Affiliate marketing is a performance-based marketing strategy where a business collaborates with other companies or individuals to promote its products or services. Affiliates earn commissions based on sales, leads, or other positive outcomes they generate for the business, which acts as the advertiser. This approach helps reduce costs by paying only for results, increases ROI, and boosts conversions.
In this article, we’ll uncover how affiliate marketing works, show you how it fuels your business, and explain step by step how to get started with this marketing strategy. We’ll also provide you with 10 strategies for bringing more revenue to your company and 5 examples of gaining measurable results.
How does affiliate marketing work?
Affiliate marketing is a strategy for promoting your business with minimal effort and resources. It starts by creating an affiliate program that partners can join anytime. Once they sign up, affiliates receive a unique link to track their referrals. They can then use various marketing channels—such as websites, blogs, reviews, social media posts, and email campaigns—to share the link or code and drive potential customers, ultimately converting them into clients.
When customers click on an affiliate link and complete an action—such as making a purchase, signing up for your newsletter, or requesting a free trial—your business can track which affiliate referred them. This helps you identify the number of referrals and calculate the commissions owed to affiliates. Commissions are typically based on sales, payments, or generated leads. Affiliates are then paid via bank transfers, checks, PayPal, or other payment methods.
Affiliate marketing offers many benefits for merchants and affiliates. After joining an affiliate program, affiliates receive flexible schedules, additional income, and low costs. At the same time, business owners can access a wider audience, receive word-of-mouth promotion, and increase visibility at a low cost.
Now that you know how affiliate marketing works, it’s time to unveil even more benefits you can reap after implementing the strategy. We’ll cover the most essential pros that will convince you to develop a program for your company.
How can affiliate marketing fuel your business?
Partnership is an excellent way to effectively promote your products and services across various channels using different strategies while spending little on advertising. Below are even more benefits of affiliate marketing.
- Brand awareness. Every affiliate's main task is to present your products and services positively, highlighting their benefits. By showcasing your offerings and sharing your brand story, affiliates help introduce and establish awareness of your business. Creative and interactive promotion methods can attract more attention and enhance brand recognition. While this may not result in immediate conversions, it contributes to future sales. People are more likely to buy from companies recommended by trusted influencers and those that are easily accessible online.
- Cost-effectiveness. When you partner with affiliates, you can reduce costs on customer acquisition. Since compensations depend on the sales, sign-ups, and leads generated, you only need to pay when there are positive results for your business. This helps you reduce costs associated with customer acquisition and allocate more resources to areas that will bring your company more conversions and higher revenue.
- Flexibility. You can partner with as many affiliates as you want, depending on your business goals. By onboarding more affiliates, you’ll be able to scale faster by significantly increasing the number of customers and boosting income. Affiliate marketing also lets you decide on the goals of your program for which partners will receive their commissions. You can pay them for each new sale, prospect, or sign-up.
- Higher sales. When affiliates effectively showcase your products to their audience, you can increase visibility and drive more traffic to your website. This leads to higher conversions, helping your business reach its sales goals faster. By being visible across various marketing channels and social media profiles, your products become more popular. The more potential customers see your products, the more likely it is that some will make a purchase.
- Effective promotion. Since affiliates’ compensations entirely depend on the effectiveness of their marketing efforts, they do their best to make a sale, get a new prospect, or bring a sign-up. They find the best ways to communicate their marketing message and interact with potential customers right away so that they take the desired action.
- Trust and credibility. When reliable partners recommend your product to their audience, they show that your brand can be trusted and that your offer is compelling. Bloggers, content creators, experts, and other opinion leaders who have the trust of their followers have the power to influence people's decisions. Since clients trust recommendations from people with established credibility, your company will manage to have them, too.
- Wider reach. Having an affiliate network means that you have professionals ready to promote your products and reach the necessary results effectively. Usually, affiliates have all the tools and channels to communicate the main perks of your products or services. They also have a wide audience that is ready to engage. With affiliate’s help, you can seamlessly enter new markets and demographics without spending too much. This will help you scale more quickly and expand your reach.
- Brand visibility. Affiliates help you become visible on various online platforms. Influencers promote your brand on social media, allowing it to reach a broad audience. As a result, more people will learn about your offer and consider it for solving their problems. Greater visibility is essential for driving conversions and building brand recognition.
Now that you have some crucial reasons to incorporate affiliate marketing, let’s discover how to start if you are ready to do it immediately.
How to get started with affiliate marketing?
To successfully attain your goals using affiliate marketing, you need to understand the necessary steps. That’s why we’ll provide you with detailed instructions to make everything clear, even for beginners.
- Determine your key objectives. Think of what you want to achieve with affiliate marketing. When defining goals, ensure they are SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and timely). Whether you want to boost sales, brand awareness, or lead generation, your objectives should be specific and measurable so that you can track the performance of your affiliates’ efforts.
- Identify the right affiliate model. The model you choose depends on the goals you want to achieve. It will define how affiliates should get their commissions. Your model can be based on a new product sale, click generated, sign-up, prospect, etc. So, you’ll pay when your affiliates make a sale, bring a lead, or make a person subscribe to your newsletter.
- Choose a proper platform. Affiliate software like ShareASale, CJ Affiliate, ClickBank, or Amazon Associates will ensure your program runs smoothly. It will also allow you to track performance and give commissions to the right affiliates.
- Decide on the commission structure. You can conduct short research to identify a competitive commission for your affiliates. It will help you find the right structure for your business, which will attract new partners and prevent you from spending too much at the same time. For instance, you can offer 15-20% off digital or physical products. Moreover, consider an enticing bonus for those who bring excellent results in the short run. It will encourage them to perform even better and push others to do their best to become top performers.
- Search for the right affiliates. You need the right people to promote your products. The best way to do this is to search for influencers, bloggers, marketers, and other experts related to your niche. You should place information about your affiliate program on your website and social media so that the right people can check it out. When you look for affiliates, ensure they have their audience’s trust.
- Ensure all the necessary information. After selecting affiliates, you should provide them with an affiliate kit. Send promotional images, pre-written content, guidelines, banners, and logos to your partners. This will ensure that your affiliate partners communicate your message correctly and show them how to deliver your product.
- Encourage your affiliates to use email campaigns. Since email marketing is one of the most effective ways to reach potential customers directly, you can ask your partners to use it as one of the channels. This is easy when using a special service like SendPulse. Affiliates can create professional emails from templates, schedule campaigns for the right time, and personalize messages to meet prospects’ needs.
- Monitor affiliates’ performance. Consider using a special tool to monitor all actions related to your affiliate program. Track everything to ensure it works and make decisions based on performance. You might need to adjust partnership conditions and commissions.
Now that you know how to start with affiliate marketing, it’s time to proceed to the strategies. They will help you get the most in terms of revenue.
10 Strategies for Maximizing Affiliate Marketing Revenue
To boost your affiliate marketing revenue, you need a structured plan that covers effective strategies. You should focus on optimizing your program, establishing appropriate commissions, selecting the right affiliates, and providing value for customers. Here are some of the most effective techniques for helping you reach your business goals more effectively and efficiently.
- Strive to reach your target audience. After creating an affiliate program and promoting it to affiliates, ensure that the people they target are interested in your product. There’s no use reaching out to everyone because the chances of sales are low. You should research to identify the target audience of these influencers, content creators, bloggers, YouTubers, and other experts. They need to be relevant to your niche to bring real results. Although you pay commissions upon successful sales, it might negatively impact your brand.
- Add information about your affiliate program to your website. When you have an affiliate program, you should add this critical information to your website. Cover all the details about the program, the people who can participate, and the commissions they can earn. You should also add a link where affiliates can seamlessly join your program.
- Select the right partners for your program. Choose your affiliates based on their niche rather than the size of their following. These opinion leaders, influencers, bloggers, reviewers, and industry leaders should have the trust of their audiences, be related to your industry, and show excellent promotional skills.
- Provide good commissions. The commission size influences affiliates’ decisions on whether to join your program. That’s why, before creating a commission structure, conduct a short research on competitors. It will help you find the most appropriate sum for payoffs.
- Disclose affiliate links for trustworthiness and credibility. If your business uses affiliate links in the US, it must disclose them and comply with the Federal Trade Commission’s requirements. Moreover, it contributes to building trust. By disclosing links, affiliates show customers that they hide nothing and that no fraud is involved.
- Use high-quality content. Encourage affiliates to promote your products using valuable and helpful content. You can write detailed reviews, tutorials, comparison guides, and case studies and provide them to affiliates. They will share this content with their audiences using the most suitable channels.
- Encourage affiliates to share product reviews. Product reviews are very effective for reaching a wide audience with high transactional search intent. These are usually people who have already considered making a purchase; they just need to ensure that a product is worth it. Your affiliates can prove this easily when they share reviews on social media platforms, YouTube, or websites. However, these reviews shouldn’t look perfect; instead, they should reflect your product. Prospects prefer real experiences over promotional content.
- Let affiliates create tutorials. By creating tutorials, you can teach readers how to do something right using your product. Although these tutorials carry an educational character, when presented effectively, they can benefit your business. If you manage to show prospects how to use your product and resolve their problems, they might consider it a solution. Your affiliates can include affiliate links to your products in their how-to guides, making it easy for readers to explore available options for handling their issues. It’s also convenient for them to purchase your product once they decide it’s a perfect fit.
- Share promo codes for discounts. A price reduction can become enticing for new customers, especially when they really need this product. That’s why you should share a discount code with your affiliates. For instance, you can give a 15% discount on the first purchase with a dedicated code. When a code is a limited-time offer, you can create a fear of missing out and influence buying decisions. Moreover, these exclusive codes help you track the performance and results each affiliate brings to your business in terms of sales.
- Consider using link localizers. Since your business can reach international audiences, it's important to show them landing pages in their language and currency. Link localization makes this possible. It allows your affiliates to deliver the right content to the right people, making it easier for them to find the necessary products and information on their pricing.
Now that you have the strategies, let’s explore how brands incorporate them to their advantage. Let’s dive in.
5 Affiliate Marketing Examples that Drive Results
- Skyscanner — search aggregator with links to websites
- Sellpy — an Instagram story with a code
- Email10K — YouTube reviews
- Dior — Reels
- BuzzFeed — listings with product promotions
Affiliate marketing has been successful for years. Its major business benefits include increased revenue, an enhanced customer base, and brand visibility. Below, we’ll review some examples to see how they achieve these pros.
Skyscanner — search aggregator with links to websites
Skyscanner is an excellent example of successful affiliate marketing. This search aggregator helps users search for flights and identify the cheapest ones. The platform provides them with the most affordable options and lets users access those services.
Sellpy — an Instagram story with a code
You often see influencers promoting brands and their products. Some of them use special codes. This is a nice way to attract new customers, especially when they receive a discount or a special offer when using the code. Below, you can see how an opinion leader showcases the clothing brand’s products and gives customers a 15% discount on their first purchase when applying the influencer's code.
Email10K — YouTube reviews
Some experts, opinion leaders, industry leaders, and bloggers work as affiliates and create content for their marketing channels. YouTube is a perfect platform to share valuable videos and reach a wide audience in different locations. Below, you can see Alex Berman talking about cold email automation tools. Besides a video review, viewers will find direct links to these services to explore instantly.
Dior — Reels
Opinion leaders can promote your brand by creating useful, entertaining, and engaging content. Reels are now one of the most effective ways to showcase your products and communicate your main message. This is a great idea for expanding your reaching a wide audience, establishing recognition, and building trust. When people see that influencers recommend your products, they are more likely to purchase them. This is why Dior encourages micro-influencers to create such videos by providing them with commissions. They can grab attention and demonstrate the company’s products from a new perspective.
BuzzFeed — listings with product promotions
Affiliates can include links to your products in their listings. This is what BuzzFeed does on its website. Site visitors can explore topics they are interested in and find relevant products. For example, one such blog post includes furniture from Walmart. Prospects can explore reviews, pricing, and pictures. It also includes a link to this item on Walmart’s website so that customers can seamlessly buy it as soon as they want.
To sum it up, affiliate marketing is an excellent and cost-effective way to expand your reach, effectively promote your products, and boost your customer base. With affiliates’ help, your products can be promoted through various channels and strategies, resulting in conversions, scalability, and business growth. We hope our techniques will help you use affiliate marketing to its fullest potential.
Last Updated: 10.01.2025
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