Affiliate marketing is a win-win for brands as well as affiliate marketers. It is an evolving mantra to make money even while you sleep. Yes, this strategy helps a brand drive sales and generate significant online revenue.
The only prerequisite for a brand to leverage affiliate marketing is to have a functional website. Even a website is not compulsory for those who know how to use social media platforms.
Here are some statistics that prove the effectiveness of affiliate marketing:
- Around 81% of brands and 84% of publishers around the world leverage affiliate marketing
- 38% of marketers consider affiliate marketing as one of the top customer acquisition methods
- A well-crafted affiliate marketing network can boost a business’s revenue by 30%
- Around 15% of the digital media industry’s revenue comes from affiliate marketing. This is in parity with revenue generated from email marketing
Let’s deep dive into what is affiliate marketing, how it works and how Razorpay leverages this program.
What is Affiliate marketing?
Affiliate marketing is the process by which a person (affiliate) earns a commission for marketing another company’s products or services or another person.
An affiliate promotes a product or service he loves and earns a profit by promoting the said product or service. The brand, which the affiliate promotes, pays a share of the profit from each sale they make through the affiliate.
Types of affiliate marketing
1. Unattached affiliate marketing
In unattached affiliate marketing, the affiliate has no connection to the product or service they are promoting. They have no known related skills or expertise related to the product/service and do not serve as an authority on or make claims about its use. cases as well This is the most uninvolved form of affiliate marketing among the three.
2. Related affiliate marketing
This is the opposite of unattached affiliate marketing. This type of marketing involves the promotion of products or services by an affiliate with some sort of connection to the offering. Generally, the connection is between the affiliate’s niche and the product or service provided.
3. Involved affiliate marketing
Involved affiliate marketing is a model where the affiliate promotes the product or service based on the experience with the same. Not in a banner ad or somewhere that says “recommended resources,” but within your content on a website or application.
How does Affiliate marketing work?
Affiliate marketing works by dividing the responsibilities of product marketing and brand creation among different people involved. It tries to make the most of the abilities of different people for an effective marketing strategy while providing contributors with a share of the profit.
Here are all the parts that are involved to make this marketing technique work:
- The product creator and the seller
- The affiliate marketer
- The consumer or the buyer
Let’s understand the connection between the three that make an affiliate program a success:
The product creator and the seller
A seller can be a solo entrepreneur or a company that has created a product or invented a service and wants to market it. The definition of the seller also includes a vendor, retailer, or merchant, basically whoever wants to market a product or a service.
The seller does not have to be actively involved in such affiliate marketing programs. All he needs to have is a product or service to sell or render.
For instance, a seller can be a company producing mobile phones or a company providing digital payment solutions.
The affiliate marketer
The affiliate marketer can be an individual or a company that persuades potential customers to purchase a seller’s product. They are also known as publishers. They market a product that might be valuable or beneficial to customers, in an appealing way. If a customer ends up buying such a product, the affiliate receives a portion of the money earned as commission.
These publishers or affiliates target specific products to their audience, which are of their interest, and they are most likely to act on such promotions.
The consumer or the buyer
It’s the customer or the buyer who drives affiliate marketing. The affiliates share and promote the products through their social media handles, blogs, and websites.
Once the customer buys the product, the seller and the affiliates share the revenue among themselves in an agreed proportion. This solely depends on the contract made between the seller and the publisher.
Sometimes the customers are aware that the affiliate is receiving a commission for the purchase they do. Other times, the customers are unaware of the affiliate marketing infrastructure behind the purchase.
The customers will not pay a higher price to the affiliate, as the affiliate’s share is included in the retail price of the product.
How to find affiliate programs?
You can primarily find affiliate programs by:
- Searching through Google or any search engine
- Affiliate listings and directories
- Scout the various affiliate links on the internet
- Competitive analysis of products and services offered
How do affiliate marketers get paid?
The consumer doesn’t always need to buy the product for the affiliate to get remuneration. Depending on the program, the affiliate’s contribution to the seller’s sales will be measured differently for different industries and companies.
The affiliate may get paid in various ways:
1. Pay per click
PPC (pay-per-click) programs focus on incentivizing the affiliate to redirect consumers from their marketing platform to the merchant’s website or application. This means the affiliate must engage the consumer to such an extent that they will move from the affiliate’s site to the merchant’s site. The affiliate is then paid based on the increase in web traffic and other parameters set by the merchant.
2. Pay per lead
Pay-per-lead affiliate marketing programs compensate the affiliate based on the conversion of leads over a certain period. The affiliate must persuade the consumer to visit the merchant’s website and complete the required action — whether it’s filling out a contact form, signing up for a trial of a product, subscribing to a newsletter, downloading software or files, etc.
3. Pay per sale
In this program, as the name suggests, the merchant pays the affiliate a percentage of the sale price of the product after the consumer purchases the product as a result of the affiliate marketing strategies implemented. In other words, the affiliate must actually get the investor to invest in the affiliate product before they are compensated.
Benefits of Affiliate Marketing
- Low ongoing costs
- Low, or nonexistent risk
- A new way of making a profit and potential passive income
- Easy setup and implementation
- Increased competitive advantage
- Networking possibilities with influencers
- High conversion rate
Razorpay Partner Program
Razorpay Partner Program is for anyone who can advocate digital payments. Through this medium, you can offer a complete suite of Razorpay services to your merchants and get paid for the same. As we thrive on simplifying online payments for businesses, we want to provide the same ease and empowerment to our partners as well.
From SaaS-based organisations to freelancers, anyone who is capable of onboarding transacting customers (merchants) for the Razorpay suite of services can become a reseller or an affiliate.
Here are the benefits that you will get on becoming our affiliate partner:
- Offer online payments
Offer your customers a complete set of services to easily accept, manage and disburse digital payments.
- Increase your income
Leverage our marketing materials to sell with ease and earn revenue from our affiliate program.
- Get preferential training
Get access to our partner-focused sales training, marketing collateral, tools, and much more.
Join Razorpay Affiliate Program now
Now that you understand it is beneficial for both of us, visit our website and signup at https://razorpay.com/partners/. Post-sign-up, you will get access to adding merchants from the partner dashboard.
That’s all you have to do to become a Razorpay Reseller. Get started now and earn while you sleep too!
