The complete guide of Affiliate Marketing and how to get started
The Comprehensive Affiliate Marketing Guide
1. What is Affiliate Marketing?
In short, affiliate marketing is a process by which a publisher (or affiliate) earns a commission for marketing another company’s or person’s goods, services, or when an action has been completed. An affiliate will use their own online network and audience to promote this product or service to earn some of the profit realised on each sale. These sales are tracked via affiliate links from one website to another using a tracking tag. According to the terms and conditions of the advertiser, the publisher may earn a fixed or variable commission.
2. What is a Publisher?
A publisher can also be called an affiliate or partner. A publisher has an online audience such as a website or email database. The publisher will use their virtual sales force and online presence to advertise a product, service, or the completion of an action through images, banners, logos, and text links. For example:
- Purchase of a service such as a web hosting plan
- Purchase of a good like a lamp or a book
- Completion of an action such as an application form, or the booking of a test drive
When one of the publisher’s online traffic realises a purchase or completes a certain action, the publisher will receive a commission. Note: terms and conditions of the commission may vary. Always read carefully the T&Cs.
Can Anyone Become a Publisher?
To become a publisher and start your affiliate marketing, you will usually need:
- Company Name
- Tax Residency
- First Name
- Last Name
Several platforms exist to help you get in touch with advertisers such as AWIN.
3. What is an Advertiser?
An advertiser, also referred to as the ‘merchant’ or the ‘retailer’, is an online company which sells products and/or services through a publisher’s online traffic. The advertiser can either pay a certain percentage on the purchase realised or pay a fixed commission according to the T&Cs upon completion of a certain action (a sale, a form filled, etc).
Can Anyone Become an Advertiser?
If you wish to become an advertiser, you will simply need to create your account, pay the setup fee (this fee may vary between affiliate marketing platform providers), fill in the T&Cs accordingly, and set up the commissions for your publishers.
4. How Does Affiliate Marketing Work?
Affiliate marketing works by spreading the product or service marketing across several parties. It allows the seller to increase its reach while the publisher (affiliate) earns a share of the profit.
The Seller or Advertiser
The seller, also referred to as an advertiser, can either be a solo entrepreneur or a large enterprise. The advertiser is the merchant trying to sell its products or services. The seller might also need affiliate marketing for other purposes such as increasing its newsletter opt-in or a completion of a form, etc. The advertiser does not actively participate in the marketing of their products or services. They instead leave the affiliate in charge, in exchange for a certain compensation such as a share of the profit realised. This can help small business owners and even bloggers increase their revenue by displaying an “ad” on their website.
For example, The Plumbing Inc. trying to reach a new audience by paying affiliate websites to promote their plumbing services. Or the seller could be a web hosting provider offering a voucher on their web hosting packages. (Find out all about our hosting plans here).
The Affiliate or Publisher
A publisher, as we explained earlier, can be an individual or a company that markets the seller’s product using appealing designs such as banners, icons, and text links. In other words, the affiliate promotes the product or the service to convince the consumers about its added value, leading to the product or service purchase. In most cases, when the consumer ends up buying, the publisher will receive a commission.
Note: Affiliates may have a very specific audience on their website and not all audiences will suit your products or services. As a publisher, you may want to be selective about what to promote and how, if you don’t want to end up losing traffic because of this.
The Consumer or Buyer
Most of the time the consumer is not even aware that their click may generate a commission. But the buyers are the drivers of affiliate marketing. Sometimes the affiliate will decide to be upfront with their audience and will disclose that they are receiving a commission for the sales or the clicks they make. Either way, the product or service price will rarely, if ever, be higher than the price without affiliate marketing. The commission given to the affiliate is often included in the retail price and the product or service sold is exactly the same as if the purchase happened without the affiliate marketing. In short, when the consumers buy the product or the service, the advertiser and the publisher share the profits.
5. How Do Affiliate Marketers Get Paid?
One of the fastest and most inexpensive methods to make money without actually selling a product is through affiliate marketing. If you are looking to increase your income, you may consider starting affiliate marketing. How would you get paid though? Well, the answer can get complicated and may vary. The payment method may be different depending on the terms and conditions you have agreed to when starting with an advertiser. You may earn a commission even though the consumer did not purchase the product or service, but simply because they clicked on your banner or link.
Common Payment Methods
- Pay Per Sale (PPS): This is the most common payment method in the affiliate marketing structure. The advertiser or merchant will pay the publisher or affiliate a certain percentage on the total amount of the consumer’s purchase. There is no particular time frame for this payment method. Some advertisers will pay you once the client’s trial period has expired or when the invoice is actually paid. In other words, the publisher will be compensated only when the consumer pays.
- Pay Per Lead (PPL): PPL is slightly more complex than PPS or PPC. The Pay Per Lead programs are based on the conversion of leads. As an affiliate, you will need to persuade your audience or traffic to visit the advertiser’s website and complete a desired action. This action could be filling out a contact form, subscribing to the newsletter, signing up for a service trial, or downloading a brochure, etc.
- Pay Per Click (PPC): If you have never heard of PPS or PPL, you may have heard about PPC or Pay Per Click. The PPC method is very famous and broadly used not only for affiliate marketing. The PPC focuses on inviting the publishers to redirect their audience to their website or platform. According to the number of clicks, their validity, and potentially the time consumers have stayed on the advertiser’s page, the affiliate will be paid accordingly.
6. How to Get Started with Affiliate Marketing?
Getting started with affiliate marketing is a straightforward, simple process that doesn’t need to cause you a headache! You can get started and begin earning money right away with most affiliate platforms.
Setting Up the Affiliate Website
As an affiliate, you’ll need a website that you can use to display advertisements from the different advertisers that your network will include. You can choose to either create a dedicated affiliate website or adapt your existing website to accommodate the advertisements. Any website can include affiliate advertisements, and you’ll usually see them in a few common areas:
- Along the side of the website (sidebar)
- At the top of the web page (banner)
- Within the website text (affiliate links)
Joining an Affiliate Network
After getting your website in place, you should consider joining an affiliate network. Affiliate networks provide great opportunities to both advertisers and publishers alike by allowing them to connect and communicate easily. They’re a great starting point to grow your network and find new businesses to work with. The process for joining an affiliate network depends on the platform you choose, but it’s usually very straightforward. Typically you’ll need to create your profile, indicate the type of advertisements you want to show, and your desired commission rates. Now you can begin reaching out to advertisers and begin setting up mutually beneficial partnerships!
Implementing the Advertisements
So you’re set up on an affiliate network, you’ve contacted a few advertisers, and you’re ready to start publishing. Before placing the advertisements on your website, you have to decide on the adverts that you want to use. The advertiser will, in most cases, have a catalogue of content that you can choose from. It’s useful to pick the type of content that’s most relevant to your website so that you don’t detract from the website too much. Once you have the adverts ready, you can implement them on your website. Make sure to check that all affiliate links are correctly added and working properly. Now all you have to do is wait for the clicks and revenue to come in!
7. Why Join UKHost4u Affiliate Marketing?
Get up and running with UKHost4u Web Hosting affiliate program in just minutes, with quick and simple sign-up on one of the biggest affiliate networks in the world. Enjoy unbeatable commission rates, exclusive promotions, and competitive bonuses.
Worldwide Presence
For 20 years, UKHost4u has provided affordable and powerful hosting solutions to businesses and individuals. With data centres in London and Sydney, your audience will surely find satisfaction and interest in our products and services.
Industry-Leading Commissions
In the UKHost4u affiliate program, take advantage of unbeatable commission rates on all sales made when referring visitors through your website. Our standard commission rate is 30%, however, we offer higher commission rates for higher performing affiliates. The more sales you get, the more you earn from each sale! We will gladly offer you a 50% commission above 11 sales realised.
Strategic Growth
We provide unique strategies and designs to help you grow, increase your website’s visibility, and drive more sales. We want to build and nurture a trustful and profitable relationship with our affiliates. So we can save both time and money. Our web design team will gladly provide you for free all the designs and content you need to generate sales with your audience.
Powerful Tracking
Through our affiliate marketing platform AWIN, you will access a complete dashboard. You can view your earnings, track your performance and clicks, get paid, etc.
A Dedicated Team
You will have direct access to an affiliate expert who understands your business and your goals. UKHost4u will work with your team and our conversion rate experts to maximise your commissions and earnings per click. We provide 1-on-1 support through our ticket platform.
Promotion Made Easy
In your dashboard, you will have easy access to our pre-made text links, banners, and content. Promote UKHost4u anywhere on your site by simply inserting our affiliate links on your pages.
8. The Most Common Linking Methods
As a publisher, you will have a fair share of options when linking to the merchant’s website. We have gathered the most common and preferred methods here below. As an advertiser, you should provide your publishers with as many linking methods as possible. You can provide active, dynamic content to publisher websites, quickly and easily, and our system allows you to track every click and commission to your website.
Graphical Banner Links
Graphical banners are one of the most popular methods of linking to advertisers. They are small standard-sized images that advertise your website and any products on it. However, you will find that they represent the lower proportion of your click-through to your website. For this reason, we recommend that you create at least one of every different size and then offer your creative services to your publishers for custom-made banners and linking methods.
Static Marketing Tools
Often creating text that can be used by publishers to promote your website is useful, as links in text appear as part of the editorial of a website, rather than an advertisement. This makes visitors take notice of them more, and hence are more likely to click on the link and visit the advertiser’s website. With ‘Copy groups’ you can create information that can be used by publishers to send out amongst an email list they may run, or perhaps show a review of the advertiser’s website on their pages.
Email Newsletters
If you have a newsletter that you send to your existing customers, you should upload it there, so your publishers know about the latest developments for your business and can even forward that information to other people. Then you can directly put the HTML source code in the box in your account. You can also use this to store your email newsletters that you send to your own publishers so that new sign-ups have access to your history of information about your program.
Promotional Emails
Our best advertisers are often shopping sites that send newsletters as a matter of course with special offers and vouchers to their database of contacts. If you want them to promote you that way, you need to prepare a promotional email that they can use easily. Even if you make them in HTML and include pictures, you need to keep the total size under 100Kb. What should you put in it? A quick description of your website/business, featured products with pictures (best sellers, high margin, and unique products, etc.), special offers, vouchers, and discounts. How can you make it available to all your publishers? Upload them under Current Links / Static Marketing Tools / Promotional emails. It works like a text link, so you just need to paste your HTML code there. Don’t forget to link the images to the appropriate address on your site because we don’t host them as we do for banners. When and how often should you do it? On a monthly basis. When you launch a new product, special offers, organise a competition, with vouchers or coupons available.
Promotional Text
For instance, you could provide your publishers with testimonials, press articles, editorial, or any kind of advertorial. We recommend that you add at least two pieces of promotional text. One short description of only one sentence, and the other consisting of 3-4 sentences explaining what you offer to customers and why a customer should use your products or services – along with a ‘click here’ or ‘visit site’ link at the end. You need to ensure that at least one link is set up, for example:
htmlCopy code<a href="http://www.yoursite.com">Click Here</a>
The Publisher Window system will then add your publisher’s unique tracking code to this link when they get the code.
Dynamic Text Links
These are normal text links publishers can’t customise because you control the content. This is the ideal tool for you to advertise on your publisher’s site. Because once they have placed it on their site, you control the information displayed, you don’t need to ask your publisher to download a new version of the text link, you only need to update the link in your account. You control a small part of your publisher’s site!
Application Forms
These are ideal for advertisers paying per lead. Instead of waiting for the visitor to click on a link on the publisher’s site and then fill the form on your site, why don’t you directly provide the form to your publishers? That way, people will directly fill the form on the publisher’s site. Publishers love that kind of link because they don’t lose the traffic by sending it somewhere else.
Competitions
Use these to advertise the competitions you organise for your visitors. This can also be a form that your publishers can host on their website so that their visitors pass the information directly to you.
Deep Linking
It is possible to link not only straight to an advertiser’s website but also deep link directly to any product, special offer, or service on the site. This can get much better results as the visitor to the site has no need to navigate the advertiser’s site to find the product they are after once they have arrived at the advertiser’s homepage. This tends to be much more effective than just plain linking to the index of a site.
9. Some Guidelines for Publishers
- Host all images on your site and reference them with full URLs within your code.
- Don’t include <html>, <head>, and <body> tags as publishers will already have these in place within their pages they include your code on.
- If using JavaScript, preferably include the script inline within the code. Or if this is not possible, reference external .js files hosted on your server.
- Ensure that the form method is set to #get as opposed to #post.
- Ensure the ‘action’ parameter is set to the destination URL within your code. E.g. action=”http://www.yoursite.com/index.htm”
- If you wish to use style sheets, preferably include the stylesheet inline within the code or reference a file hosted on your server.
10. Affiliate Marketing Jargon
Affiliate ID (or Publisher ID)
The Affiliate ID is a unique number that identifies the publisher on the network. It is used within all tracking links so that the system knows which publisher to assign a sale to. It also tracks any banner impressions as well as clicks referred from the publisher’s website.
Affiliate Marketing Program
A type of revenue-sharing programme where a publisher receives a commission for generating a lead or sale for an advertiser online.
Affiliate Networks or Performance Marketing Networks
A network acts as an intermediary between publishers and advertisers. It provides the tracking technology, account management tools, and support required to run performance marketing programs and campaigns.
Banners
Banner is the term for an online graphic advertisement. You can find all our banners in our advertiser account in the section “My Creatives”.
Commission
Commission is the term for the money paid to a publisher for providing leads or sales on an advertiser’s publisher program. You can see our commission rates in our advertiser account in the section “Documents”.
Commission Tiers
Commission tiers can be established to reward publishers with increased commission for achieving greater amounts of volume. This can be based on the quantity of sales or the amount of revenue.
Find here our tiers:
Number Of Yearly Sales | Commission Level (%)
0-5 Sales | 30% Commission
6-10 Sales | 40% Commission
11+ Sales | 50% Commission
Commission Groups
Commissions can be divided into groups in order to reward different amounts for different items purchased.
For example, UKHost4u sells a variety of products which have varying levels of margin. We have established separate commission groups for web hosting, free web hosting, SSL certificates, dedicated servers, VPS, etc.
Conversion
The number of sales divided by the number of clicks. This figure represents the percentage of people who go on to purchase after clicking on a publisher’s link.
CPA
CPA stands for “Cost Per Acquisition”. This is the amount that the advertiser is willing to pay for an acquisition/lead. The cost per acquisition may be set as a percentage or fixed value and is also a metric used to monitor performance and set targets to.
CPC
Cost per click (CPC) is one of the online payment models by which advertisers pay for each click-through made on their advertisement. Prices typically range from 2 pence to over 50 pence per click-through. This is an ideal method of payment for advertisers who need to guarantee they only pay for those viewers of the banner that click on it and visit a page on their site.
CPM
Cost per thousand (CPM) is one of the online payment models by which advertisers pay for every 1000 impressions of their advertisement. Prices typically range from £1 to over £50 per thousand impressions. This is an ideal method of payment for advertisers who want to guarantee only the number of people who see their banner. The “M” in CPM is from the Roman numeral for 1000. The Roman numeral M was derived from the Latin word “mille” meaning “thousand”.
Domain Name
A unique name that identifies an internet site. Every domain name consists of one top or high-level and one or more lower-level designators. Top-level domains are either generic such as .com, .org or geographic as .co.uk, .fr).
Our domain name is ukhost4u.com
EPC or Earnings Per Click
The average earnings per click is one of the calculations publishers will look at when considering promoting an advertiser. It is perhaps most important for PPC publishers who need to assure that their EPC is greater than the cost per click paid to the search engine.
EPC is calculated by dividing the total publisher commission within a certain timeframe by the number of clicks that were generated.
For example, Affiliate Y made £1,250 in commission for July and achieved 1,600 clicks. EPC = £1,250/1,600 = £0.78
So the EPC is 78 pence per click.
HTML
HyperText Mark-up Language (HTML) is a computer programming language in which most web pages are constructed. It contains the instructions for how a website should appear to a visitor.
HTTP
The format most commonly used to transfer documents on the World Wide Web.
IP Address
Internet Protocol address assigned to each computer on the network so that its location and activities can be distinguished from other computers.
Landing Page
The specific web page that a visitor reaches after clicking a link.
Lead
A lead is information that may be used later to provide a sale later on. This is normally a request for a quote, the ordering of a brochure, or the completion of a questionnaire.
Linking Code
This is the code that a publisher uses to link to an advertiser’s website.
Links
A link is any form of getting the visitor to visit an advertiser’s website. This is normally in the form of a graphical banner or text link.
Manual Commissions
A manual commission is money paid to a publisher, which for whatever reason did not go through the normal validation procedure. Manual commissions can be used to fix errors in payments or give commissions to publishers for offline sales.
Merchant/Advertisers
An advertiser is a website that rewards publishers for placing links to the advertiser on their own website. Advertisers place ads and links to their products and services on other websites (publishers) through AWIN, for example, and pay those publishers a commission for the resulting leads or sales.
Online Fraud
This is a general term for any scams that are run over the internet. Spyware is a type of online fraud as is “phishing” which is a technique used to collect sensitive information illegally from a user’s PC such as passwords and credit card details.
Order Reference
This is the unique reference used to track sales made on our website.
PPC
PPC stands for Pay Per Click which is a payment model used mainly by search engines and price comparison sites.
If advertisers wish to bid on specific keywords, they select a list with each of the search engines. This means that if a user searches for one of the specified keywords, they will appear within the “sponsored listings” search results.
If the user then clicks on the advert or “sponsored result,” the advertisers will be charged a cost per click. The price of the advert will vary depending on how much the advertiser was willing to pay, the position they are trying to achieve, and for Google, the quality score.
Product Feed
A product feed is a data file of all of an advertiser’s products from their website. It contains a variety of fields such as the product ID, name, RRP, price, link to the offer page, image URL, specifications…
A feed can be downloaded in a .csv or .xml format depending on which type the publisher prefers. Typically these feeds are used by price comparison sites or publishers wishing to list all of an advertiser’s deals.
Sale
A sale is any purchase made on our website.
Tags
An HTML command, embedded in the text of an HTML document, that describes the document’s logical structure and behaviour and determines how the file is displayed in browsers. These tags send the request for an ad to the ad servers.
Tracking Tag
A tracking tag is the piece of code which sits on the advertiser’s website to enable us to report within the system when a sale has occurred. Various fields of information are captured by the tracking tag, including total sale value, commission group codes, and voucher code (if used).
Tracking Period
The tracking period is the length of time that the software tracks a clickthrough from a publisher’s website. Any sales made during this period will appear as commissions on our advertiser control panel.
Tracking URL
URLs that are redirected through an ad server to enable click-throughs in a message to be counted.
Traffic
Traffic to a website is essentially a measure of the number of visitors a website has during a set period. Website traffic can be increased through things like publisher marketing and search engine optimisation.
Transaction
A transaction is any entry on the system that results in a pending, declined, or accepted commission. This is any lead or sale, whether duplicate or not.
Unique Users
Unique individuals or browser which has either accessed a site or which has served unique content. They are identified by user registration or cookies.
URL
Uniform Resource Locator (URL) is the Internet “address” of a website or web page on the World Wide Web. For example, our site URL is https://www.ukhost4u.com. A browser requires this information in its location box in order to load a web page.
Validating Commissions
Validating commissions is the process advertisers use to ensure that only valid commissions are paid to publishers. This manual validation ensures greater control over the payment process.
Validation Period
The amount of time taken for a pending sale to be validated. A short validation period is a sign of a strong advertiser programme.
Visitor
Simply someone viewing the website, normally from an advertisement, search, or directly entering the URL.
Join UKHost4u Affiliate Marketing Program
Join today our affiliate program here and start earning money easily through professional affiliate tracking and ultra-competitive commission rates. Feel free to ask all your questions on our ticket platform or directly on our website using our Live Chat.
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