3 Most Practiced Affiliate Marketing Methods Explained

3 Most Practiced Affiliate Marketing Methods Explained—and The One I Profit From

When thinking specifically about affiliate income, I determined that I could divide how people earn money as an affiliate into three primary categories: Unattached, Related, and Involved. These terms represent how we are associated with the product or products we may be an affiliate for.

Unattached Affiliate Marketing

These are your basic pay-per-click affiliate marketing campaigns where you have no presence and no authority in the niche of the product you’re promoting. There’s no connection between you and the end consumer, and all you’re doing is putting an affiliate link in front of someone via Google Adwords, Facebookads, etc. in the hopes that they’ll click on your link, buy the product, and earn a commission.

The reason why this type of affiliate marketing is so attractive to many is because no presence or authority is needed! It takes time to build up a reputation and trust with certain groups of people online, and many people are just too scared to commit to working on a blog or website, or just don’t have the time. For many, this is their only option.

Personally, I don’t like this business model because to me, this is not a business model. It’s an income generating model, yes, but is it a business model where I can build relationships with the end user? No. With PPC affiliate marketing, you become a behind-the-scenes middle man.

And that’s not for me.

If you dabble in PPC affiliate marketing and it’s working for you, I applaud you and wish you continued success. It’s a lot more difficult than it sounds, so props to those of you finding success with it.

Related Affiliate Marketing

Another form of affiliate marketing is what I like to call related affiliate marketing. This is where you have some sort of presence online, whether it’s through a blog, a podcast, videos, or whatever—and you have affiliate links to products related to your niche, but they’re for products you don’t actually use.

Back when text link ads were a big deal, I remember seeing every single “make money online” website with a 125 x 125 pixel advertisement for text link ads. Most of these sites did not actually use the text link ad service on their own sites. On many personal finance blogs, you’ll see a lot of different affiliate advertisements for things like ING, Everbank, LendingClub, and numerous other financial institutions.

I doubt that every person who places one of those links on their blog actually uses each of those products and services. And that’s okay. Placing affiliate links on your site that are related to your niche is a great strategy to earn extra income. Whether it’s in the sidebar in banner form, or in a text link at the bottom of your blog post, because you have a website and some authority, people will trust you and your decision to place the ad on your site.

In my early days, I used to have a few of these links scattered throughout this blog- for example, an ad for a “How to Make an iPhone App” product. Many of you know I do have a few iPhone apps that generate an income for me each month, but I did not use this product. I do, however, personally know the owner, which is why I trust him and decided to place that ad there at the time.

Related affiliate marketing is great, but I can tell you that 95 percent of my affiliate marketing comes from the last type of affiliate marketing I’d like to talk about:

Involved Affiliate Marketing

Involved affiliate marketing is where you’ve used a product or service, truly believe in it, and personally recommend it to your audience. Not in a banner ad or somewhere that says “recommended resources,” but within your content, as part of your life and strategy for whatever it is you’re talking about. The product almost becomes something people “have to have,” because it’s part of the process.

It’s your involvement and experience with the product that makes that offer so attractive.

There is, however, a level of responsibility that you have to uphold while making these kinds of recommendations, especially if you have a lot of authority and influence over your followers. This is something I take very seriously. If it were up to me, this is the only way affiliate marketing would be done, because to me it’s the most honest and most helpful.

This is the complete opposite of PPC, where you’re not even seen by the consumer in order for the transaction to take place. Instead, this is you talking directly to those who may need a product that you’re offering, who have their ears and eyes on you. This is not using your money in order to make money, like with PPC. It’s using your reputation, trust, and authority in order to get others to take your recommendation, use it and pay you something in return in the form of a commission.

CONCLUSION

So, to conclude, I would say that you can choose which kind of affiliate marketing works best for you—Unattached, Related, or Involved—but in my experience, using your authority and presence in a niche to recommend products that you’ve used and have benefited you in some way is the best way to go.

I think people will feel more comfortable investing in products recommended in this way because:

1.     They have some kind of proof that it works.

2.     They have a resource to go to for help.

3.     They know who to blame if it doesn’t work.

Be as involved as you can with the affiliate marketing process, and you’ll see success with your affiliate income.
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