This is a guest post by Sté Kerwer from Dukeo.com
Affiliate marketing means you use a special link to send visitors from your blog or website to a merchant’s website. If the visitor makes a purchase on that site, you earn a commission.
For example, you might use an affiliate link on your blog and send your reader to a coffee maker at Amazon. If that reader then buys that coffee maker, you earn a percentage of the sale.
There are millions of different affiliate programs you can use to make money online which will completely eliminate the need of getting online loans or payday loans. Almost every online retailer has an affiliate link you can use to send traffic their way and earn a commission on sales you help generate.
But when you take a look at all of those programs they fall into two major business models – they either pay you earnings on the number of clicks you generate or the number of actions you generate.
Here’s a breakdown on Cost Per Click and Cost Per Action affiliate programs to help you choose the best model for you.
Cost Per Click Marketing
When you use a cost per click program you’ll be paid each time someone clicks the advertiser’s link you’ve placed on your blog. It doesn’t matter if they buy anything or submit their email address. All you need them to do is click the link and you’ll earn a commission.
Of course, it’s harder than it sounds. And you usually don’t make a lot of money per click. However, if you do it right, you can get a lot of clicks and make it up in volume.
You have to pay close attention to your keywords and content to make sure they’re relevant to the ad. For example, you may have a blog about dog training and all of your blog posts are about dogs and training tips. You’re using keywords to attract searchers who are interested in dog training, which is the right thing to do. But then you decide to place a banner in your sidebar for a free numerology reading because you think numerology is cool so you think everybody else will be interested, too. Besides that, if someone clicks on it you’ll make a whole $2.
Wrong! No one is going to click on that banner because everyone who comes to your blog is interested in dog training, not numerology. The affiliate ads you run on your blog or website need to be relevant to your readers. If they’re visiting your blog to learn about dog training tips there’s a good chance they’ll click on ads that have to do with dogs – dog food, dog collars, dog training videos, etc. But they’ll more than likely just ignore that numerology ad because that’s not why they’re visiting your blog. You already know they’re interested in dogs, so use dog-related affiliate programs.
Cost Per Action Marketing
Cost per action marketing is a little different in that your reader has to complete some sort of action before you earn your commission. They may only have to submit their email address or zip code but they might also be required to make a purchase. You still need to take the same steps to match up your content and your affiliate program but generally the commissions are much higher with CPA marketing because you have to put forth more effort to entice your reader to complete the action.
Choosing the best model depends more on the type of traffic you have. If you have a relatively new site with not much repeat traffic yet, you may have more success with CPC marketing. Your readers are visiting for the first time and they’ll be more likely to click on an AdSense advertisement to search for more information than they would a banner ad that leads to a sales page.
But if you have a more established blog with lots of repeat traffic, your readers will be closer to the buying stage and you’ll have a better chance of them clicking through to complete a sale or other action. Either way, you need to have good quality, relevant content to attract the best targeted traffic.
Affiliate marketing is one of the most popular online methods for earning money. You don’t have to worry about stocking inventory or shipping and handling, you don’t have to worry about customer complaints or returns, and you don’t have to worry about taking care of the money. All you have to do is learn how to choose the right product and create great content that sends your reader to the merchant’s sales page. After that, you just sit back and collect the money.
Top 10 Search Terms:
• affiliate marketing models
The problem with certain affiliate programs is the fact that they have a small cookie-period. Anyone will take more than one read and more than one click to buy a product of their choice. Especially, if the product is of any value. So, I guess CPA ads where submission of details/ email indicating a lead should be paid higher for this model to work effectively than waiting for the entire sale to happen, which may happen after a long time and the affiliate marketer does not get paid for it because the cookie-time has lapsed!
Cost Per Clicking is the Best way to earn money. Because in India only less number of people prefer to buy on the internet.
yes.. cpc is the best for anyone starting with their own website, especially in india.
We have just recently launched our own affiliate marketing program and most of our affiliate marketers are finding CPA more profitable. You are right when it comes to choosing between CPA and CPC. In the same manner, companies sponsoring these affiliate programs also have to consider whether the product or service they are selling is profitable or is already known to many people. If it is, then CPA would be more beneficial.
I hope you don’t mind if I put a link going to your site in the newsletter that I would be sending my affiliate marketers.
Relevancy and proper positioning are keys to success in affiliate marketing. If you are new in this best way to do it properly is to check what other blogs in your niche are doing and follow them. If that doesn’t work, try to test other methods and affiliate programs which offering products similar to content on your site. I can’t see other way.
Affiliate Marketing is one of the “in” thing these days as people are more engaged in the internet. A lot of people are also looking for online jobs and would want to work at home. But having an affiliate program giving you income doesn’t meant that you stop working your 9 to 5. You wouldn’t know if Google would change their algorithms and would affect your sites one or the other.
Kudos,
Shane
I haven’t tried affiliate marketing as yet but CPA is better choice for more earning. CPC and CPA works when you get good targeted traffic on your site or blog. So before starting affiliate marketing your primary object should be to attract targeted readers by providing quality information.
Now those are some clear tips Sté. I’ve just started off with affiliate marketing and I already love the sales I am bringing in. These tips are of great help.
I have treid affiliate marketing and it works though the conversion rate is prettey low cpa is alot better as far as conversion rate
Hi Ste,
This is informative post. Though, I never tried to engage affiliate marketing but I’m looking forward to what is the best model to choose in order for me to have knowledge already when the time comes because I do believe that it is important to have a best model referring to affiliate marketing.
CPC especially using Google adwords is the most effective tool in affiliate marketing but it is expensive, uses a means of social network marketing also effective and efficient.