Two Kinds of Affiliate Marketing — Relationship and CPA Affiliate Marketing [LNIM239]

This week on the Late Night Internet Marketing Podcast, we’re diving into the world of affiliate marketing and exploring the two most popular methods. Discover how you can use these strategies to grow your online business in 2023. 

Today on the show, we’re discussing affiliate marketing and its potential for business growth in the new year. As a long-time fan of affiliate marketing, I believe it’s the perfect starting point for anyone looking to launch an online business. However, I understand that many people may have confusion about the different types of affiliate marketing.

In this episode, we’ll be breaking down the two major categories of affiliate marketing and how they differ. We’ll also be discussing how you can use a combination of both methods to start a new revenue stream in 2020. Additionally, I’ll be bringing back an old segment of the show, the Late Night Internet Marketing Fortune Cookie.

 

Show Notes

Affiliate Marketing is where you talk about something to help, to educate, to teach, or to inform people about something, and if they, as a result, buy or take some action, then you get a commission for that work that you did.

There are some important aspects of this – there needs to be a know-like-and-trust factor between you and your audience. They need to care about what you say,  be interested enough to listen, and trust that you are recommending good products. This is what I call the Traditional Relationship Affiliate Marketing. 

This is no different than what you’ve been doing for your entire life at the coffee shop, or the barber shop or out at the bar when you’re with your friends. If your friend needs a plumber and you love the plumber that you use, you recommend the plumber. And if that plumber is a savvy marketer, that plumber will actually ask that customer where they heard about them and they will maybe come by and drop off a $10 gift card for you as a thank you for the referral. That’s a good business practice that people use and that’s a derivative of Affiliate Marketing.

There’s a second type of Affiliate Marketing that is often referred to as CPA Marketing — cost-per-action affiliate marketing. This is a less personal, more technical, affiliate marketing form and is also considerably more simple in many ways. 

Companies everywhere need people to buy their products, and the way they do that is with marketing. One of the tools that marketing people use is advertising — banner ads on websites, pop-up ads on YouTube, for example.

One of the ad network channels that you can buy is the so-called cost-per-action type channel. In this CPA business model, what’s unique is they pay per action. You get paid in the event that we can get people to take a small action — leaving their email address or zip code, filling out a form that gives demographic information that can be used to pre-qualify a lead, filling out a small survey.

Usually, when we do cost-per-action marketing as a form of affiliate marketing, we buy paid traffic, send that paid traffic to the offer, and fine-tune it until we get a conversion rate. There’s no know-like-and-trust factor. You’re just an invisible person placing ads, driving that ad traffic to someone else’s offer, and getting paid. It’s mechanical, there’s no presence for you online, and you don’t get to know anyone. 

There is an interesting situation where you can have a hybrid of these two. 

For example, you’re going to create one affiliate business around people who play guitar. You’ll help them learn how to play guitar through YouTube videos, guitar reviews online, and the like. Occasionally, you’re going to make a recommendation about a guitar course you think they should take or a type of guitar you think they should buy. 

You could also find a cost-per-action offer in your niche — you could buy cold traffic and drive it to that offer through a landing page where you can capture a lead’s email before you send them on to the offer.

You are then able to create this growing stream of traffic into your affiliate marketing business where you can develop a relationship with people, and get them to know-like-and-trust you but they’re coming from traffic that got paid for by this other company.

 

Links Mentioned In This Episode

• Late Night Internet Marketing YouTube Channel

• Descript

• Send me feedback at [email protected]

• Subscribe in iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher or Spotify

 

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