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
There are many ways to make money with affiliate marketing but until you figure out what works best for your individual site, you won’t make any money.
I have dabbled a bit with cost per click as well as cost per action marketing and I have found that it depends on the content of the site as to which method works. You offered some great tips, which I will be able to implement.
It’s so hard to choose an affiliate program, if your outside the “make money online” niche. I mean you have Amazon, which would be one of the gratest deals if they would have a higher commission, because the best part about Amazon is that if someone clicks on your link for a coffee maker and that someone ends up buying a tv, you still get the commission. But it’s harder than it sounds to get people to click your link.
Cheers!
Affiliate marketing is one of the best technique to earn online money but it demands a lot of patience and hard work.Affiliate marketing far more secure than adsense program but reality lies in relevancy and ranking of site under some keywords.
Mihai, I agree with you!
Amazon gives very less discount so it is not too big for earning great money, I would like to go towards ClickBank or Adsense as well.
Traffic and trust it is what really dictates affiliate marketing. Having success you need to have both and also you have to do a good SEO job.
Being an affiliate marketer of a particular product can be very promising. However, you need to make sure that you are using the right strategy in order to maximize your full earning potential. Just like what you’ve said, why would you offer a banner about numerology if you’re targeting a market who is interested with dogs. Most of us used to think more about the money rather than relationship of one strategy to the other. I guess, that’s the most common downfall of those who are trying to be successful in online business.
I never tried affiliate marketing and still seeking for the right way for making money and it seem like cost per action marketing is a great technique for earning money through affiliate marketing.
Yes i personally prefer CPA marketing because it is a right way of making money honestly according to the efforts we made. Perseverance and patience really plays a big role for affiliate marketers. Thank you very much for these great tips.
One of my blogs, actually the biggest one, has a major flaw: the topic in itself is not connected to any kind of commerce or products. I have a substantial number of visitors though, so it would be nice to find a way to capitalize off of that. I have tried many different affiliate ads and the visitors click – but they never convert, i.e. no money for me. Sadly I have now retreated to only using adsense on that blog due to lack of other ideas to try.. Seems like you have a lot of good tips here, so count on me coming back..