What is affiliate marketing?
An Affiliate Program is part of Affiliate Marketing, which has become quite popular. Affiliate marketing helps drive traffic for a business or company, and it also helps affiliates earn money from the comfort of their own home, car, local café.
Affiliate marketing is the process by which an affiliate will earn a commission for promoting a company’s products or services. The affiliate can look up the products or services they love. Next, they promote product to earn a part of the profit from each referral they earn. Many companies have this process automated and all sales are tracked via affiliate links and coupon codes.
How does Affiliate Marketing work?
If you know anything about marketing, you are probably thinking social media, newsletters, TV ads, Google ads, etc. The way marketing works is that a company can either reach out to potential consumers directly through the channels mentioned above, or by embracing the traditional ‘Word-of-Mouth’ methods.
According to Martensen and Grønholdt, Word-of-Mouth is amongst the most effective marketing method that exists. This is because the whole concept revolves around talking to people within your friend group, peers, colleagues, family, and your sphere of influence. People have a higher purchase intent if a product is recommended by someone they know and trust. Affiliates are trusted as influencers.
In Affiliate Marketing, three parties are involved:
- Companies
A company or entrepreneur has a product or service to sell to audiences. Besides reaching out to their consumers directly, a company can instead set up an affiliate program for certain trusted groups to join and benefit mutually. - Affiliate/advertiser
Companies can contact affiliates with an opportunity or people become affiliates by looking up services they use or love to promote. Many affiliates actually end up making a living from just being in the Affiliate Marketing business without working the 9-5 office job! - Consumers
Consumers are the drivers of affiliate marketing. Once a consumer buys a product, the company and affiliate will share profits. Affiliates may be upfront with the fact that they are earning commissions with each purchase made. Here at WpStream, we believe in 100% transparency. We ask affiliates to disclose that they are earning commissions from purchases. Why? Transparency between companies, affiliates, and consumers improves openness, trustworthiness, and the overall purchase intent.
Why be part of WpStream’s Affiliate Program?
Passive Income
Make money sleeping. That’s it.
By investing time and effort into a campaign to set it up, you will see the continuous returns for months to come. At WpStream, you will have Lifetime Referrals. This means that you continue earning commissions each time your referral’s subscription plan renews (monthly!)
Work from Home
Here’s a job you can do in your pajamas. You can launch campaigns and earn revenue from the comfort of your own home.
Cost Effective
Whilst some companies may expect you to pay sign up or processing fees, here at WpStream, we handle all of that. Joining our Affiliate Program is quick and simple and you can start earning right away.
Performance-Based
You will earn based on your great performance. Start writing that blog post, create that fascinating video, and tweet that good tweet. Your reward will be obvious!
About WpStream’s Affiliate Program
Our affiliate program is for developers, website designers, graphic designers, content creators, or anyone who has experience and influence in the WordPress community.
You will earn a 5% of Lifetime Commissions. As mentioned earlier, you keep earning profits off your referral for as long as they stay subscribed. All you have to do is promote WpStream on your website, social media pages, blogs, or through emails to your clients. You will find a custom link in your Affiliate Portal that you can share with your peers.
Once someone purchases a subscription plan, your referral is created and you will start earning. Based on how far you’ve come and how many referrals you have, you may also become eligible to share Coupon Codes with discounts to people. This works as an incentive. You earn your commission, your referral gets a discount, and we have a purchase. It’s a WIN-WIN-WIN situation!
Becoming an Affiliate : Step-by-step
Registering a new affiliate account
First things first, you will need to register a New Affiliate Account.
Once you register, your application will get to our Affiliates Team where they will go through it and either accept or reject your application. Please note that we may still reach out to ask you more questions or provide any details. You will receive a response on your application within 48 hours.
After you have been accepted
Congratulations! You can now start earning your commissions.
Affiliates Dashboard
If you go back to the Affiliates page, you will now be taken to the Affiliates Portal which looks like this (taken from the AffiliateWP website)
Affiliate URLs
This affiliate already has some referral activity. Next, let’s check out ‘Affiliate URLs’ which is where you will find your link to share on your websites, social media pages, blogs, etc. This is where you can customize and add a campaign name to track your performance.
Creatives
There is also the ‘Creatives’ tab where you will find versions of our logos that you can copy/embed. You can also check out our Brand Assets and download the logos here.
Set up payment
Before you start sharing your links or creatives, please make sure you connect your payment account by going to ‘Settings’. The page will look like this
You will register for the Payouts Service so that you do not experience any delays in your payments.
Referrals
Now, let’s check out what it looks like once you start earning referrals. Of course, go to the ‘Referrals’ page. This is where you will find every single one of your referrals including the reference, amount, description of the subscription purchase, date, and whether you were paid for this referral or not.
Visits
Here is your ‘Visits’ tab so that you know where your referrals are coming from. If you are sharing the link on your YouTube channel, you will find that people have used that link to visit from YouTube. This is especially helpful if you are sharing the link on multiple platforms/channels so that you know which one is more successful, and which one you can work on to improve.
Payouts
Finally, if you go to the ‘Payouts’ tab, you will see something like this. These are all your completed payouts!
Lifetime Customers
By going to the tab ‘Lifetime Customers’, you will find the first and last name of the referral that purchased a plan using your link. These are the customers that you will keep earning commissions from on a monthly basis if they keep their subscription. Once they cancel their subscription, they are no longer considered ‘Lifetime Customers’ and you stop earning.
Conclusion
Getting started with Affiliate marketing is as easy as it gets since you do not need to ‘create’ a product. Your business is simply ‘promoting’ products and services. You do not handle customer service, don’t need to leave the comfort of the house, and you make passive (sleeping) income.
If you don’t already have experience with affiliate marketing, WpStream is a good place to start!
Table of Content
