This article is partially adapted from Charles Ngo’s e-book “AFFCelerator_Ultimate Guide” and supplemented with my own experience of nearly four years in the industry, providing detailed answers to several major questions frequently raised by beginners. I hope it can help you gain a more comprehensive understanding of the industry. To be honest, the content of this book may not be considered very substantial for seasoned mediabuyers. However, in terms of industry mindset and professional attitude, it is quite instructive for newcomers to the field. It’s beneficial to read, so I suggest you take some time to read this well-known work in the industry.
1、What is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliates are like people selling kitchen knives. Decades ago, salesmen would go door-to-door selling products in their own neighborhood, much like Amway did twenty years ago. This was the precursor to affiliate marketing, or what we could call “Affiliate 1.0”. A kitchen knife is sold for 100 yuan, with a production cost of 30 yuan, and the affiliate earns a commission of 20 yuan for each knife sold. From this, we can derive the first question, which many newcomers are curious about——how long can this industry last. The answer is as long as there is a demand for promoting products in the world, there will always be affiliates, and there will always be Affiliate Marketing. When an affiliate sells a kitchen knife and earns a 20 yuan commission, it also brings a 50 yuan profit to the knife company, right? This kind of profit comes without any cost, and naturally, there is no risk. The premise for the knife company to pay a commission is that the affiliate has brought them a conversion. Imagine if you are the advertiser, wouldn’t you love this kind of promotion. With the popularization of the internet, affiliate marketing has evolved from 1.0 to 2.0. We no longer just sell kitchen knives to our neighbors but offer a variety of products to customers around the world.
Affiliate has the following three advantages:
(1) Income is not limited by time.
You can build a website and hang the product’s promo link on it, conducting marketing activities for your site’s visitors. You can also buy traffic for your offers on traffic sources, quickly and accurately pushing your offers to the target audience. Set a schedule for your advertising campaign, which can be while you are asleep at midnight; there’s no need to continuously monitor it.
(2) Marketing activities are not limited by geographical area.
Affiliates can use the internet to break through regional restrictions and promote products worldwide. This is actually quite impressive. Some say it’s the same as micro-commerce. Yes, but micro-commerce is overwhelming, and how many people still trust it? In recent years, domestic social media has rapidly gained prominence, and many marketing strategies applied abroad are like dropping a bombshell. Taking the “cut a deal” trick of Pinxi Pinxi to Africa would be a complete wipeout.
(3) You don’t have to work for just one company.
The relationship between advertisers and affiliates is not an employment relationship but a simple partnership. There is no contract. If you promote one company’s offer today and tomorrow you don’t want to because a competitor is offering a higher commission, you can switch. Take the competitor’s offer, keep all the running materials the same, and just change the link.
2、Can you engage in Affiliate Marketing without technical knowledge or coding skills?
It is now 2024, and you do not need to master programming skills to create a website or webpage. How simple is it? It’s like decorating your QQ space ten years ago, where you just drag and drop modules, write text, and insert images. So, does the affiliate marketing industry require technical skills? I’ve always believed that coding can help you go further in this field, but it’s just the icing on the cake. For affiliates, what determines whether you can make money is your operational ability, your marketing strategy, ad placement choices, and optimization methods. Programming and web design are not the most important aspects of this industry. Over the years in the field, I’ve come into contact with many programmers and designers, and I’ve found that a significant number of technically skilled people eventually get stuck in the technical bubble and can’t break out. For example, with a tracker, technically inclined people often like to look at its source code and understand the logic inside. However, a tracker is just a tool; knowing how to use it is enough.
3、How to view losses in advertising campaigns?
The correct mindset for engaging in affiliate marketing should not be that of an employee, but of an entrepreneur. However, compared to starting a business in real life, the risk of affiliate marketing is quite low. After all, the failure rate in the catering industry is as high as 60% (within three years). For beginners, it’s difficult to see results from mediabuying in the short term. Sometimes you might not even know why you’re incurring losses today, making you doubt your own sanity for spending money on this suffering. Let’s change our perspective on losses; they are simply the result of your assumptions about the offer not meeting expectations. But at least you’ve taken action, and being able to summarize the reasons for each failure is progress. If we use the “Law of Conservation of Failure” to analyze, you will succeed faster than others. Keep in mind that more than 90% of those who have been interested in this industry for a long time won’t even launch a single campaign. It doesn’t matter how many times you fail, just one success can change your life. Since it’s like starting a business, as long as it’s within your risk tolerance, you should always be clear about your goals and not stop until you achieve them.
