Affiliate marketing is a performance based marketing strategy where companies pay a commission to affiliates to promote their products or services. Affiliate Marketing blog is an effective way to expand the reach of your business and increase sales. However, creating a successful affiliate marketing program requires careful planning and execution
When it comes to creating an affiliate marketing website, you have several options. You can create a static website using HTML. For this, you need to know a certain programming language.
You will also need an HTML editor to create your pages. An alternative to this is creating a blog using WordPress, a free platform that many people use these days to create their blog.
Why WordPress?
Using WordPress gives many benefits to your affiliate marketing efforts. First, it can be easily installed from your web hosting cPanel. You can use Fantastico to install WordPress in less than a minute. After launch, your site will be fully functional with a blog that you can use to promote your affiliate products.
Another reason why many affiliate marketers prefer WordPress is the simple admin panel. When you enter your WordPress installation, you will have access to different sections of the admin panel.
From here you can change the theme of the blog, create pages or messages, install WordPress plugins, track your site statistics and much more. The ability to do anything with one click makes WordPress so attractive to affiliate marketers.
Search optimization
WordPress can also help you optimize your site’s search engine. There are many themes and plugins with built-in options that will help your site rank higher in search results.
Take, for example, your metadata. This is the title, description and set of tags that search engines can read to determine what keywords your site is targeting. If you use HTML, you must manually insert them into your pages. In WordPress, you can enter information in the text fields, and it will be added as soon as the message is published.
Plan your posts
Because search engines love new content, WordPress makes it ridiculously easy to regularly update your site. You can plan to post blog posts in the future. If you sit down and write 52 blog posts (or outsource them), you can publish them once a week for publication. This will basically put your efforts to blog on autopilot for the entire year!
As you can see, there are many reasons why you should consider using WordPress for your partner blogs. Some people may think that the platform is difficult to use, but it is definitely better than learning the entire HTML language for creating a website.
Important Affiliate Marketing Terms
As you get to know affiliate marketing, you’ll come across a lot of new and confusing terms, but there’s no need to worry. Definitions of most of them will be given below.
1. Affiliate link
As mentioned above, an affiliate link is what you will use to redirect customers to the merchant’s website. This link is unique to each affiliate and is used to track activity on your site, which will determine your payment.
2. Partner Relations Manager
This is the person who manages the affiliate program on behalf of the seller. He will help you find ways to increase sales by advising on the best methods to promote the product depending on the type of product.
3. Affiliate network
This is a system that brings together the seller and the partner. She finds the most suitable sellers for partners, ensures the functioning of the link tracking system, and prepares sales reports.
4. Commission (remuneration)
This is the amount paid to partners for sales made. The amount for the sale is usually agreed upon in advance.
5. Cloaking
In general, this term refers to the technique of “black” search engine optimization, when the information given to a robot and intended for a person on the same page differs. But in the context of affiliate marketing, cloaking refers to hiding the tracking code included in the affiliate link for security purposes. Cloaking is also the process of converting a long link into a shorter and more attractive one so that recipients do not think that it is a spam link. For cloaking you will need a special plugin.
6. Landing page (landing page)
This is a standalone/intermediate web page that you will use to generate leads or sales. From it, visitors will go to the seller’s website.
7. Impressions
This is the number of times your ad was shown on the page.
8. Vertical (niche)
The topic you are focusing on as a partner.
9. SEO
This acronym stands for search engine optimization . The goal of search engine optimization is to improve a page or website so that it ranks at the top of search results for specific queries.
10. ROI
ROI is a measure of return on investment. It demonstrates how profitable the investment turned out to be.
Calculated using the following formula:
ROI = (Gross Profit – Investment) / Investment * 100.
11. User affiliate income
All new affiliates are offered a general rate, but once an affiliate begins regularly generating hundreds of sales, many sellers switch to an individual commission rate.
12. Payment method
This is a form of payment between the seller and the partner. The most common payment method is bank transfer or payment to an electronic wallet.
13. Two-level affiliate marketing
This type of affiliate marketing allows you to earn money not only from your sales, but also from the sales of those partners who joined the affiliate program through your recommendation/link. Every time their customers make a purchase, you also receive a small commission, which is also known as a sub-affiliate commission.
14. Split testing
Also known as A/B testing. This is a marketing research method in which a control version of something is compared with a test version that differs from the control in one or more aspects. The purpose of the study is to determine which attribute changes lead to an improvement in the power of the control variant.
Conclusion
In conclusion, creating a successful affiliate marketing program requires careful planning and execution. Define your goals, choose the right affiliate network, set competitive commission rates. Create high-quality marketing materials, recruit the most effective affiliates. Track and optimize your program. Following these steps will help you create a successful affiliate marketing program.
Taylor is a freelance SEO copywriter and blogger. His areas of expertise include technology, pop culture, and marketing.
