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How does affiliate marketing work in 2020

2020-03-13
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If you’re a business owner, affiliate marketing can be a great solution for increasing your revenue without engaging in the production process, investing in services and maintaining customer relations. If you’re just planning to start your own thing, you can use this approach to experiment with your business ideas. This article will introduce you to the basic affiliate marketing terms and provide a step-by-step guide to affiliate marketing: how it works. You’ll also find a couple of examples how to start earning with Travelpayouts travel affiliate network.

Affiliate marketing terms

To be able to figure out how to do affiliate marketing, it is important to start with the basic terms. Here are some definitions that will help you speak the language of the industry.

  • Affiliate marketer is a person promoting the products or services for the purpose of making a profit.
  • Advertiser or merchant is the party that owns the product or service and pays affiliate marketers for their promotion.
  • Affiliate network functions as a third-party service aiming to connect merchants to marketers, as well as manage the products and payments. By means of unique links, this network monitors sales efficiency and traffic quality.
  • Affiliate offer is an arrangement between the advertiser and affiliates, establishing the framework of their cooperation.
  • Conversion rate is the percentage of clicks turned into leads or sales. For instance, if one in every hundred customers of your web resource makes a purchase, a conversion rate will be estimated at 1%.

The knowledge of the most essential terms turns out to be really helpful for building your affiliate-based business, from networking to promoting offers. Now, let’s see how it actually works.

How affiliate marketing works

One of the main reasons behind the growing popularity of affiliate marketing lies in its simplicity. To start generating passive income, you have to perform a few simple steps, then the process is automated. As an affiliate, you’ll receive full support from your advertiser and affiliate network, including technical advice, promotional materials and more.

The business goal of affiliate marketing is to establish a win-win scheme for both brands and publishers. On the picture below, you can see a step-by-step explanation of the process:

What is affiliate marketing

How to Start Affiliate Marketing for Beginners

  1. Join the affiliate campaign. You can partner with the advertiser directly through their affiliate program or join an affiliate network, such as Travelpayouts, accumulating various affiliate offers in the travel niche. Terms may differ, but joining the network is beneficial if you seek support and/or want to apply for a few programs at once. Some programs approve applications automatically as long as you comply with basic requirements, while others manually choose their affiliates. But the approval doesn’t take long in that case anyway.
  2. Promote products. After joining the campaign, you’ll receive an affiliate link and promotional tools that you’ll have to place on your blog to start making money. It is important to provide an appropriate environment for the link and tools. Surround them with relevant content and drive traffic to the page. For example, if you want to promote flight tickets, you can write an article on how to travel to a remote destination and place a flight tickets search widget in the main body of your text.
  3. Track sales. Your affiliate link to the advertiser’s page contains a special marker that will show your advertiser which customers came from your website. Travelpayouts provides a personal account for every affiliate where it is possible to track sales in real-time.
  4. Earn commissions. Every sale made through your link brings you a reward. Usually, affiliates are paid one or two times per month or as soon as their commission reaches a certain amount.

Now that you have a general understanding of how affiliate marketing works, let’s study a couple of examples of how to make money with affiliate marketing services.

Sell flight tickets on your blog with Aviasales/Jetradar

If you decide to sell flight tickets on your blog, you can join the Aviasales/Jetradar affiliate partner program. It is one of the largest online search engines for flights worldwide, accumulating offers from over 700 airlines and dozens travel agencies and providing users with an opportunity to find the cheapest flight tickets available.

Affiliates receive 50 to 70% revenue share on confirmed bookings (2.2% of the ticket price on average) and 30-day cookie lifetime. The program is available in English, German, and other languages. Affiliates are provided with a number of tools such as link generators, search forms, widgets and more to perform sales. Here are some examples of Aviasales/Jetradar widgets that you can place on your website:

Sell flight tickets on your blog with Aviasales/Jetradar

To start earning with Aviasales/Jetradar, join the affiliate program and place your affiliate link and one or a few tools on your blog, social media page or any appropriate web resource. If you want to go with the blog, consider writing an article on traveling and place a search form or another widget where appropriate.

For instance, make a list of must-visit sights in New York and insert a search form so that readers can book tickets right away if they feel inspired. All Aviasales/Jetradar widgets are customizable, so you can tune them to your context:

Aviasales/Jetradar widgets

Promote tours and activities on social media with Musement

Promote tours and activities on social media with Musement

Musement offers over 25k tours, tickets and other activities in the most popular tourist destinations around the world. Users can book online city tours and passes, food and wine tours, art exhibition tickets and other activities and then skip the line at the entrance. Musement offers competitive pricing and accepts payments in 40 different currencies.

You can join the Musement affiliate program in different networks. To become an affiliate, you’ll need to be an active user of social media having a well-organized profile on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter, or have a travel blog. Affiliates receive 50% revenue share and the necessary promotional tools such as link generators, links and banners. The program is available in English, French, German, and other languages.

After joining the program, you can place links and tools on your blog. To encourage visitors to follow the link, you should offer a unique call to action. Don’t forget to be specific in what you are promoting, whether it is a certain destination, excursion, yacht tour or spa center. It is important to deliver useful content, so spend time on accumulating helpful tips and then deliver them in the form of an article.

For instance, you can offer a list of top sights to see in a particular destination and then promote the Musement city pass so that your readers can save money. You don’t have to stick to a particular location. Why not write a guide to art exhibitions in Europe and then suggest travelers buy tickets online on Musement?

How to join affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing is a proven way to generate passive income hassle-free. On the Travelpayouts website, you can find an overwhelming number of potential partners in the travel niche.

To proceed, you’ll need to sign up for the program, place the affiliate link and appropriate tools on your web resource and then encourage readers to click on the link and purchase services. The trick is to surround affiliate tools with useful information and help visitors make informed decisions. Once a sale is made through your link, you’ll be rewarded with a commission. Fast and easy!

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