What does it mean to be an affiliate?
What does it mean to be an affiliate?
This is worth understanding, because it is not until you fully get this that you can start making money as an affiliate. Until you understand this, you are MISSING OUT on the money.
As an affiliate, what is your side of the bargain?
In essence the relationship between a merchant/affiliate-network and an affiliate is this …
- The merchant’s job is to provides the product/service, and the sales tools (sales channel, payment system, often some marketing tools) to be able to sell it.
- The affiliate’s job is to bring in targeted visitors that can potentially become paying customers.
So the affiliate’s job is the marketing to bring in the customer. It is up to the affiliate to do whatever it takes to bring in that customer. If that means building a separate website that attracts the customer, then that is what the affiliate does.
I get asked many times, if I can build someone’s site for them, or if I can get traffic to an affiliate’s site for them. My response is always with this question …
“If I build your site/do the marketing for you and bring in the customer, what would I be paying you for?”
Merchant-affiliate relationships are ALWAYS about value exchange.
You as an affiliate bring in customers and in return get paid commission.
A merchant gets customers buying his product/service (on which he obviously earns a percentage profit), and in return pays the affiliate for that.
= VALUE EXCHANGE.
Now as a caveat to this, it is in the merchant’s interest to do everything he can to HELP the affiliate to sell. 2U gives more tools and training to affiliates than any other I know of. We will continue to work hard to help YOU to make sales.
But remember - If we did all the work to get a customer, why would we pay an affiliate? Paying affiliates is always for something that the merchant has NOT done and the affiliate has, that brings VALUE to the merchant ie a customer.
So do not let that cloud the clarity of the relationship. As an affiliate, you want and need to be - it is your job to be - working on bringing in targetted customers, with the aim of getting them to buy the product/service. 2U, as your merchant, will continue to work hard to provide you with the best sales channel possible, to enable you to sell and to earn.
I hope this helps clarify things for you, so you can work to EARN MORE MONEY!