential consumers. In other words, the affiliate promotes the product to the right consumers to enable a purchase to take place. If the consumer does make a purchase, the affiliate receives a portion of the revenue made.
Affiliates often have a very specific audience to whom they market, generally adhering to that audience’s interests. This creates a defined niche or personal brand that helps the affiliate attract consumers who will be most likely to act on the promotion.
3. The consumer.
Whether the consumer knows it or not, they (and their purchases) are the drivers of affiliate marketing. Affiliates share these products with them on social media, blogs, and websites.
When consumers buy the product, the seller and the affiliate share the profits. Sometimes the affiliate will choose to be upfront with the consumer by disclosing that they are receiving commission for the sales they make. Other times the consumer may be completely oblivious to the affiliate marketing infrastructure behind their purchase.
Either way, they will rarely pay more for the product purchased through affiliate marketing; the affiliate’s share of the profit is included in the retail price. The consumer will complete the purchase process and receive the product as normal, unaffected by the affiliate marketing system in which they are a significant part.
So we hope that gives you a taste of what affiliate marketing is and how it works. In our next blog, What is Affiliate Marketing Part 2, we’ll share how Affiliate Marketers can get paid.
As the UK officially enters recession today, other data sources reveal how COVID-19 has redefined global consumption patterns, patterns which are here to stay.
People are living differently, buying differently and, in many ways, thinking differently. The habits formed now will endure beyond this crisis.
In this short video, I share some of these trends from the latest Accenture Consumer Research Report which reveals the profound impact of COVID-19 on consumer goods. The pandemic has accelerated long-term trends, forcing companies to rapidly adapt as demand for certain products and services outstrips supply.
Of particular interest is the 160% increase in eCommerce during the pandemic, with 52% of new online buyers stating they will continue to favour eCommerce over traditional purchases even after the pandemic is over.
As businesses move forward, they must consider how to better understand consumers based not on gut feel only, but on what the hard facts are telling us:
You can see a summary of the key trends from the report below:
You can access the full report here.
In this time of dramatic change, people, businesses and institutions have an opportunity to reset and renew. It’s time to seize this opportunity to reinvent your business and begin to outmaneuver uncertainty.
If you haven’t already signed up for our free workshops that show how you can create and launch recession proof income streams from scratch, then we invite you to do so by clicking here.
COVID-19 has massively accelerated the growth of e-commerce, according to an Adobe Digital Economy Index (DEI) report released today.
Adobe’s DEI is a global economic measure for the 21st century that more
quickly, comprehensively, and internationally measures the increasing buying power of digital consumers — with greater detail than any other data source available. You can download the full report here.
Highlighting that total online spending in May hit $82.5 billion, up 77% year-over-year, the report states: “It would’ve taken between 4 and 6 years to get to the levels that we saw in May if the growth continued at the same levels it was at for the past few years.”
Report highlights:
E-commerce: jumped $52 billion
Memorial Day sales: jumped 75% from $2 billion last year to $3.5 billion this year
Mobile’s share of e-commerce: grew from January but not much, up just 10%
BOPIS: buy online, pick up in-store grew 195% in May
Travel: flight bookings tripled from early April to late May
Higher rates of e-commerce and BOPIS (buy online, pick up in-store) may be the new abnormal, Adobe data indicates.
“We are seeing signs that online purchasing trends formed during the pandemic may see permanent adoption,” Taylor Schreiner, Director, Adobe Digital Insights, said in a statement. “While BOPIS was a niche delivery option pre-pandemic, it is fast becoming the delivery method of choice as consumers become more familiar with the ease, convenience and experience.”
Adobe’s DEI analyzes over one trillion online transactions across 100 million product SKUs, the company says.
What people are buying is changing too, perhaps returning more to relatively normal consumption patterns. Electronics and apparel purchases were up 11% and 12%, respectively: we’re working at home, but we haven’t bought new clothes in a while. Pricing is changing though: grocery prices were up 4% in May compared to 2019.
The data is telling us that COVID-19 has simply accelerated the trend of growth in the digital economy that has already been happening for many years. I share more in this short video below:
So if you’re serious about your business, you need to listen to what the data is telling you and be agile enough to act/respond accordingly.
Many people see the advantage of an online business but fail to get started because they simply don’t know where to start, or have a fear of failure. That’s exactly the position we were in which held us back for so long until we found the right education and support network to help us get started from scratch. If you’re ready to explore proven steps with a support network that you can take right now to take advantage of the growth in the digital economy, then Click Here to learn more.
This week we caught up with Phil & Pauline Sanderson who hold a number of world records in the Mountaineering world including:
• The World’s longest climb – The Dead Sea (lowest point) to Everest (highest point)
• The 1st British married couple to summit Everest – Only 2 couples have ever done this
• And the the world record for…well I explain more in the video below…
There are so many parallels between planing and executing an expedition to starting an online business. I would suggest the most important parallel is ‘mindset’, and both Phil & Pauline admit the key success factor for them has always been taking control of the conversation that happens in their head.
They both experience doubt, they both experience ‘imposter syndrome’ (I’m not good enough to be here) and they both feel like giving up when things go wrong. Have you ever felt like that?
So why don’t they give up where others have?
Because of the conversation they have in their heads. They take control of the negative thoughts they hear.
What we also love about Phil & Pauline is how they have used their achievements to help a number of charities including:
SOS Childrens Villages ( The world’s largest orphan charity)
And Practical Action – a charity using technological solutions to help tackle poverty around the world.
And probably the most important take away message from Phil & Pauline is, no matter what journey you are on, TAKE TIME TO ENJOY THE JOURNEY!
Stephen
Click here to gain access to the same online business coaches and educational system that we use now.
Finally, take courage from this lesson from sporting history: Derek Redmond, British record holder for the 400m sprint, had many trials, including tearing his ham string in the 400 metres semi-final at the 1992 Olympic Games. However, he did not let this hold him back, but finished the race, not on his own, but with assistance from his Dad he completed a whole lap limping!
So in the week ahead, if you’re struggling, don’t be afraid to ask for help. You don’t have to do this alone. Let those who are further along the journey to online success help you take your next step.
We’d love to hear from you at info@digilifeenabled.com
Ruth
What can you do?
Do what you can.
“If you can’t fly, then run. If you can’t run, then walk. If you can’t walk, then crawl. But whatever you do, you have to keep moving forward.”
Dr Martin Luther King Jr
Growing up, the words, but perhaps more importantly, the life of Dr Martin Luther King Jr challenged and shaped my world view. Maybe you’ve been challenged by the likes of Luther King too?
Maybe you’ve heard his popular quote above?
It teaches us that no matter where you are in your journey to success, there is always some kind of action you can take to move forward. I share something more of that perspective in this short video:
For example; if you don’t have any money to start your business right now, you can still plan your future budget, or even design a business logo or website.
If you’re stuck in a job you don’t like, you can build up your CV/resume, or network with professionals in your area to learn about job opportunities.
If you’re like me, maybe you feel that small steps don’t feel as satisfying as big leaps, but Luther King showed us that any progress is better than no progress. So do what you can do today to get closer to your goals, whether it’s fly, run, walk, or crawl… and you will get to where you want to be.
I’d like to conclude with a lesser known quote of Luther King:
“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”
To me that is equally as powerful as the first quote, because many people measure success from a perspective of Return On Investment (ROI) based on our actions, but fail to consider COI – Cost Of Inaction because of our silence.
So what matters most to you?
If no one was looking, who would you really want to be?
Are you being silent about that which really matters to you?
Make time today to reflect on how you can you give greater priority to that which matters most to you in the week ahead.
I find so many in business are unsatisfied with simply selling ‘stuff’.
Sure, we need to sell ‘stuff’ to keep the bread on the table, but what if there was more to business, more to life, than just selling ‘stuff’?
What if our business, what if our life, was about living out our values so as to make a difference in this world while at the same time providing for those we are responsible for?
One of the reasons we sign post people to the business start up programmes at SFM is because, having been through the system ourselves, and having met with the founders and lead team, we’ve seen it’s not about getting people to sell stuff.
Sure, there are some ready made resources for newbies starting out with to sell if they choose to, and as newbies we found that really helpful as we had nothing to sell, but it’s not about that.
The core of the SFM programme is about helping people understand their Vision, Mission, Purpose and Values, so they can become the best version of themselves in business and in life whether they choose to sell SFM stuff or not.
There’s very few programmes that offer that support.
Take SFM student, Rob Sewell as an example. I shared something of Rob’s transformation from Drug & Alcohol abuse to six figure business owner here:
In going through the SFM programme Rob now appreciates:
1. The impact of speaking truth & empowering others
2. The hardships he’s overcome and how they’ve helped him find his true purpose
3. How the experiences you go through forge your values
4. How he’s stepped into his purpose and launched his own coaching business
Rob now seeks to serve others by acting as a guiding light that shows people a space where they feel safe and understood.
Rob’s Vision, Mission, Purpose & Values
And while no income is guaranteed by any programme, after pinpointing his purpose with SFM, Rob’s income through his online business is such that it allows him the financial freedom to take each Friday off to volunteer with those who are struggling with drug and alcohol abuse, and given him the time freedom he so longed for with his family that his corporate job never gave him.
So, in the week ahead, perhaps you can reflect on what your business is about and whether it’s aligned to your true purpose?
If you’re interested in learning how to create a sustainable business based on your values, then click here to get started with our complimentary video training series delivered straight to your inbox.
Coming to you today from The Digger’s Inn, Francistown, Botswana, sharing an historic industrial lesson which has relevance to those wishing to start any new venture today.
In the late 1800s Francistown developed as a gold mining town. It had a railway bringing vital communication and transport from the South, but connectivity to the north, in particular Bulawayo (then Rhodesia now Zimbabwe) was by ox wagon only. The Rinderpest epidemic of 1896-7 had killed virtually all the cattle, so that ox wagons could no longer be used for transport of good or people. The sole means of transport therefore became donkey carts and mule drawn Zeederberg coaches making this a long slow journey requiring animal changes every 10-12miles.
Cecil Rhodes gave orders to engineer George Pauling that the rails must reach Bulawayo from Francistown before the rains started at the end of 1897, a feat which they accomplished at a mile a day for 70 days. A feat which is all the extraordinary when you consider this was all manual labour with hand tools.
Because of the urgency, much of the line was initially unballasted with sleepers resting on the ground and most of the river crossings were merely forded without bridges.
The line needed to be able to carry trains at a speed of 12 miles per hour. Stations and sidings initially had only simple tin buildings. However, once the entire line was operational and revenue coming in, appropriate bridges and stations were built.
To summarise, the engineers set to work on a ‘workable’ solution which would deliver something on time, rather than wait for a perfect solution which would be too late.
One of the lessons for all of us starting off a new project, or business, is we often procrastinate and delay because we don’t have everything perfect to start. The reality is, things never will be perfect, we just need to start from where we are, not in a careless manner, but realising that we can create ‘something’ where there was ‘nothing’. That is progress!
So, what are you waiting for?
Remember, a workable solution delivered on time is better than a perfect solution a little too late.
Francistown grew because of the gold rush. If you’re interested learning how to leverage the digital gold rush, then click here to review our complimentary video series where you can learn more about starting a profitable online business based on your values and passions.
You know, many people talk about ‘thinking big’ in business and in life to succeed, and I get that, but this week I want to encourage you to simply think small, in both your business and personal life.
In the video below I share two examples of people who are making a big difference in this world not by thinking big, but by thinking small, one of whom is a 16 year old girl who through small acts is making a huge difference…
Finally, as we all think about ways to generate wealth to make a difference in this world, I want to leave you with some of the last words Steve Jobs shared before he passed away at the age of 56 from pancreatic cancer:
“At this moment, lying on the bed, sick and remembering all my life, I realize that all my recognition and wealth that I have is meaningless in the face of imminent death.
You can hire someone to drive a car for you, make money for you – but you cannot hire someone to carry the disease for you.
One can find material things, but there is one thing that can not be found when it is lost – “LIFE”. So, love the people God sent you, one day he’ll need them back…”
May we all make a big difference in the week ahead by thinking small.