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Top 2 Affiliate Marketing Platforms in Africa in 2022

Affiliate marketing has been the business if choice for most newbies to online marketing and those new to the make money online movement, however having incomplete information has meant alot of newbies are stuck, unable to properly market those products and make the large sums of money they were promised they would.

Source : Pharma-Deko Plc

While affiliate marketing ranks among the top legit online networking business around the globe and you do not need to have much of an experience to start, building on the wrong foundations is costly in terms of both money and time.

This is why we have created this post to enlighten you about the best affiliate marketing platforms in Africa and how to join them, their commissions and which in our opinion and observation is the best.

If you are still having double thoughts about the Affiliate business space, the affiliate model allows you to be your own boss, and still gives you room to do other things you find fun.

What is Affiliate Marketing and how do you start?

Affiliate marketing is simply a business model where an affiliate (marketer) earns a commission for marketing (promoting and recommending) another company’s products. Affiliate marketing involves referring a product or service by sharing it on a blog, social media etc, generating traffic and leads (people interested in that product) for the chosen product and getting paid for it.

Source: New Breed Marketing

As an affiliate marketer you do not need to worry about selling a product. The affiliate marketer’s duty is primarily to bring customers and leads to the product of their desire thereby helping the affiliated company to make sales. Basically yours directing interested traffic to a product using marketing strategies and earning a commission on it.

Your commission is usually a percentage of the price of the product. Most products have affiliate commissions raving from 5% to as much as 95%.

How can you become an affiliate marketer?

Becoming an affiliate is quite simple, the part that requires work is getting sales through and getting them consistently. The first step is to search for a platform that supports your country’s means of payment, this is important because it’s painful to make sales and not be able to withdraw your money.

Source: Make A Website Hub

Choose a Platform

Choosing the right platform may be a big determinant of your failure or success in affiliate marketing full stop when attempting to choose a platform you should select one that gives you the ability to withdraw your money as well as learn on the job.

Since this post is dedicated to figuring out the right platform for you we will come back to this topic in a minute.

Choose a Niche

A niche refers to an area of specialization. What do you want to sell, how suitable are you with this niche or product you intend to sell? What questions do my audience ask me of? What do the network i have currently prefer?

Source : Advantage Affiliates

Choosing a niche makes it easier for you to make choices on the products. When selecting a niche you should focus on evergreen niches such as Money, sex, relationships, business, travel etc. After choosing a suitable niche, you consider the Product

Choose a Product

After successfully choosing your niche you should choose a product which is evergreen.

Source: QuestionPro

While there are thousands of products out there you have to consider if these products have a hungry market at the moment, if you are able to successfully deliver these products to the customers and you have to consider the results these products generate for the customers.

Some things you need to know include:

  • How much do they need it?
  • Does it placate the consumer’s desire?
  • Where do you get this product?
  • Who are your Competition?

At this point you settle into the affiliate business proper. After choosing a niche, you need to check out AFFILIATE MARKETING PROGRAMS. These programs connect you to affiliate businesses who are in need of your service.

In choosing the affiliate company you get affiliated to, here are some things you need to consider

The Product They Have To Offer
The Brand You Desire To Represent
Your Commission.

The Brand You Desire to Represent

When choosing a company to be affiliated to, you have to also take into cognizance, their brand. The brand refers to the message the company seeks to sell to the public of the company, their carriage and their repute and every other distinguishing factor that separates them from others.

Source: Emotive Brand

The Affiliate brand would influence the quality and kind of product they sell and it would reduce the strain of marketing on prospective clients.

Commission

This refers to the percentage profit the affiliate marketer makes from the sales or clicks of any of the products. Your commission is based on the arrangement between you and the affiliated company.

Source : Tapfillate

Affiliate commissions are based on two premises namely;

  • Pay Per Click: This commission system agrees that the affiliate marketer is paid based on the number of clicks he is able to get on the product. Clicks in this sense refers to the number of visitors who visit the affiliated company’s site and click on the affiliate marketer’s product. For each click, he gets his commission.
  • Pay Per Sale; This method is the most popular, the percentage commission is paid to the Affiliate marketer based on the sales. For each sale of the affiliate product, you get paid your commission.

How Much Can You Make From Affiliate Marketing?

There is no limit to how much you can make with the affiliate marketing business model. Just as with any other business you ability to sell determines how much you earn. In Affiliate Marketing, this is dependent on your content, that is how you present your product, your marketing channel, you as a personal brand and the brand you represent.

Source :LeaDyno

You can make five figures, six figures and even more, it all depends on you. It depends on how you make your goods available to the prospective clients and how well you are able to close prospective clients.

Three Pitfalls to avoid as an affiliate marketer

Like every business, the affiliate marketer has his challenges such as how to get his clients to see the offer and how to close the sale.

As a starter in the Affiliate Marketing Business, it is not wrong if you make one or two mistakes while running the affiliate business, however there are some mistakes that are detrimental yet avoidable. Let’s look at some of them shall we?

Putting up too many products

Its cool to have the income coming in bulk and getting increased gains from different products. For the affiliate marketer, too many products could get you confused.
You might be asking, why shouldn’t I put up too much products for sale?

  • It reduces knowledge of products :Your customers and clients deserve to have knowledge about the product you intend to sell to them. Selling more than you can could restrict your knowledge of products to a minimum and you can barely conceal the fact that you do not know a lot about the product you want to sell to your clients.
  • Inadequate Content Creations : Having little knowledge about a product, hinders the quality of content you disperse. Despite not having adequate information about your products, it could also reduce the contents created for your products. Too many contents strains you and therefore limits the quality of contents to be promoted and created for your products. The fewer the products the easier the leads.
  • Lack of Concentration : Having too many products could get you off balance, the number of ads you have to monitor, leads, prospective clients and impressions of your products and how your customers feel about your products. Having too many products may be too much for you. It pays to stick to one or two niche you are interested in and work towards marketing it.

You will enjoy every single bit of it when you are focused on one or two products to sell. You present yourself more coherently.

Creating The Wrong Content

Creating the wrong content type will absolutely reduce your sales. People love to understand that you are aware and benefiting from what you’re offering them

Your content must be easily understood and pass the message in simple and understanding language.

For instance, Facebook gives you access to different types of ads, such as image ads, Carousel ads, video ads etc. Choosing the right ad type for your product can be tricky, despite that, putting on the right content can be trickier. The same goes for poster ads.

The Right content should have the following quality
Concise,
Creative
Straight to the point
Catchy

Your client is supposed to get the idea behind your poster or ad as soon as he sets eyes on it. He or she is supposed to be gripped to a halt to get the full message of your ad from the very first glance.

Muddling up your ad with so many texts, images and characters would make your ad noisy and indecipherable.

Top 3 Affiliate Marketing platforms

Source : Digital Marketing Skill Institute

Expartnaire

In Nigeria, Expertnaire reigns as the foremost and popular digital marketplace where creators of digital products get more sales and connect with more customers via the platform and network of high performing affiliates.

Source : Expertnaire

On the Expartnaire platform, lots of people connect, buy and sell digital products. These digital products are on constant demand about and around the world.

Accounting for over 100, 000 quality products sold, over 30, 000 affiliate marketers and over 70 product creators, Expertnaire boasts of a marketplace where different variety of goods are sold, building opportunities too for individuals who can create quality products.

Advantages

Effective tracking system that helps the affiliate marketer to keep track of the sales of his or her product ts through.

You are highly honoured as affiliate marketer, your role is clearly defined and all you need do is to make sales.

Compensation is not an issue as they boast of the best compensation system. The affiliate marketer makes 50% commission for the sales of these products.

It is very flexible. The screening system for products on expertnaire is tight and so long as you know what you have to offer, your product is sure to pass the test of time.

Disadvantages

  • Digital Products Only: Expartnaire only allows for the sale of digital products. In case your network are lovers of physical products and goods that can be diminish, you may have to think about it for a little second longer.

How to get Started

Check on your browser for the Expertnaire.com, then click on Become an Affiliate Button, Follow the steps involved and you are good to go

Remember on Expertnaire, you are to pay a yearly renewable fee of 10,000 as an affiliate

Learnoflix

Second ranking in the Affiliate world in Nigeria is the Learnoflix Affiliate marketplace. Learnoflix is an affiliate and online networking platform that teaches and also partners with affiliates selling top notch digital products.

Source :Egtechblog

Advantages

 

  • As a marketer under Learnoflix affiliate platform, you get the cool opportunity to be trained and prepared for the affiliate business through tutorials and courses.
  • It provides for you a market to sell your products.
  • As a Learnoflix Marketer, you do not really need to go through the stress of getting influencers and blogs to get prospective clients, LearnOflix, shows you opportunities and markets to sell your products.

Disadvantage

Digital Products Only : On LearnOflix, the products, you choose from a variety of digital products and courses that are on constant demand.

How to register

You have got to Partner with LearnOflix by applying to join the affiliate program.
Watch the marketing tutorials to complete your training.
Choose a hot selling product to promote from the Learnoflix digital store.
Create contents for your product,
Get traffic
Earn 50% commission on each sale.

There are lots and lots of affiliate programs to choose from including,

  • Amazon Associates
  • Fiver Affiliates
  • GiddyUp
  • ShareAsale
  • And a host of others.

Summary

There are different affiliate programs to pick from, whichever you choose. Your aim of making cool cash is possible.

As it is said, every human endeavour requires dedication. Affiliate Marketing too, would require that you put in dedicated efforts towards marketing your products.
The good thing is, it is easy, it can be done in your leisure and it requires less exertion.

Categories
affiliate marketing Business Facebook ads

Can I do affiliate marketing on Facebook? 4 platforms that support affiliate marketing

Facebook boasts of having the largest social media audience and getting sales from Facebook is certainly amongst the cheapest in today’s competitive market and certainly good for a start of your affiliate marketing business..

Yes! You can market your affiliate business on Facebook. Not only that, you run affiliate marketing on other platforms apart from Facebook. But, before giving you my reasons why you should run affiliate marketing on Facebook or any other social platform, let’s discuss the pros and cons of affiliate marketing.

Affiliate marketing is an advertising model in which a company( or product owner) compensates third-party publishers to generate traffic or leads to the company’s products and services. Simply put, an affiliate helps to generate sales and gets paid a commission for every sale he or she generates. Oftentimes, the commission is a percentage of the sales price.

Affiliate Marketing Requirements

Two things you basically need as an affiliate marketer are the online space and the affiliate product you have to sell.

Online space

This refers to the platforms and media you will use to get to your potential clients. This platforms could be Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, blogs, hotsuite, twitter etc.

The product

What product are you selling? It could be digital or physical. Digital products are easier to sell . What digital product do you have to sell?

You have to take note that starting small is good although in the affiliate marketing world, you get a percentage of the amount you sell. This means the bigger the product, the higher your commission. So choose wisely. Irrespective of whatever affiliate platform you choose, you’ll be presented with a wide range of products ( even wider when it’s digital products) to choose from. Often times these products span diverse niches. Choose the products your customers want more. Know your clients and learn their demands and ensure to supply that demand.

4 Platforms that Support Affiliate Marketing

In as much as you can run affiliate marketing on a variety of social platforms, I will be outlining to you three top platforms where you as an affiliate marketer will get more leads and prospectives for the least amount of money

Facebook

Facebook ranks as one of the top most visited and populated social media site used by different people about and around the globe. With its advancement through the ages, Facebook has become a platform where people, companies and businesses connect. Facebook has evolved to occupy not only the social hub of the society but to also provide tools that support different businesses.

As an affiliate marketer, Facebook is a good marketing platform for you. Apart from creating a page for you to communicate with your various potential clients, Facebook provides you the following services.

  • Pages. You can create a page for your business and communicate with your leads as a business entity.
  • Groups. You can connect to a community of people who need your products through Facebook.
  • Ads. When I mean ads, I mean promotion in the very sense of it. Facebook allows you to run sponsored ads that reaches a wide range of prople especially those whom you have designed the the message for.
  • Facebook/Instagram influencers: Apart from this, you can also send your affiliate links to Facebook influencers to help you reach out to more people, potential clients, and those who intend to learn from you.

Tailor Your Ad to Your Audience

You are allowed to design an ad to suit your audience. With the different varieties of ads types made available to you, such as image ad, collection ad, video ads etc, you are allowed to choose, create and build your own ad for your various goals. You can learn how to create high converting Facebook ads here

Send Interested People to Your landing pages.

A re-direct to your landing page. Through Facebook ads, you get people to see the message you designed for them and also redirect them to the landing page for your products. Here you can collect their contact details and follow them up using email or WhatsApp marketing.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn offers you professional tools and a platform to broadcast and sell yourself and products. Being the largest online social business-oriented networking site specifically designed for professionals.

It has over 500 million members, in over 200 countries. It provides you an easy platform to find, connect and link up with leads and prospective clients.

LinkedIn gives you the ability to showcase your profile, expertise, recommendations and connections, to the million others who seek your experience.

LinkedIn can also be used for affiliate marketing by showing your expertise in the topic or niche you’re attempting to market in. For example, if you’re promoting a product in the travel niche, showcasing your expertise in solving travel related issues will be advantageous.

The simple way to use LinkedIn to sell affiliate products is to optimise your profile to reflect your knowledge in that niche. Once done, simply using relevant content will generate organic leads. Alternatively, you can run LinkedIn ads and get leads to your sales funnel or landing page.

While this method is costlier, it’ll however give you results faster than promoting using organic methods. However it’s a highly untapped platform as people tend to stay away from it because it’s more professional than social.

The gains of using LinkedIn cannot be overstated though, this is because if you promote high ticket affiliate products, which you should, LinkedIn provides you the best platform to get to professionals with the financial capacity to purchase that product.

YouTube

YouTube is a video based platform owned by Google. It offers its users the ability to upload videos, watch others videos as well as attend live video events.

YouTube when combined with affiliate marketing is a very powerful way to promote products both digital and physical. YouTube for affiliate marketing involves creating videos that explains or shows the benefits of the product you’re promoting and attaching links to learn more or purchase that product in the video description.

As the old saying goes, “show don’t tell”, showing people how the product will benefit them instead of just telling them serves two purposes. One it creates trust because it gives an opportunity for consistency and secondly, it provides an opportunity for you to give proof of action or proof of benefits.

With YouTube, you can run google display ads to get more viewers to see your videos, go ahead to your landing page and then purchase your product.

Twitter

Twitter boasts of one of the best platforms for affiliate marketing. One big advantage twitter has over others is it’s favorable algorithm. With twitter, almost anyone can go viral, this happens less with other platforms such as Facebook or LinkedIn.

Using Twitter for affiliate marketing is simply about dishing out relateable value consistently and letting the algorithm grow your account. As your account grows, so would your sales if done properly.

To promote your affiliate products, you should regularly create high value posts that have the propensity to go viral and attach your affiliate links. Similar to LinkedIn, this creates an air of authority which people admire and follow. The advantage here is that people who will follow you are going to be highly interested in your offer.

With consistency, people will follow you more and buy your affiliate products easily.

Others

The lists of platforms are growing as many people are getting to know the power of the internet and social media marketing.

You can try out Pinterest, Google ads, WhatsApp groups, blogs, hotsuite, the list is ever increasing.

Now that you know 4 of the best Platforms to carry out affiliate marketing, you should check out our “7 steps to making 7 figures with affiliate marketing” article.

Categories
affiliate marketing Business Digital Products E-commerce

3 Highly Profitable Online Business In Nigeria You Can Start With A Low Budget In 2022

Starting a profitable online business in Nigeria requires some capital, and for the average Musa, it can be very difficult to get the capital needed to start any business, it’s ever worse when you have no track record.

That is people cannot look back at business you have done in the past to ascertain if you would be successful or not and judge whether they should lend you money or invest in your idea.

Luckily the internet has brought with it so many methods of making money that one no longer need to have a physical shop or get hundreds of employees to have a multimillion naira business.

As the popular saying goes, there are a million ways to make a million bucks and this is no where more true than on the internet. With so many opportunities it can get really confusing and can make you lose focus as a beginner.

That said here are three of my favourite businesses which you can start with a very low budget and promised very high returns.

1. E-commerce

E-commerce
Budget : ₦ 100,000 - ₦150,000

Requirements : Learn more about how to start a profitable E-commerce business in Nigeria here.

E-commerce is simply the act of sourcing goods and products at a cheaper rate and reselling them at a higher amount.

Similar to the way a shopkeeper buys products from a wholesaler and resells them e-commerce simply leverages the internet to sell to people using adverts on Google Facebook and other platforms.

In the last six years e-commerce have become a multi-billion naira industry in Nigeria as big companies such as Jiji, Jumia and Konga rule this business model.

However this model can still be done by individuals and requires a simple knowledge of the business industry as well as a little budget. Get more information about starting an e-commerce business here

By understanding the market and carving out a niche for yourself you could make your first million in less than a month. All you really have to do is find a difficult to get product and promote the heck out of it to the market that needs it the most at a good, profitable price.

Once you get your customer, product, target, and price right, it’s simply a matter of wash, rinse and repeat.

To learn how you can profit massively from e-commerce click here.

2. Affiliate Marketing

The 3 steps of affiliate marketing
Budget : ₦60,000

This is simply the most popular online business in Nigeria today. However 98% of affiliate marketers are doing it wrong.

Almost every time you open your Facebook or join a group you are very likely to see an affiliate marketing post. So what the heck is affiliate marketing?

According to the founder of EXPARTNAIRE Toyin Omotosho, affiliate marketing entails recommending helpful products to people who need it and can afford it and getting paid a commission when they buy the products using your recommended link.

This means any time you recommend a product to someone and they make a purchase you simply get paid a percentage of the purchase fee. Sounds like a pretty cool way to make money if you ask me.

Using Expartnaire, there are over 50 different digital products you can recommend to people ranging from 5000 naira to as high as 150,000 naira, with commissions going from as little as 35% to as high as 80%.

Let’s say for example you choose to promote a product of 60,000 Naira with a commission of 50%. This means for every sale you make you get a pay back or commission of 30,000 naira. Let’s go ahead to see you are able to make 10 of the sales every month.

This means you make
10 × ₦30,000 = ₦300,000 monthly.

The amazing part is that they are digital products so you do not have to care about delivery or damage to the product you also are not liable to give refunds or guarantees.

Cool right? To learn how you can get started as an affiliate marketer and make some money click here

3. Digital Trainings

Digital products include videos, ebook and virtual trainings
Budget : ₦ 50,000

The digital products industry in Africa exploded after the 2020 lockdown due to the ongoing Corona virus pandemic. During this period people were forced to sit at home and had to look for alternative sources of income and they flocked the internet.

People began learning a ton of digital skills or began finding ways to digitalize their skills and knowledge and share or teach others to raise money. These are known as digital products/ training and industry is now a multi-billion naira industry and almost anyone with some helpful knowledge can make a living and live a life of luxury and freedom selling digital products and trainings.

The very first step is identifying what useful information you have to share and how it benefits people and then deciding how you want to package it and get it across to people who need it.

Some examples could be a step-by-step process you took to loose weight, make money, travel out of the country, learn an in demand skill, get healthier, etc.

You could then package this knowledge into an eBook, video course, seminar on WhatsApp, zoom, google meet, telegram etc.

The advantage with this system is that it usually requires a one time investment and high reoccurring returns. This means you only create the product once and you can keep making your cool cash out of it.

To be successful at selling digital products and trainings though, you need to learn some basic skills such as online marketing, copy writing and content writing among others.

Learn more about how you can start with this business here.

Categories
affiliate marketing Business Facebook ads

Can I start my affiliate marketing without a website? 5 Must have tools for success in Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing has become one of the easiest ways to earn huge amounts of money legally in a very short amount of time in the last 3 years.

With the advent of Covid-19 and the massive loss of lives and livelihoods, people start turning to knowledge sales and acquisitions. Even though affiliate marketing has existed for a long time, it has increasingly become popular after the covid-19 pandemic.

What is affiliate marketing?

Source : Waypoint Digital

Simply defined as the process of marketing and selling a product you do not own for a commission which is a share of the sales price. Better put, it’s the process of recommending helpful products to people who need it and can afford it.

Contrary to popular description, affiliate marketing is not a skill. It’s a business model that requires a combination of several skills.

One good thing about this business model is that as an affiliate marketer you do not require a ton experience or an office to start.

Affiliate marketing offers you leverage over other business models as it is flexible to run, you are offered a variety of products to choose one or more to sell as you please.

All that is required is learning how to show your products to the right people and that requires a couple of tools.

Must I use a website?

Source : NLT of NYC

While having a website isn’t mandatory it’s certainly advantageous. Having a website allows you show another touch point to your potential customer. This means you can showcase how your product works and testimonials of your products.

Such a website when designed properly will definitely increase your conversion rate.

The Affiliate Marketing First steps

These refers to the actions an affiliate marketer is supposed to take after he has chosen a product for his prospective clients.

Step 1 – Registration

The very first step is to choose a platform, such as Expartnaire. When registering using this platform, you also get a course on how to sell massively as an affiliate marketer. You can learn more about this here

Step 2 – Product

Affiliate marketing is basically about presenting your audience with the right offer and getting a commission for that. For this transaction to take place, there has to be an irresistible offer or better still a product. On Expartnaire today, the highest selling product is the 72hr income Generator. This course shows you how to generate money with affiliate marketing in 72 hours.

Step 3 – Targeting

Every affiliate marketer needs to know who his customers are. What do they need and how the product he has will satisfy his clients. What are their age range and where is he likely to find them? When you have done this, it becomes easier to get the customers to see your product. These are called demographics.

You can learn more about targeting and demographics here.

Step 4 – Positioning

That is the marketing essence. The clients for this product abound. The crux is on the affiliate marketer to present the product to the customer as the solution to his/her desire and and get them to pay for the product.

Five Must Affiliate Marketing Tools

Advertising Platform

The choice of advertising platform is very important to the affiliate marketer. This is important because it determine who the advertiser can target and how much he or she would spend.

Source : avada

Platforms like Facebook and Google can reach a wide range of audiences, while a platform like TikTok would generally be better suited to generation Y and Z as these are the major age groups on TikTok.

It’s also cheaper to advertise on Google and Facebook and more easily accessible as compared to TikTok, Bing, as well as other as platforms that are not accessible in many countries.

Your choosen affiliate marketing platform helps also can be used to carry out research. This means when carrying out customer identification, you could learn more about your target customer by watching their interractions on the platform.

Note; it’s wiser to carry out customer research based on the product before attempting to choose an affiliate platform. Understanding who your idea customer is for that product should be the very first step in affiliate marketing.

When choosing a platform, choose one with a wide reach and low cost per thousand impressions. As of 2022, Facebook has the lowest cost per thousand impressions and has the widest reach of all social networking websites.

I’d definitely recommend Facebook for you, however it’s not without its problems and you should do well to get some training on Facebook ads before proceeding. Click here to find out more.

Traffic

In Affiliate marketing, traffic is one of your most important tools. Traffic is what generates sales and and helps guage the performance of your business.

But let’s slow down a bit. What is Traffic?

Source : IndeedSEO

Traffic refers, simply, to the number of visitors that visit your website or a specific webpage or lead magnet you are giving out.

Traffic generally refers to the number of visitors, that comes in contact with you or your products through your ad you have used in generating sales for your products.

Traffic is the seed of sales. The more traffic you have, the more likely you are to make any sales. In other words, the more people you have coming through your ad funnel and seeing your products, the more sales you are going to get.

Efforts must be put towards generating Good traffic and these will in turn covert to sales.

There are basically four types of traffic namely;

  • Organic Traffic: This refers to visits to your site gained through the organic search results.
  • Paid Traffic: As the name implies, it refers to all paid ads that optimizes search results of your goods for your clients. Prospective clients get to see your products without literally hing for it.
  • Direct Traffic: This refers to traffic that is generated when clients directly click on your link to buy your product
  • Refferal Traffic: This is traffic or potential buyers that are referred to you from a source you don’t own or have control over.

Creative Ads

Most Marketing efforts, many times, are focused on increasing the number of visits to help increase sales or qualified leads.

Source : Search

Creatives refers to the various adverts that you put together in other to market your product to the public. As an affiliate marketer, your creative is your means of convincing, persuading d influencing your clients with strong reasons why they should check out your products over the different advertising popping out all over their screen.

These creatives could include Video, image adverts, Collection adverts, it can also be a mix of images, videos, audio, and other formats that get delivered to users.

Creatives as the name implies must grab the viewers attention, be concise and straight to the point. When your creatives are well delivered and served, your prospective clients, will automatically get the idea behind the product in one view.

Creating creatives for your products can be so much fun as you get to explore the different elements that your product ad will comprise of. Your creative as a tool is your means of reaching out and communicating to your clients.

You can learn more about making creatives that forces your potential customer to click on your ads here.

Product Affiliate Link

An affiliate link is a specific URL that contains the affiliate’s ID or username. This link contains a code that is unique to the affiliate marketer and to that product.

When a visitor checks out a product using the affiliate link, codes are stored on his or her web browser that tells the platform algorithm where that visit came from and to whose (which affiliate marketer) they belong. These codes are stored for 90 days.

Source: Ad Cumulus

This means even if a customer doesn’t buy after going through your affiliate link, but comes back to buy 30 days later, you still get credited the purchase simply because those codes are still active.

Through this link, the affiliate platform can record the traffic that is generated and track the sales of your choosen products.

The advantage of affiliate links is that they track sales and offer opportunity to those who are interested (affiliates) in selling another party’s products to do so without their sales going to someone else.

This is why it’s very important that when you have a prospect, you ensure they visit the product page via your affiliate link.

CRM Tools

Customer Relationship Management tools are one of the must haves for affiliate marketing. These are used to follow up leads and show them just how much the recommended products would change their lives.

Source : Small Business Trends

Some CRM tools you could employ inlcides email marketing and WhatsApp marketing. Others include YouTube marketing and SEO marketing. These tools help you stand out in the potential customers mind and follow them up until they make a decision to buy.

On average, according to research it takes a customer about 7 times of contact with your products before a purchase decision is made. By employing a CRM tool, it makes this contact points cheaper because you don’t have to pay for them.

Learn more about CRM tools here

Summary

So there you have it. While having a website isn’t compulsory for affiliate marketing, having one does boost your chances of making and tracking sales as well an enabling you collect leads.

You can learn more about starting your affiliate marketing journey here.

If this post has been helpful or we left out something important, we would love to see it in the comment section.

 

Categories
Business

Is affiliate marketing legit? Six things to know before starting your affiliate marketing business

You have made up your mind that you want to be your own boss. You desire to control your income and ease yourself the stress of waiting for a salary that never satisfies and even though there are other business models such as e-commerce and cryptocurrency, you have chosen affiliate marketing as the business of choice.

That being said, let me tell you six things you need to know before you start your affiliate marketing business.

affiliate marketing

Saying the world has gone digital would be an overstatement of the truth. Welcome to a world where networking and the ability to handle your network is power. Online statistics has it that 30.9% of online businesses are fake as of 2020.

You might get septical about what are the guarantees of venturing into Affiliate marketing and if it would be a wise investment.

Affiliate marketing has been around for a long time, it was made popular by Amazon through pay-per-click on products sold by affiliates.

What exactly is affiliate marketing?

First, we have to understand the very concept of Affiliating and marketing as a whole.

Marketing is exploring and providing value for target audience. This value could come in form of goods and services, tangible or digital (or intangible). In simpler words, it is providing goods or services to those who need them.

Affiliating is another word for partnership. It is coalition with a larger firm based on certain conditions. There are terms to this partnership, that is, you play your part, they play theirs too. This terms could he paying you a fixed fee or paying you on commission.

affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing can be simplified into simples terms; that is you earn a commission for marketing another person’s or company’s products.

Simply put, it is an advertising model in which a company compensates third-party publishers to generate traffic or leads to the company’s products and services.

The affiliate ( third-party marketer) simply searches for a product they enjoy (have some knowledge about and feel comfortable marketing), then promotes that product and earns a piece of the profit from each sale they make. The sales are tracked via affiliate links.

Affiliate links are unique links that distinguishes one affiliate marketer from the other. The affiliate link is unique for each product and to each marketer. This means two different marketers can market the same product with different links and have their records tracked independently.

Affiliate marketing differs from the pyramid business models and differs from e-commerce. The only thing you do as an affiliate is sell a digital product and get commissions.

Digital products are virtual products, or better put, information products. You can touch them, hence the term virtual, but these give you some actionable processes, steps and information that you could use to achieve some result. In general terms, ebooks, movies, teleseminars, video trainings are all digital products.

The digital product industry is among the fastest growing industry in Nigeria today, coupled with affiliate marketing, sales of digital products is at its highest ever and set to continue growing.

That said here are 6 things to know before starting an Affiliate marketing business.

  • Your product
  • Your Customers
  • Your space
  • Your Brand
  • Profit
  • Risks

Product

Simple. Digital products, goods, etc. The list is endless. As stated earlier, your duty is to advertise these goods and you are paid a commission for the sales made. These products are already having a high demand by people around you. They don’t get spoilt or damaged during delivery, no need to worry about how the customer likes the products, the company will take care of that.

There are varying products, as well as various companies running affiliate programs, such as Expertnaire, Amazon, Learnoflix. Find out the one that suits you and you are passionate about and dive into it.

In Nigeria, Expartnaire is the most popular affiliate marketing platform and best suited for the Nigerian market. The most popular affiliate product in Nigeria as of 2022 is the 72IG course, others are Canada Relocation Blueprint, Ecommerce Leverage Advantage, Facebook Ads Implementation Course, among others.

To promote a product, simply register as an affiliate on Expartnaire, select the product you wish to promote, get it’s unique affiliate link and start promoting. You can learn more about becoming a successful affiliate marketer here.

Customers

Do you bother about the people you would sell to? You might be worried about how you would get clients & customers to hear about and buy the products you’re recommending.

You have to remember that lots of people are harnessing the social media and your products have a ton of people who need them. Your job is to advertise these products and reach out to people interested in what your offer and close the sale. The company takes care of everything else.

Now, finding customers is easier said than done and here are 2 ways to get interested people to check out your offers.

Organic Traffic method. Here you actively post in groups or other public places about your product and educate people about it. This method is time consuming but works, as well as doesn’t require spending money.

People who indicate interest are then taken to your WhatsApp or some other form of more intimate messaging where you can close the sale. This method is slow and only advisable when you’re new to affiliate marketing. For pros how ever consider method two.

Paid Traffic Method. This method consumes a lot of money but can be used to scale your fillet marketing business superfast. What do you need to do here is create a lead magnet ( some high-value material which could be an eBook or a video describing your product and giving some other valuable information about your product) and giving it out for free.

Then you are advertising an offer to give out your lead magnet for free to anyone who exchange their contact information with you. Using this method lots of people get your lead magnet and reach out to you, wanting to buy the products through your link. This process is faster and even though it consumes a lot of money (which will be spent on advertising), the rewards are massive.

Your space

The online space is your workplace. You have different media handles as tools with different audiences who seek ways to making profit out of their stay on the online space.

However do not fall into the common trap of trying to reach everyone, everywhere. Instead focus on only 2 social media channels that give you the best reach and promote your products there. Personally I would recommend LinkedIn and Twitter. Twitter specifically, gives one of the best organic reaches of every single platform out there.

Your online space must be fully optimised to show that you are an expert in that industry in which you sell products full stop no one is going to buy from someone who doesn’t look like what he sells. Imagine trying to buy weight loss pills from a very fat man, it just shows that the weight loss pills never works. If you are going to actively attract potential buyers you must clean up your social media handles and look like the part you are trying to sell.

Your Brand

In simple terms, your brand is the entirety of things you do that represent your business. You are an Affiliate marketer, that’s good. You have got a business that can earn you money in five figures. But it’s not a sit-down-and-do-nothing-business. There is work to be done.

You have to create content, create a network, get traffic on your site. Give useful content and advice’s, build your personal brand to be about the product you’re selling. That way you help build, gain and cement trust from prospective and current clients.

So how do you go about this? Irrespective of whether you use the paid traffic method or not, you should create a content calendar where you constantly update value-laden posts on your social media handles. To do this you must be knowledgeable in your niche, this requires you reading and studying materials of the product you wish to sell.

Next, you have to master communication and closing. You must learn to be patient with questions of your potential customers and learn to respond to messages with courtesy.

Profit

You have got profit to make from the sales you make. That after all is the essence of being an affiliate marketer. Since You are basically paid per sale, when choosing a product to promote, you should consider the prophet you’ll be making from that products. This takes into account how much will be spent on accumulating customers. If little to no profit is left after spending to get a customer, then the product isn’t worth promoting.

For example, let’s examine the 72ig course, that is the most sought after product on affiliate marketing. For each sale of the 72ig product, you make 50℅ commission on it. As at the time of writing this post, the 72 IG course goes for ₦60,000. This means for every successful sale you make ₦30,000. Depending on how good you are in advertising you might be spending more or less in acquiring customers and closing sales. You must factor that into your profit and decide if that course/ product is what promoting.

The easiest formula to increase your commission, is through increased sales, the more your sales, the more your commission, the more your commission the more your profit. Simply put make more offers and get more people to see your offers. That is basically all.

You should also note that you don’t need to buy a product before you can promote it on Expartnaire.

Risk

All business are risky, but affiliate marketing could be one of the safest business ever. Why?

  • One, you don’t own the products. You are not liable for it integrity this simply means if there is a problem with the product you are not to be blamed. The buyer simply takes up his grievance with the product creator.
  • Two, you do not store or transfer the products. Simply put since we are dealing with digital products the buyer gets the product directly from the product creator and you as a middleman do not handle storage or delivery. Even in case of physical product you do not handle storage or delivery you simply connect buyer to seller and get your commission.
  • Three, you are not liable for refunds. In case of grievances with the products, The seller is responsible for making refunds as well as keeping to guarantees.

With all these awesome advantages are there any risks? Well yes!

For one, you will need to learn how to close a potential client. This means you must work on your closing skills regularly by learning and implementing. Failure to close properly means you will have a ton of leads which you have spent money and time acquiring and no sales.

Secondly if the product you decide to promote is crappy, since people do not know the content creator, instead they know you, they are likely going to tag you as crappy. However on a platform like Expartnaire, products are vetted for sincerity and results before they are allowed to be on that platform. So you need not worry about this.

Thirdly, if you will be running paid advert you must learn how to advertise properly. Failure to properly advertise at a good rate will mean spending a lot of money without achieving complimentary results.

Away from the risks, the gains are inexhaustible, the profit margin is high, the risk is far reduced. You can make gains through affiliate marketing even when sleeping, the secret, delegate the task, create an ad and see wonders.

The Affiliate Marketing business model enables flexibility, making you your own boss. This means you are free to try out new ways that fit you and you are provided with lot of products to pick according to your niche.

Looking at all these six points so far, it’s safe to say that Affiliate Marketing is one of the safest businesses you can get into in 2022.

Click here to learn more about starting your affiliate marketing journey today.