Getting rich in no time with affiliate marketing and referrals - is it really possible? At least there are numerous platforms, guides and self-proclaimed experts who promise this. Today, Sven Scheuerle will tell you why this is a fallacy, what types of affiliate marketing there are and which of them make sense.
Earning money as an affiliate is possible in many different ways. In the following article, I will provide you with some interesting information and tips. However, you won't find a roadmap on how to get rich quickly here. Because that's not possible with affiliate marketing either - even if some marketers out there like to portray it that way. I myself have many years of experience in this field and can tell you here and now: you have to invest time and effort to achieve good to very good results! I will now explain how to do this.
What is affiliate marketing and how does it work?
Affiliate marketing means that an affiliate and a merchant (provider) have entered into a cooperation or partnership and the affiliate is given the opportunity to advertise the merchant's products or services. The merchant makes all its advertising material available to the affiliate for this purpose.
Affiliate marketing is therefore nothing more than so-called "referral marketing". In short, this means that you recommend a product or service to a third party (e.g. your friends, relatives, website visitors). If a person buys the product or uses the service, you receive a predetermined commission. There are numerous commission models according to which you can be remunerated. More on this later in the article.
Important: For affiliate marketing to work at all, two parties must be present. Firstly, the party that provides the product or service. On the other hand, the party that recommends the product.
This type of online marketing is a form of digital sales, as everything takes place completely online. So that the merchant knows who has recommended their product or service, you will first receive a unique and individual link with your own ID. This ID allows you to be clearly identified as an advertiser (affiliate).
Affiliate link example:
URL: https://rb001.dev.360vier.net/
Personalized ID: xzy458
This would result in the following affiliate link: https://rb001.dev.360vier.net/xzy458
In order for you to earn a commission, interested parties must click on this affiliate link and buy the corresponding product or service.
Do affiliate links have to be labeled?
The role of merchant and affiliate
As briefly mentioned above, the system always consists of the merchant and an affiliate. As a rule, the affiliate applies for the "partner program" offered and thus signals to the merchant that they would like to advertise their products or services.
As soon as the merchant has approved the request, you as an affiliate have access to a variety of advertising materials, for example in the form of logos, advertising banners, text links or even partially prefabricated texts that you can use for your newsletter, for example.
Here is an overview of the two terms and their synonyms:
Merchant / seller / dealer: Is the provider of the product or service and provides the affiliate with advertising materials.
Affiliate / Publisher / Partner: Promotes the product or service digitally and receives a predetermined commission rate from the sales price for the successful sale or recommendation.
What affiliate marketing methods are there?
There are numerous ways in which you can do affiliate marketing. You don't necessarily need to have your own website or be active on social media channels. This is precisely the great advantage of affiliate marketing, because theoretically anyone can do it, with or without experience.
I would like to explain in more detail below what options there are, how and where you can use the affiliate system.
1. website / blog
If you have your own website or blog, these are already very good prerequisites for being able to use affiliate marketing for yourself. This is because you usually have traffic, i.e. regular visitors to your website.
To explain the whole thing clearly, I would like to use a simple example. Imagine you are a travel blogger and regularly post new and interesting articles about your travels on your blog. For example, you tell us which hotels you stay in or which activities you have undertaken with which providers.
Now you can, for example, integrate suitable products or even booking forms for your partner companies on your blog. This gives visitors who are also interested the opportunity to book the hotel or even the activities directly. And you receive X percentage of commission for every booking.
2. affiliate website / niche site
An affiliate website, usually also called a niche site, is actually a normal website. The big difference, however, is that it is created exclusively for the purpose of affiliate marketing.
Simply put, this means that you look for a lucrative niche in which you want to earn money with affiliate marketing and build a suitable niche site on the corresponding topic (for example, dog transport boxes). On the website, you offer your visitors information and thus added value on the product or topic and, of course, place your affiliate links in suitable places.
A nice side effect of this type of affiliate marketing is that if you set up such a project correctly, you can actually generate purely passive income after a few months. I explain my experiences with affiliate marketing and how you can set up your own affiliate website in my Niche Business Masterclass. Use the code "Raidboxes20" to get a 20% discount on my online course 🙂
3rd Newsletter
In addition to affiliate marketing with websites or a blog, you can of course place affiliate links within newsletters. So if you already have an audience, you could advertise affiliate products to them at regular intervals.
To stay with my example above: If you have subscribers who are interested in dog transport boxes, you could, for example, recommend dog training or dog education courses in addition to the transport box itself.
Here, of course, you should find a healthy balance between added value and advertising. If you send too many purely promotional emails, you run the risk of people unsubscribing from your newsletter at some point.
4. direct messages
In affiliate marketing, direct messages are the easiest way to recommend products or services. As described above, you don't necessarily need your own website, blog or newsletter. You can send direct messages via WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, private messages on Instagram or any other messenger service.
However, you need to have a certain knack for this, of course. Sending hundreds of direct messages a day is not everyone's cup of tea - not mine either! To earn money with affiliate marketing in this way, you have to be active over and over again. You will also be writing to people who are not at all interested in the product or service.
That's exactly why I'm really happy to have put my focus on building successful affiliate websites. Because your niche site will only be visited by people who are interested in the product or service right now.
The commission models in affiliate marketing
In affiliate marketing, there are numerous commission models according to which you can be remunerated as an affiliate. The best known of these is by far the so-called "pay-per-sale" model. This means that as an affiliate, you are only paid when the product you recommend has actually been sold.
However, in addition to this model, there are many others that you can use to earn commission. Below I would like to explain the best-known and most important commission models in affiliate marketing in more detail.
Pay-per-click (PPC)
With this commission model, the affiliate is already remunerated when someone clicks on the affiliate link. The advantage: A click is of course done much faster than the actual sale, for example. However, with this type of commission, you are usually only remunerated in the low cent range.
Pay-per-lead (PPL)
With this commission model, the affiliate is only remunerated when a qualified "lead" or customer contact is made. For example, a qualified customer contact is when a prospective customer enters a contact form via the affiliate link and leaves an email address, telephone number or similar. The merchant can then contact this lead afterwards.
Pay-per-sale (PPS)
As previously mentioned, "pay-per-sale" is the best-known and most widespread commission model in affiliate marketing. Here, the affiliate is only paid when someone actually buys or uses the recommended product or service via the affiliate link.
Pay-per-view (PPV)
With this commission model, the affiliate is remunerated for the display of banners or advertisements. This means that no direct action by customers or interested parties is required. The special feature here is that the commission is paid per "thousand contacts" (1,000 impressions). This type of remuneration is particularly interesting for affiliates who are active on platforms such as YouTube.
Lifetime remuneration
Lifetime remuneration differs from all other known commission models. This is because you receive a commission not just once, but for as long as the customer you have referred uses the service.
A simple and nice example is a subscription where a customer pays X amount each month to use a tool or service. If you, as an affiliate, recommend this tool or service via your affiliate link and the provider offers a lifetime commission, you receive a percentage X of the subscription price every month.
Of course, this is just one example. A subscription does not necessarily mean that the provider also offers a lifetime commission for affiliates. It may also be that you are remunerated with the first sale (i.e. "pay-per-sale").
Lifetime commission is a very lucrative form of remuneration for affiliates, as you can plan your income on a fixed basis.
Other
In addition to the commission models mentioned above, there are numerous others in affiliate marketing. In my opinion, however, these are little or not worth mentioning, as they are rarely used by "normal" affiliates. These include, for example, models such as "pay-per-install" (with installation of the software), "pay-per-print-out" (with printing of a coupon) or "pay-per-sign-up" (with registration on the provider's website).
The most popular partner programs & partner networks
Now that you know what affiliate marketing is, how it works, how you can use it and what commission models there are, you probably want to know where you can find suitable providers, right?
There are a variety of useful partner programs and providers for this. A distinction is usually made here between so-called "in-house partner programs" and "partner networks".
In-house
With an in-house partner program, the provider manages its partner program independently. They provide the affiliate system for their affiliates and also pay them.
Network
With an affiliate network, the provider of the network (not the merchant itself) provides the complete infrastructure for the affiliate system. The provider only has to enter their partner program and can determine which affiliates can advertise their products or services.
The network also manages and pays out the affiliates. However, the merchant pays a certain price to the partner network for this, or the network receives a percentage X of the sales.
Partner programs / Partner networks
If you are a beginner in affiliate marketing and don't know exactly where to find suitable merchants for a specific product or service, I recommend the affiliate program directory 100partnerprogramme.de.
You can simply enter a product name such as "bicycle" in the search and you will receive an overview of all available affiliate programs and providers that offer corresponding products and an affiliate program for them.
If you click on the button, you can see which partner network or in-house partner program you can use to advertise the product or service.
In our example, these would be the partner networks AWIN and belboon.
Amazon PartnerNet
Amazon PartnerNet is a real classic and is one of the most popular in-house affiliate programs among affiliates. With Amazon, affiliates benefit above all from the huge product selection, because as you probably know, you can really buy anything on Amazon. This makes it a real paradise for affiliates, as you can promote almost any product you find in the Amazon store.
Amazon offers its affiliates fixed commission rates depending on the product category. The amount of commission is always based on the amount of the sales price.
Within Amazon PartnerNet, there are numerous advertising options available to you as an affiliate. You can create text links, integrate product boxes into your website or use classic advertising banners.
AWIN
AWIN is one of the largest affiliate networks on the market. As an affiliate, you will find over 15,000 partners here whose products or services you can advertise.
After logging in, you can easily search for suitable categories or directly for a partner and submit a request for the partner program. You will then have access to all of the merchant's advertising material.
Digistore24
Digistore24 provides almost exclusively digital products on its platform, which vendors can not only sell here, but affiliates can also advertise. The special thing about this network is that virtually anyone can market their own digital products here, such as their online course, coaching, etc.
If you register as an affiliate on Digistore24, you can advertise any product listed on the marketplace. Some vendors also approve you directly so that you can start promoting the product or service immediately. You have a variety of categories to choose from, which you can filter by.
Raidboxes
Of course, Raidboxes also offers its own in-house affiliate program, with which you can earn money as an affiliate by promoting hosting tariffs via affiliate marketing.
To do this, you simply need to register as an affiliate. You will then have access to the affiliate dashboard, where you can view your affiliate ID, advertising banners and current statistics.
Other
In addition to the above-mentioned partner programs and partner networks, there are of course many others that are ideal for affiliate marketing. These include platforms such as:
Important key figures in affiliate marketing
When you sign up to an affiliate program or affiliate network and search for products or services to promote, you will see a variety of affiliate program metrics on each platform.
As an affiliate, you should definitely take a closer look at these before applying, as these are the conditions that the merchant grants you. In the following paragraphs, I have described six of the important key figures in brief.
EPC
- Is the so-called "earning per click"
- Indicates how much an affiliate earns per click
- The higher the EPC value, the more lucrative the partnership can be
- Formula: Turnover * amount of commission / number of clicks = EPC
Conversion rate
- Indicates how well the merchant's landing page converts
- The higher the conversion rate, the more lucrative the partnership can be
- Formula: Number of page visitors / actual purchase = conversion rate
Cancellation rate
- Indicates how many referred leads or sales are rejected by the merchant as invalid and for which you ultimately receive no remuneration
- The higher the cancellation rate, the less attractive for the affiliate (higher probability that the buyer will also cancel their own recommendations → possibly poor product / service)
- Formula: Total number of sales / number of cancellations = cancellation rate
Shopping cart
- Indicates the average value of the shopping cart
- The higher, the more lucrative the partnership can be
- Formula: Total number of visitors / turnover by the items placed in the shopping cart = shopping cart (cart conversion)
Cookie runtime
- Indicates the period of time over which visitors or their purchases are assigned to you using cookies
- The longer the period, the higher the probability of receiving a commission
Commission
- Indicates the percentage of revenue or sales you will receive (based on the "pay-per-sale" model)
The 3 best affiliate plugins for WordPress
Below I would like to introduce you to three of the best Amazon affiliate plugins for WordPress in my opinion. These are particularly suitable if you use a website or blog for affiliate marketing.
All of the plugins mentioned are exclusively suitable for WordPress. They all have a fully automatic update of the product information, individual designs and shortcodes for integrating the products.
The big advantage of these affiliate plugins is that you don't need any HTML or PHP knowledge to integrate the relevant products. So even beginners can use one of these plugins to carry out affiliate marketing in the form of product placements.
Affiliate WordPress Plugin: Amazon Affiliate for WordPress (AAWP)
The Amazon Affiliate for WordPress plugin (AAWP for short) is one of the best and most popular Amazon affiliate plugins. With this plugin, you can add not only text links, but also beautiful Amazon product boxes, bestseller lists, widgets or comparison tables to your WordPress website with just a few clicks.
Important to know: The AAWP plugin is fully specialized in the Amazon Affiliate Program. This means that only products from the Amazon store can be advertised with this affiliate plugin. It is also only available in a premium version.
Affiliate WordPress plugin: affiliate-toolkit
Just like AAWP, the affiliate-toolkit plugin for WordPress is a pure affiliate plugin that allows you as an affiliate to integrate suitable products on your website with just a few clicks.
For example, the affiliate plugin has its own shortcode generator, widgets, a product import, list import, hover product links and much more. Text links, product boxes, comparison tables and bestseller lists can also be integrated via shortcode.
With affiliate-toolkit you can not only advertise Amazon products on your WordPress website for affiliate marketing, but also products or services from AWIN, eBay, Belboon, Tradedoubler and Webgains, for example. The affiliate-toolkit plugin is also only available in a premium version.
Affiliate WordPress Plugin: Amazon Simple Affiliate (ASA2)
Another highly recommended affiliate plugin for affiliate marketing is ASA2. With the Amazon Simple Affiliate plugin (ASA2 for short), you have a variety of options for integrating Amazon products on your WordPress website, just like with the other two plugins presented.
With the help of the ASA2 plugin, you can integrate text links, product boxes, bestseller lists or widgets, among other things. Comparison tables are not possible with this Amazon Affiliate plugin.
In addition, the affiliate plugin includes its own product search, dynamic templates and the option to search for and insert products directly via the WordPress editor.
The ASA2 plugin is also only available in a premium version. In addition, just like AAWP, only Amazon products can be advertised with it.
You can use the previous version of the plugin(ASA1) free of charge. However, this version only allows you to integrate a simple product box.
The 3 affiliate plugins for WordPress in comparison
| AAWP | affiliate-toolkit | ASA2 | |
| Shortcodes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Product boxes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Bestseller lists | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Comparison tables | Yes | Yes | no |
| Product import | no | Yes | Yes |
| Shortcode generator | no | Yes | Yes |
| Individual templates | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| AMP | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Discount display | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Prime logo | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| URL shortening | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Caching | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| SSL | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Interfaces | Amazon | Amazon, AWIN, eBay, Belboon, Tradedoubler, Webgains | Amazon |
| Price from | 49 € | 57 € | 59 $ |
Conclusion
When it comes to earning money online, affiliate marketing really is for everyone. Whether for beginners, advanced users or professionals - there are many different ways to earn attractive commissions with referral marketing.
However, you should know one thing: Many affiliates and marketers out there unfortunately convey a completely wrong picture! The affiliate system is not a tool with which you can get rich overnight and no longer have to go to work. For example, it took me about five years to build up a stable passive 4-figure income.
For me, affiliate marketing is a great and "easy" way to build up a foothold either part-time or full-time. However, you also have to do something about it. With the right guidance, such as a course or mentoring, you might be able to do it much faster than I did.
