Knowing What Fits: Types of Affiliate Marketing You Can Choose From

With its steady rise in popularity, affiliate marketing has been implemented as a means to earn money by more and more people. And with the right affiliate marketing tools and enough effort, the money just keeps flowing in!

But what is affiliate marketing? The simplest explanation would be is that you get paid whenever you make a sale from the products you promote. Sometimes it doesn’t even have to be a sale – some affiliate marketers earn money by having people fill out a form or even just by clicking on an ad! The simplest way to do affiliate marketing is to create your own website, establish your readership, and place the ads where people can see them.

There are many types of affiliate marketing. Depending on your preferences, you can pick one out that would suit you. Let us divide them into three categories which are further explained below.

Indirect

Indirect affiliate marketing mainly deals with the basic campaigns like pay-per-click ads you post on your website. Most beginners use this method since you don’t need any familiarity or even expertise on the products you are promoting – you just place these ads in your website and if people click on them, you get paid.

Related

This method is a bit different from the first in the sense that you are well-aware of what you are promoting. Even if you don’t use the product yourself, these products are still under your field of knowledge; therefore, you can promote them with ease. Some people implement this method by targeting audiences of a specific niche (preferably one where you’re good at, as well).

Expert

Expert affiliate marketing is the most straightforward method you can use. You believe and even use the products you promote. Since you are knowledgeable enough with the said products, it wouldn’t be too hard to tell other people how good they are. Some expert affiliate marketers include their promoted products as part of their own blogs/websites so as to be more effective.

There are other types of affiliate marketing, such as entrepreneur affiliate marketing (wherein you’re the one who owns the product and let others promote it for you, thereby making you the “merchant”) and multi-level marketing (you earn through the sales of people you have recruited and the people they have recruited, sometimes up to the fifth degree).

You can choose one which you think would suit you best. You can also venture into multiple types at the same time to find out which ones are right for you.

You might think it is easy, but in reality, you need to put in a lot of effort at first for this to work. Once you get the hang of things and finally know your way through it, your affiliate marketing venture can turn from being an additional source of income to being your primary financial source.