Affiliate marketing is one of the top tactics on the market to drive sales and generate major commissions for the affiliates. This is super-beneficial to everybody involved! The brands can turn everybody into a sales rep and the affiliates can make substantial commissions off the products they are constantly talking about and recommending.
Simply put, it is the process of earning a commission for recommending somebody else’s product. The sales are tracked by the affiliate links, making it also easy to understand who is driving sales to your platform and paying out commissions easily.
Think about how many times people have asked you, “Where did you get that? ” “What is that?” or, “Hey, what can I get to solve this problem?”
And you gave out your opinion, recommendation or the name of the product for free, even if it was just to your friends and family.
The beauty of affiliate marketing is that you can grab a unique link from a business that participates in, send that link to whoever is asking about the product and if they make the purchase, you will get a commission.
In the US, 81 per cent of brands leverage affiliate marketing.
The biggest platform in the world with an affiliate programme is Amazon. It offers commission rates between one and ten per cent. based on the category the items fall under.
Once you register for an account on Amazon Associates, you can begin typing in
any product available on Amazon, it would generate your unique affiliate link and once you post that link, embed it in your website or send it to your friends, they can click on it, purchase the item and you will receive your commissions.
Amazon will either mail you a cheque in US currency to your address here in TT or you can register for Payoneer, and Amazon will send the money to your Payoneer account, which in turn will wire the money to your local bank account.
My workflow for how I get paid on Amazon would look like this.
I purchase a new microphone for better sound quality for my Digipreneur FM podcast. I make an Instagram or Facebook Story about the new microphone and give viewers a behind-the-scenes unboxing.
People watching who are interested in checking out the new microphone would ask me where I bought it or want more details on it. I would go to Amazon Associates, type in the name of the microphone, generate the affiliate link and then I can post the link on social media for people to check it out. Once they purchase, I can see the purchases made on my Amazon Associates dashboard, along with my commissions.
Many companies have an affiliate programme; it’s performance sales. The more you can talk about their products or recommend them, the more people buy and the more commissions you can make.
Some people have affiliate marketing as their main source of income. Whilst I don’t, I think it is a great revenue stream to have in your business, regardless of your niche.
I believe that
more Caribbean businesses should have been engaging in affiliate sales.
Most businesses will engage influencers to promote their business, but don’t set up the affiliate infrastructure to properly track the sales attribution to a specific influencer.
Setting up a proper affiliate system will allow you to turn anybody who knows about your products into a sales rep. It would incentivise them to share your products even more, knowing that they would be able to get commissions from the sales. If they have a website or YouTube channel, they could embed their links in those platforms and that way they could drive sales or traffic to your website for a longer period than when an influencer shouts out your brand on social media.
There is no limit to your earning potential with affiliate marketing and everybody wins. The business makes more revenue and only pays out commissions when a sale has happened.
The more sales you bring in for the company, the more money you make. Therefore, it has become one of my favourite passive revenue-generating activities. I am still earning commissions from products I embedded into blogs I did back in 2019 because people are still Googling questions and my blogs from 2019 are popping up as a result.
Both business owners and content creators need to learn more about affiliate marketing and make it a part of their revenue streams.
For more info on building your digital presence & monetising, visit Keronrose.com. You can also check out the Digipreneur FM podcast on Apple Podcast/Spotify/Google Podcast. Follow @keronrose on LinkedIn/Instagram/TikTok.
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