In the United States, 80% of online stores use affiliate marketing to increase sales. The largest online store — Amazon — has been running its affiliate program for over a quarter of a century! The potential of affiliate marketing continues to grow along with the development of online tools, social media, and various communication platforms.
The value of the e-commerce market in Poland is growing by several percent year over year. In 2022, it will exceed PLN 100 billion, and according to forecasts, this value will double over the next ten years. As a result, more and more e-commerce business owners decide each year to join an affiliate network and expand their advertising activities with affiliate marketing. It is worth joining them so as not to fall behind and miss out on cooperation with the best publishers.
An affiliate network is an intermediary between an advertiser and a publisher that provides the necessary technological infrastructure and enables cooperation within affiliate marketing. You could say that an affiliate network is a kind of virtual place online. It is where advertisers can launch their affiliate programs, and publishers can join them and promote the advertiser’s products on their online spaces.
Example:
The owner of an online women’s clothing store plans to launch an affiliate program to increase sales in their store. They decide to join an affiliate network because it provides the technological infrastructure necessary to run the program. By joining the affiliate network, the store owner gains access to publishers who are willing and able to work in the Cost Per Sale model.
The store owner, i.e. the advertiser, defines the terms for rewarding publishers when launching an affiliate program. This may be the commission rate for generated sales or a fixed rate for delivering a lead or another action.
After registering with the affiliate network, publishers gain access to hundreds of affiliate programs that they can join quickly and easily. The affiliate network also provides them with the affiliate tools needed to recommend products and earn money through affiliate marketing.
Affiliate marketing is a type of online marketing based on cooperation between advertisers and publishers. The advertiser pays the publisher only when the publisher delivers a result in the form of a sale of promoted products (Cost Per Sale) or other actions (Cost Per Lead, Cost Per Click). The history of affiliate marketing dates back to 1994. The idea of commission-based sales was used by the founder of one of the first American online stores — PC Flowers. Two years later, Jeff Bezos launched an affiliate program at Amazon.
The main task of an affiliate network is to track traffic and transactions generated by publishers for advertisers. In addition, the affiliate network collects data on the basis of which it provides detailed statistics and calculates appropriate remuneration for publishers. It mediates the flow of information and advertising materials between affiliate partners, and also enables the optimization of activities of the involved parties.
An affiliate network significantly streamlines the implementation of affiliate activities and supports cooperation. Advertisers gain access to a large database of publishers, and publishers to advertisers. Both share a common goal — to increase profits by boosting sales.
As we have already mentioned, an affiliate network provides a space for cooperation between advertisers and publishers. For those who are unsure whether they are advertisers or publishers, we explain who is who in the affiliate system.
An advertiser in affiliate marketing is any online seller who promotes their products or services with the help of virtual sellers — affiliate publishers. They settle with them only for delivered results, such as:
A publisher in affiliate marketing is a user registered in an affiliate network who has online advertising space where they can recommend the advertiser’s products or services. A publisher can be any blogger, YouTuber, influencer, social media user, owner of thematic websites and online portals, discount and cashback platform, mailing database owner, or SEO specialist.
When talking about the people involved in affiliate marketing, we cannot forget the last but no less important link in affiliate marketing. This is the user, meaning the person who visits the advertiser’s website through the publisher’s recommendation and makes a purchase.
The greatest advantage of using affiliate marketing is the performance-based billing model. What does this mean for the advertiser? Above all, it means they pay only for results, without the risk of incurring costs for ineffective ads. Among the most popular forms of cooperation are Cost Per Sale (CPS) and Cost Per Lead (CPL).
Cost Per Sale (CPS) is the billing model most commonly used in the e-commerce industry. The advertiser pays a commission to the publisher if the publisher has generated a sale in the advertiser’s store. This is a favorable situation for both parties. The advertiser incurs costs only for advertising that led to a sale. The publisher earns money if they successfully convince the user to purchase the advertiser’s products. This task is easier if the publisher precisely matches the recommended products to the content they publish. This strategy translates into high conversions and, consequently, higher earnings.
Example 1.
The owner of an online store selling footwear wants to increase sales of their products. Therefore, they register with an affiliate network as an advertiser and launch an affiliate program. Kasia runs a YouTube channel where she recommends fashionable outfits. She decides to monetize her activities, so she joins the affiliate network as a publisher. She finds the affiliate program of the previously mentioned footwear store and sends a request to join the program. After the request is accepted, Kasia downloads affiliate links to products from the store and places them in her video content.
When a user watching Kasia’s video goes to the advertiser’s website through an affiliate link and makes a purchase, Kasia receives the commission specified in the terms of the affiliate program. The store owner is satisfied with the increased sales, and Kasia earns a commission on the sale of the products she recommended.
Example 2.
The terms of the affiliate program for a store selling clothes for children and babies set a sales commission of 10%. Dominika runs a parenting blog, so she joined this affiliate program and began recommending clothes from this store in her blog posts. The blog’s readers showed considerable interest and, within a week, made purchases totaling PLN 8,000. As a result, the blogger earned PLN 800 in 7 days.
Cost Per Lead involves paying the publisher for delivering an action specified in the program terms, i.e. generating so-called sales leads. This billing model is most often used when promoting courses, mortgage loans, bank accounts, or building an email database.
Example:
According to the terms of bank X’s affiliate program, the publisher will receive PLN 100 for each correctly completed and submitted contact form regarding a mortgage loan. Marcin, a financial podcaster, joined this affiliate program and prepared a ranking of mortgage loans. In the episode description, he included links to the analyzed banks and to the form of bank X. His listeners listened to the podcast, and 15 of them filled out the form, allowing the podcaster to earn PLN 1,500.
A sales lead is the data of a person or company left on a dedicated page. It enables further contact and the presentation of a sales offer.
Cost Per Sale and Cost Per Lead are the basic models used in the affiliate system. In addition to them, other hybrid solutions are also used, in which CPS, CPL, and CPC (Cost Per Click) models can be combined in various ways. An affiliate network has tools that make it possible to differentiate rates for selected products or reward the best publishers with so-called premium rates. In this way, the advertiser optimizes costs because they assign a lower commission to products with a low margin, while at the same time rewarding more generously the publishers who are most engaged and whose effectiveness is the most valuable.
From the advertiser’s perspective, launching an affiliate program in an affiliate network is not complicated in any way. The network provides full software, and the advertiser receives complete guidelines on the process of launching the program. It also provides a functional admin panel, which allows the advertiser to analyze, optimize, and develop cooperation with publishers.
3 steps to launching an affiliate program:
- Signing an agreement with an affiliate network.
- Defining the terms of the affiliate program (including commission rates for publishers).
- Implementing tracking code on your website.
After completing these three simple steps, the advertiser gains full access to the admin panel. This is where the advertiser manages affiliate programs and settles accounts with publishers. The advertiser panel also enables the approval of commissions and publishers’ requests to join, as well as inviting those with whom the advertiser would like to establish cooperation. Detailed statistics on traffic and transactions generated by publishers are available in the panel.
Registering as an advertiser in an affiliate network also provides access to a database of several thousand publishers. Each of them is registered in the affiliate network and knows exactly how to cooperate in performance-based models.
Running an affiliate program is possible without establishing cooperation with an affiliate network. Joining one is not necessary, but it brings many benefits. The owner of an online store who decides to launch an affiliate program independently faces many challenges. First of all, they must handle the technical aspects of launching the program. Then they must independently find publishers, invite them to cooperate, and also contact and settle accounts individually with each one.
The above activities are significantly streamlined and accelerated by cooperation with an affiliate network. In addition to faster development and lower costs of running an affiliate program, registering with webeAds brings many other benefits.
Registering with an affiliate network means gaining access to a database of several thousand publishers. Publishers know exactly how to cooperate in the CPS model and, when they consider the program terms attractive, they express their willingness to promote products. At the same time, the advertiser can independently invite selected publishers to the program.
Effective cooperation and sales growth are easier to achieve thanks to a range of affiliate tools available to publishers registered in the affiliate network. Access to them is completely free, and using them is simple and does not require any special skills or knowledge. Affiliate links are the most commonly used tool and, at the same time, the one offering the most possibilities. Publishers also have access to product widgets, XML files, banner rotators, and discount codes.
Collective settlement with publishers is a major advantage of launching an affiliate program in an affiliate network. Thanks to this, the advertiser does not have to settle accounts with each publisher individually. The affiliate network handles the distribution of funds immediately after the advertiser pays the collective invoice.
WebeAds is a platform for advertisers who decide to launch and run an affiliate program independently. For those who need help with affiliate activities, it is recommended to use the basic version of cooperation with webePartners, in which the program launch process is carried out with the help of our account manager. In addition, the advertiser’s affiliate program is supported by affiliate managers, who take care of building the publisher network and developing the program.
The registration process in the webePartners affiliate network takes publishers about 30 seconds. Registration gives publishers access to many free features and tools.
An affiliate network gives the publisher access to hundreds of affiliate programs in one place. The publisher can send requests to join any number of programs and choose those whose subject matter matches their online activity. Access to many offers at the same time makes it easy to compare the offers and program terms provided by advertisers registered in the affiliate network.
Effective affiliate cooperation is made possible by tools such as affiliate links, product widgets, XML files, banner rotators, and discount codes. Thanks to them, publishers can promote the advertiser’s products on their platforms. These tools also serve another role – they enable the tracking of traffic and transactions generated by the publisher. This data allows the affiliate network to provide detailed statistics that make it easier to optimize advertising activities.
Publishers can establish cooperation with any number of advertisers without any unnecessary formalities! Publishers do not have to sign any cooperation agreements. Joining a program only requires registration in the affiliate network and acceptance of the affiliate program terms. What is more, publishers have complete freedom as to which product they advertise, to whom, and in what way. They can use any affiliate tools for this and do not have to meet any performance thresholds. They can also end the cooperation at any time without giving a reason.
An affiliate program is not a sprint, but rather a marathon that lasts for months, and sometimes even years. That is why publishers have time to calmly test their activities until they find the ones that bring them the highest commissions. There are no limits when it comes to the number of advertisers a publisher cooperates with or the affiliate programs they have joined. A long time horizon also makes it possible to build good relationships and effective communication, which has a positive impact on cooperation between advertisers and publishers.
