How Affiliate Links Work (And How to Use Them Right)
These days, there are many ways for influencers to make money. Advertisements, sponsorship deals, and membership subscriptions are just a few ways influencers can monetize their platforms. Making a career out of content creation is a dream for many, and there are many ways to achieve that goal. One way for influencers to make money through their platforms is through affiliate marketing, which uses an affiliate link. Content creators can collaborate with brands, companies, or other influencers to promote their products and earn a commission.
Want to learn more about affiliate links and how you can use them to monetize your platform? Read on!
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What is Affiliate Marketing?
The concept behind affiliate marketing is simple: companies want to market their products, and influencers have large audiences of consumers who may be interested in what a company sells. Affiliate marketing joins companies and creators in a mutually beneficial partnership to increase profitability and exposure for both parties.
In affiliate marketing, the affiliate, who, in this case, would be the influencer, markets a company’s product directly on their platform. When someone from an affiliate’s audience purchases that company’s product, usually through a unique affiliate link, both the company and the affiliate get paid.
When done right, affiliate marketing is a win-win scenario for all involved. Companies get to showcase their products to larger audiences, consumers gain awareness of products designed with them in mind, and the influencers in the middle get to monetize their platforms through commissions.
Wondering which brands are marketing best? Check out this guide to 10 Brands with the Best Social Media Brand Marketing Strategy.
What is an Affiliate Link?
You may be wondering how affiliates keep track of when a member of their audience makes a purchase. The answer? Affiliate links.
An affiliate link is a unique URL that keeps track of when someone clicks it and whether a purchase is made from that click. If someone in your audience clicks your unique affiliate link and then purchases the promoted product, you get a commission. Easy as pie.
Here’s an example of an affiliate link at work. Say a beauty YouTuber tries and recommends a certain kind of concealer from a makeup company. The influencer includes a link to the product page in the description of the video. Because the influencer is an affiliate of the makeup company, when a member of the influencer’s audience uses the link in the description and purchases the concealer, the YouTuber gets a commission on that sale.
What Does an Affiliate Link Look Like?
Chances are, you’ve seen and interacted with affiliate links during your time on the internet. You may not have even noticed it was an affiliate link at all. While tracking affiliate links requires some extra features that distinguish them from regular URLs, affiliate links themselves can appear just like any normal link. They can be shortened, hyperlinked, and otherwise made easier to find and access in text and video, just like normal URLs.
This is good news for influencers because it means affiliate links can be easily incorporated into various types of content. Common places to find or place affiliate links in influencer content are captions, comment sections, bios, and descriptions of videos.
No matter what your style of content is, chances are, there’s a place for an affiliate link in it. For this reason, affiliate links can be one of the most versatile ways creators can monetize their platforms.
What Kinds of Influencers Should Use Affiliate Links?
Many types of influencers can use affiliate links. Common affiliate marketing partnerships include bloggers, photographers, videographers, comedians, online gamers, and more.
Cooking influencers might recommend kitchen appliances or recipe books, while online gamers might promote a certain keyboard, mouse, or gaming site. The possibilities for appropriate and valuable affiliate marketing are endless, and many influencers can take advantage of them.
If you have a large enough audience, chances are some companies would like to market to them. Affiliate links are a win for both of you.
Which form of content is best for your brand? Find out if long-form and short-form content is right for you here.
Why Should Creators Use Affiliate Links?
There are several reasons why influencers should consider using affiliate links to monetize their content creation. These include:
Diversifying Revenue Streams
With more and more influencers crowding online spaces, it can be difficult to stand out, let alone make money from your work. Affiliate links don’t replace ad revenue, member sponsorships, or other forms of content monetization – they add to them.
Diversifying sources of revenue is a solid move for content creators hoping to make a living out of their work. With affiliate marketing, influencers avoid putting all their monetization eggs in one basket, so to speak. When it comes to building a sustainable career out of content creation, affiliate links are just one way to make it happen.
Building Brand Relationships
When influencers become affiliates with a certain company or brand, they demonstrate faith in the quality of its products. That faith gets translated to their audience, who often look to influencers for purchasing suggestions.
Brands love that, and influencers who perform well as affiliates may have more brand partnership opportunities. Affiliate marketing is a great way to expand an influencer’s network in the brand partnership space.
Leveraging Audience
One of the most valuable resources an influencer has is their audience. Companies covet the trust and reach of established creators when marketing their products. Affiliate marketing allows influencers to take advantage of this resource in a way that can be monetized.
Brand Aesthetics
One of the benefits of affiliate marketing is the ability to include affiliate links seamlessly into the content you make. Links are less obtrusive than some other forms of marketing, as they can be embedded directly into your content, so for influencers who spend a lot of time cultivating a specific brand image, this subtlety is meaningful.
No need to sacrifice aesthetics or branding to monetize your content. Affiliate links are an unobtrusive yet useful way to direct your audience toward certain brands and products you believe in.
Passive Income
Perhaps most importantly, affiliate links are, by nature, a passive form of marketing. Anyone who clicks one of your affiliate links, even in previously posted or old content, has the chance of earning you a commission, so long as you retain your affiliate partnership with the associated company. Who doesn’t want to make money while they’re asleep? With affiliate links, you can.
As a passive form of income, affiliate links can free up time, space, and money so influencers can do what they do best: making content people love.