Affiliate marketing. You?ve heard of it?and you might have also heard a lot of other things that make you think it?s not for you. Here, we dispel the top 5 myths about affiliate marketing with affilinet, BritMums?s partner in our Affiliate Marketing Masterclass. This is sponsored content.

Richard Leake, affilinet?s Senior Publisher Development Manager, sets the record straight, in easy-to-understand language.

To sign up to affilinet and start making money from your blog click here.

 
 

1. Affiliate marketing only makes money for companies, never for the blogger.

This is certainly not true. Affiliate commissions are paid out on a performance basis e.g. you get paid when a specific action takes place. The advertiser only makes money when a sale is made, which means you make money too. Many advertisers will also work on a tenancy basis, which means they will pay for a set amount of exposure on your site. This is money straight in the bank for the affiliate blogger, with the advertiser taking the risk that they will see a good Return On Investment (ROI).

2. It?s too complicated and hard to understand.

Out of all the online marketing channels affiliate is perhaps the easiest to understand: You sign up to an affiliate programme, select the advertiser you want to work with and integrate their brand assets onto your site. You are then paid a commission for each sale you generate; this is much simpler than the dark arts needed to be successful in SEO and Pay Per Click. If you have questions on the technical side of things, you should get in touch with the support team at the relevant network/agency. They should always be willing to help you. Never be afraid to ask for help!

3. If I sign up, I?ll have to spend loads of time every week or every month maintaining it.

The level of maintenance for an affiliate relationship depends on the advertiser. If it is an advertiser who has new sales and promotions every week, then yes you will need to maintain it. Consider though if you didn?t bother updating an advertiser?s offer; you definitely won?t see any revenue and you?ll be providing a poor user experience by showing out-of-date creative. Think about how much time you want to invest in updating your affiliate content and make you choose an advertiser based on their offer frequency.

Affiliate like any form of onsite monetisation requires time and dedication to bear fruit.

4. If I make any money, it will be a pittance.

There is no other way to put this: Like every other form of online marketing, you get out of affiliate what you put in. Admittedly it?s easy to put a Google AdSense banner on your site and watch a few clicks come through and generate some revenue but is this showing relevant content? Or delivering an enhanced user experience?

If you have maybe 100 visitors to your site each day, then the chances of making a sale are reduced compared to someone who has 200 visitors a day and so on, and again that?s the same for other marketing channels. Does that mean affiliate is a waste of time? Not at all! Affiliate is a piece of the overall online success puzzle. If you enjoy what you are writing about, keep going, keep building up an audience and your advertising will start to generate more for you.

5. I won?t like the companies or products that are featured on my site.

This shouldn?t really happen, as you sign up for advertiser programmes that are the right fit for you. If you do sign up for a programme where you don?t select the advertisers that will be shown such as affilinet?s Performance Ads, then you can rest assured that the network has taken all necessary steps to make sure that no inappropriate advertisers will be shown, such as gambling, payday loans, sexually explicit ads and so on.

It is not in the best interests of any party involved to show offensive or inappropriate advertisers and of course you should always feel able to raise any concerns or questions and get an answer.

To learn more about affiliate marketing, how it works and what you can do it with, take our Affiliate Marketing Masterclass, sponsored by affilinet.

To find out more about what you can do with affiliate marketing and how to work with affilinet click here.

To sign up to affilinet and start making money from your blog click here.

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