Affiliate Marketing: Benefits and Challenges and Success Stories

Affiliate Marketing
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Affiliate Marketing
Overview
Affiliate marketing refers to an online-marketing approach for promoting products and services. According to Olbrich et al. (2019), people with affiliate marketing programs earn a commission when they promote the goods and services of other businesses. The people with affiliate marketing programs are referred to as affiliates, and businesses pay them a commission when they redirect potential customers to the business website. Affiliate marketing is a form of digital advertising to promote a business's products or services. The commission earned by an affiliate is the affiliate marketing fee. According to Wright (2019), the affiliate marketing fee is only earned after a customer purchases the product or services from the advertising business. The affiliate marketing fee is only applicable if a potential customer from the affiliate’s network becomes an actual customer for the advertising business (Quesenberry, 2021; Mangio & Domenico, 2022). The purchase does not have to be immediate. The customer can decide to buy a product day or a month after being referred to the product by the affiliate. Once the purchase is made, the affiliate receives the commission.
The affiliate can receive a commission regardless of when the buyer purchases because of browser cookies. Wright (2019) reveals that when a buyer purchases a product based on a referral made by the affiliate, the browser cookie utilized on the affiliate network stays on the browser. The cookie can remain on the browser for up to 30 days. Nowadays, most affiliates choose lifetime browser cookies, meaning they can get paid the marketing fees even when the buyer purchases the products after 30 days. The browser cookies ensure that a purchase can be traced to a unique affiliate link as evidence that the affiliate's referral influenced the buyer's decision to buy the product (Gupta & Aggarwal, 2019).
Benefits and Challenges associated with Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing presents benefits and challenges that are important to understand when considering affiliate marketing fees as a source of revenue. The main advantage of affiliate marketing fee is that it allows individuals to run their own business (Wright, 2019). As such, it is a good activity for anyone looking to join entrepreneurship and earn income. Additionally, since affiliate marketing is online-based, it allows the entrepreneur to work from anywhere, anytime (Wright, 2019). It gives entrepreneurs the freedom to choose their location, work schedules, priorities, and goals while earning a living. Finally, affiliate marketing can become a good source of passive income. Over time, the initial input in affiliate marketing can develop into a profitable source of passive income (Wright, 2019). It can provide liberation.
However, earning an affiliate marketing fee requires much work in developing a website or social media sites to attract enough traffic (Wright, 2019). Also, earning an affiliate marketing fee requires creativity and expertise o as to build and engage a large audience. Affiliate marketers must utilize methods such as content creatio...