Do you know what affiliate marketing is? Is your company using it to expand your business? What does it take to get started?
These are all critical questions to consider if you want to start leveraging affiliate marketing to create more exposure for your brand, generate more qualified leads, and eventually boost your sales numbers.
Employing affiliate marketing is also a great way to tap your customer base and audience to generate passive income.
If you want to start earning more through affiliate marketing, then you need to learn the basics about this marketing method. This article will share how you can use top affiliate tools to boost your income.
What Is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing is essentially the process of a third party promoting a product or service in exchange for a commission. Commissions are paid out for any sales that result directly from that promotion.
There are essentially two ways for a small business to make money using affiliate marketing:
Offer An Affiliate Program – As a business that has a product to offer, you can reach untapped markets by offering an affiliate program to marketers. This is a very effective way of expanding your reach and building your brand through more exposure. It is a low-risk and cost-effective method of marketing your business and can result in a significant rise in qualified leads and revenue.
Sign Up As An Affiliate – If you are a blog writer or run a business with a captivated audience, you can start to leverage your influence by signing up as an affiliate to promote another company’s product or service. This is one of the best ways to generate passive income and can amount to significant amounts of money if it doesn’t with the right method. If you can satisfy a craving in your audience by providing paths to something else of value, affiliate marketing can bring a major boost to your business.
The Affiliate Network
There are essentially three actors within any affiliate marketing program – the advertiser, the publisher, and the consumer.
The advertiser is the one who has something to offer and is seeking people to promote their business.
The publisher is the one who is promoting a product or service for another company in exchange for a commission.
The consumer is the one who purchases from the advertiser due to recommendations they received from the publisher.
The transactions between all of the actors are tracked using cookies, unique links, banner or text ads, and even specific phone numbers that prove a consumer was lead to an advertiser due to a publisher’s efforts. In order to maximize this system, many business owners rely on the best affiliate marketing tools to improve the effectiveness of affiliate networks.
Top Affiliate Tools For Growing Your Business
Most small business owners know that trying to sell your product or service online is extremely competitive. In fact, if you don’t employ clever marketing strategies it is very difficult to find any level of success.
Here are just a few examples of the benefits of using some of the best affiliate marketing tools to expand your business:
- Gain more exposure for your brand
- Attract more qualified leads
- Boost revenue with less effort
- Generate passive revenue
Examples of the Best Affiliate Marketing Tools
Affilorama – This is a great tool for people who are just starting out with affiliate marketing. Signing up gets you access to a huge affiliate marketing network and the site offers a variety of tools and training to help you succeed.
ShareaSale – This is an affiliate marketing site that is set up to help advertisers and publishers connect with each other. This is a good site if you already have a strong grasp on how you want to use affiliate marketing.
Tapfiliate – This is a website that helps businesses create their own affiliate programs. This is a good resource if you want to retain total control over an affiliate program, but requires a more expert approach. The website also provides some extremely useful affiliate tracking software.
GrowSumo – This is a website that approaches affiliate marketing a little bit differently. This site helps businesses turn their customers into micro-influencers by awarding them for their referrals. This is a good resource for any small business with a strong following or an active audience.
Successful affiliate marketing isn’t an overnight process. It takes time and effort, but employing these top affiliate tools will help you succeed.