Affiliate marketing has gained momentum over the past few decades. Globally, a growing number of industries and businesses are making use of this technique to reach out to the market. As an affiliate you not only increase your revenue potential but also your networking and social skills.
Once you develop your affiliate network you need to keep a track of their performance. This is where your affiliate tracking system comes into play. But how do you keep a track of such a humongous network? The answers simple- through an automated system that has a unique ID created for each affiliate and links back to the system.
How do affiliates market products?
Affiliates typically market or advertise for products by placing cookies or Postback links on other websites or even theirs. Take for instance, bloggers who review products on websites; they can add a banner of the product that they are reviewing. If you click on it, it will lead you to the traders’ website. Similarly, a blogger can simply include a back link in their post while writing about a particular product. Once you click on this link, it will lead you back to that product website. If a sale arises out of that action, it will be tracked in the system.
As a blogger you can also post content on another website and use keywords with product backlinks. You can only use an affiliate link to make sure it is tracked in the system. These types of links will be exclusive to you and through that ID of the link you will get credited as the referrer, thus getting your share of commission. Similarly there are multiple levels in affiliate marketing and thousands of people marketing the same product in different ways everywhere. You need to be innovative to come up with fun ways to promote and add affiliate links in posts or reviews in order to earn a commission.
How does a blogger introduce affiliate links?
It may sound tricky; however, it is not really very difficult. It is a mammoth job to handle so many marketers or channels where your product is live, but if you have an automated system in place, there is nothing too big to handle. The best part about using these links is that, as a business you have the freedom to add as many people to market your product through different channels. As a marketer, you can also join as many networks as you want, however, you need to use the links and cookies appropriately so that you can have the visitors visit the site for purchase.
The affiliate tracking system deals with multiple marketers in the market and helps you to understand how each one is performing. If the affiliate does not perform, they do not get paid. Every search must result in a sale. You get paid based on the number of sales that you make. Every conversion results in a sale.
As a blogger, it is important that you generate enough traffic daily to even see the links materialize. Hyperlink the text with the affiliate link to generate leads and ultimately sales-
As a merchant you should invest in an affiliate tracking system that can help you keep a tab on all the marketing efforts that are put in by affiliates.
How do Affiliate Cookies work?
We all know that whenever we open any link on the internet there is a cookie that gets stored in your browser history. This cookie may be an affiliate link that you just activated on your system. For example- You just read through a great article or a review and thought it will be good to at least check the site out. You click on the link that has been posted in the given article and lo behold there is a cookie that gets stored in your system. This activated cookie helps to keep a track about the visitors’ information.
There are multiple things stored in visitors cookies like his / her visit duration, date and time, IP address, your affiliate ID as well as the name of your website. This is the trail of information that is most useful to track affiliate links and the product purchase. Cookies are ideally deleted after a particular span of time from the browser history and that is where you cannot track it. However, if there is a purchase or sale during that time, it will get recorded in the affiliate tracking software.
Amazon has been a pioneer in affiliate marketing which has made it such a profitable platform for sellers and buyers. Typically an Amazon cookie has a 24 hour lifespan; similarly every cookie has their individual lifespan after which it will get deleted if you clear your browser history. Some affiliate links last a lifetime without an expiration date. This means if you do not clear your browser history and if you make a purchase through the link that was originally clicked on, the affiliate will get a commission, even if it is after a year or a really long time.
Affiliate tracking system is the only way to track the marketing campaigns and the cookies as well as links of different affiliates anywhere in the world. Mostly these programs are not geography specific, which means you, can be present anywhere in the country or globe and still use affiliate links and promote products.
Although it is best to use one cookie or link per blog or review, however, there are many people who abuse the use of the cookies, which is called cookie stuffing. If you do indulge in an act such as this or the master of cookie stuffing Shawn Hogan of Digital Forum, then you will be in a lot of legal trouble. Not to mention, that you will be banned from using affiliate program links forever. Today, affiliate tracking systems are much more advanced and aim at avoiding such colossal damage to their brand and image.
This guest post is courtesy of Mohd.Sohel Ather.