What is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing, in its simplest form, is when you promote another company’s products. And when someone makes a purchase through your referral, you earn a commission. As they say, “It’s like having your cake and eating it too!” To ensure that sales are attributed to the right person, merchants use a unique identifier known as an affiliate link.
The Magic of Cookies
When a visitor clicks that link from your blog, website, or any other platform, a cookie is stored on their device. Now, these aren’t the kind of cookies you dunk in milk, but they do two delightful things. First, they help merchants attribute the sale to the right person. Second, these cookies usually have an expiration date, meaning people don’t need to purchase the product immediately after clicking your link. In the wise words of cookie enthusiasts, “Good things come to those who wait!”
Example: The Gardening Hose Adventure
Let’s break it down with an example to make it crystal clear. Imagine a visitor lands on your blog post about gardening hoses and clicks on one of your affiliate links, which takes them to a product on Amazon. However, life happens—they need to pick up their kids from soccer practice. After the chaos of dinner and bedtime stories, they remember the gardening hose and return to Amazon.com in their browser. They find the product again and decide to purchase it, along with a game console controller. Thanks to the cookie stored on their device, and Amazon’s 24-hour cookie duration, you would still earn a commission for both the garden hose and the console controller, even though you weren’t promoting it. Talk about a win-win!
Now that we’ve covered the basics of what affiliate marketing is and how it works, get ready to discover what you’ll need to kickstart your affiliate marketing journey in our next lesson. Stay tuned!
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