Affiliate marketing for Beginners

In this article we are going to analyze what Affiliate Marketing is, what the process of publisher’s work consists of, what are the verticals in affiliate marketing and what they are, and much more. Let's start with the fact that the "arbitrage" has several meanings and one of them can be taken directly on Wikipedia: "several transactions aimed at taking advantage of a difference in prices at the same time in different markets (spatial affiliate marketing), or in the same market at different points in time (temporal affiliate marketing).”

In our case, since we are dealing with traffic arbitrage, we are talking about buying it cheaper and selling it more expensive. But don't take everything so literally.

Before we go deeper into affiliate marketing, let's go through history a bit, so that you can flash erudition one day:

• 1989 - someone William J. Tobin applies for a patent for the concept of affiliate marketing in other words partnership one. This term refers to the promotion and sale of goods through intermediaries, that is, partners.
• 1996 - Amazon launches the "Amazon Associates" program, and if in the previous example a similar move was extended to the company's employees, then Amazon has already opened access to it to the general public so that everyone can recommend products from the catalog and receive remuneration.
• the 3rd important date for us - when traffic arbitrage appeared - Google provides upon request. This is the 8th of December 2004. This date marks the first time when traffic arbitrage was called traffic arbitrage, so we can consider it traffic arbitrage Day. 

In order to make it easier to understand what affiliate marketing is, let's start with the main participant, who receives the maximum profit. This is an advertiser. For example, there is a certain company that produces or sells a product. In order for a product to be bought, you need to make sure that people know about it, right? There are 2 options here: either the company allocates a budget and organizes advertising campaigns, promotions, collaborations and so on or it can use the services of publishers and in this case pay only for each attracted client. For this, there are CPA networks or affiliate programs. 

How does it work?

The advertiser prepares an offer for their product, namely, product characteristics, tips and rules for using advertising materials, geography of the offer, conditions for its promotion, and so on. They also indicate the cost of the product and the commission that the publisher will receive. And this information is posted at Affiliate Network?

But in fact, its functions are not limited to this, the managers of the CPA network are constantly in touch and provide very valuable information: whether it is responding to hackneyed questions from beginners or recommendations on choosing an offer in different GEOs, etc. If you choose CPA network wisely, it will be interesting to earn together with the publisher as much as possible.

Then Publisher (or webmaster or just web) chooses an offer in the affiliate program, receives her/his individual link and starts driving traffic to it.

How he does it? It is very simple

In order to drive traffic, you need to take it somewhere, for this there are traffic sources, the so-called special platforms from which traffic is sent to the publisher's link. Here is a list of them:

- Advertising networks

- Social networks

- Search engines

- Native advertising on websites

- Advertising with bloggers and video bloggers

- Ads in channels, chat rooms, streams

- Traffic from mobile applications

Having decided where to drive, the Publisher works on an advertisement: selects images, texts, etc., and then launches an advertising campaign in the traffic source. Further, the following happens: people follow the link, some percentage of them perform the target action, i.e. the action for which the Advertiser pays and the Publisher receives her/his reward for them.

Thus, the Publishers' income is the difference between how much they received from the advertiser and how much they spent on traffic and other organizational issues. 

Types of Affiliate Marketing

According to promotion methods and offers, it is divided into:

- White implies the use of permitted methods to attract traffic and buyers eventually receive exactly what they are told in the advertisement without deceit and exaggeration, the best example can be goods from large marketplaces;

- Black is the exact opposite of white, that is, prohibited methods are used to attract traffic for exact niches, but it guarantees fantastic results in advertising, as well as deceives a client in order to enrich or steal personal data, for example. In the first case earnings are not great, in the second one it leads us to the "dark side of the force," which will leave a reputation stain, with all the consequences.

- Grey affiliate marketing would not be gray if it were white, remember this. Here only we remain white and fluffy. In advertising, we lure the client with flexible formulations without promising something impossible, for example, “a guaranteed way to get rich” by promoting a casino, but also not forgetting about the intrigue, for example, that “the amount of winnings this month has finally been increased to 257,000 dollars." We can also promote offers that may be prohibited in traffic sources, but without causing harm to either customers or to the reputation of the seller like some dietary supplements for the treatment of prostatitis or vitamin complexes for immunity. 

What verticals are in Affiliate Marketing?

In traffic arbitrage there is such a thing as Verticals. The main ones:

• Adult
• Nutra
• Dating
• Gambling
• Betting

Each of them contains a certain group of offers, united by their focus. For example, Dating, Gambling including casinos, Nutra meaning beauty and health products that are not medicines. Why didn't they call them something simpler like Niches, for example?Because the Verticals are also divided into Niches. For example, in Nutra we have the following:

• Diabetes
• Varicose
• Weight loss
• Anti-aging cosmetics
• Parasites

Different verticals and niches may have their own characteristics when working, so you need to carefully analyze what and how you will have to work before choosing. In this article, we took a closer look at what Affiliate Marketing is, how a webmaster can make money, and in which verticals and niches. You can also find information for work on our blog.

Want to start with nutra? Have questions about the case-study?

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