In today’s post, I will show you how to make money from affiliate marketing and 5 best Indian affiliate networks to choose to start your money-making journey.
Let’s start.
Passive income excites everyone’s mind.
Out of many ways in which one can generate a passive source of income, affiliate marketing is the most popular and the most effective option.
If affiliate marketing keeps popping in your mind and you are interested to explore this profitable field, then you are in luck!
In this guide, I am going to teach you how to make money with affiliate marketing.
An Introduction to Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is an online arrangement where a retailer gives a commission to a website owner for the traffic, he diverts to the retailer virtual store or the product page.
The external website owner is rewarded through a previously agreed-upon commission, whereas the retailer is benefitted through driving more product sales.
It is a win-win situation for both the retailer and the affiliate marketer.
You need to be familiar with the below given 4 parties in the affiliate marketing process.
They are:
1) The Affiliates
The people or websites that are involved in the promotion of the product.
2) The Creators of the Product
The brand that is involved in the creation of the product.
3) The Affiliate Marketing Networks
The networks that act as an intermediary between the advertisers and the publishers.
4) Consumers
These are the people who end up buying products as a result of the affiliate marketing process.
Out of the 4 participating members mentioned here.
The affiliate marketing networks are optional.
However, the other 3 parties are the core members of affiliate marketing.
The Affiliates
The affiliates can be anyone; they can be an organization and can also be an individual.
Generally, the affiliates are content creators.
They create content in the form of blogs and videos.
They also create content in a particular niche.
Their content helps in the promotion of the products and also plays a role in driving sales of the product.
The promotion of the products can be done through various methods by them.
It can be through generating organic traffic with the help of SEO, creating an email list, or posting ads.
They gain a commission when a customer either completes a transaction or fills up a form for the purpose of lead generation.
The Merchants
The merchants are generally the product creators or advertisers.
The merchants are the ones who pay a commission to the affiliates when the affiliates help them in selling a product or service.
Like the affiliates, the merchants can also be anyone.
The merchants can be a big enterprise or can also be a solo entrepreneur.
The main common point between the two is that both of them regardless of their organization size is ready to pay up the affiliates a commission for helping them with their product sales.
Affiliate Networks
The affiliate networks work as an intermediary between the product creators and the affiliate.
Not all the merchant and affiliate relationships include an affiliate network.
However, some companies choose to include the affiliate networks as they provide an extra trust level.
When affiliate networks are involved in the merchant and affiliate relationship the cases of frauds are greatly reduced.
Some big organizations also choose to go with affiliate networks such as ShareASale and ClickBank because they do not have the required time and resources.
Big organizations are mostly busy with their core business areas.
As a result, they find it difficult to dedicate the required time and resources to manage affiliate payments and activities.
Some big brands may also go for employing multiple affiliates to promote their products.
The Affiliate Marketing Process
The process of affiliate marketing is action-based.
This means the affiliates are only going to get the commission if they are successful in encouraging the customers to take action.
This action can range from a click on a link, acquiring a customer’s personal information for lead generation or purchasing a product.
There are three major types of affiliate marketing commission model:
• PPC
PPC is also known as the Pay-Per-Click affiliate program.
Here the affiliate will get a commission based on the click he/she can achieve on a link.
In this type of affiliate method, the risk mainly lies on the shoulders of the product creator.
• PPS
The full form of PPS is Pay-Per-Sale.
This is the most common form of an affiliate model.
Here the affiliate gets paid after a sale takes place.
The risk in this situation lies mainly on the shoulders of the affiliate.
• PPL
PPL or Pay-Per-Lead is the affiliate model in which the affiliate gets paid based on the number of leads he/she is able to generate.
Leads can be in the form of any pre-purchase information or any form of submission.
In this case, the risk is equally distributed between the affiliate and the product creator.
Signing Up for an Affiliate Program
To start doing affiliate marketing, the first step is to sign up for an affiliate program, for example, the Amazon Associates.
Once you have completed the process of sign up you will receive a link with a unique ID.
From now on the link with the unique ID that you received is going to be a part of all your content that is created for promotional purposes.
After a customer clicks on your affiliate link, a cookie will be sent to their browser.
This cookie will attach itself to the customer’s browser to track their activity.
If an action is taken, such as the submission of a form, a click on the link, or product purchase, the information will be sent to the affiliate network or the merchant.
Then after monitoring this activity, the merchant will pay you a commission for that action.
The payout arrangement can range from being weekly or being monthly.
It all depends on the affiliate program you chose and the terms you agreed upon with the merchant while joining the affiliate program.
The Initial Steps of Affiliate Marketing
• Business Model
Affiliate marketing broadly has two kinds of business models.
a) Review Sites Model
In the review type of business model, your site will include reviews of products that you tried yourself.
By sharing the pros and cons of a product and service you basically help people in their decision-making process.
Here, along with your reviews, your site will also contain links to the merchant’s or brand’s website.
Review sites require fewer updates as compared to the resource sites.
b) Resource Sites Model
In this type of business model, affiliate marketers post informational posts like how-to articles.
These posts are meant to educate or provide useful information to people.
The affiliate link to the merchant’s websites is embedded in these posts.
They require a little bit more work than that of the review sites as they need to be frequently updated.
Fresh and quality content is a must for these sites if they want their readers to return and attract new ones.
Which type of affiliate business model you go for, is totally up to you.
It mainly depends on your interests and inclination.
• Have Your Own Website
To do affiliate marketing you obviously need your own website.
If you do not have one, then create it right away. You can also hire an expert from Fiverr.
You may choose to go with some platforms like WordPress or blogger to build a free website.
However, if you do wish to go for paid website services, you may again choose WordPress for its paid version.
Similarly, Bluehost and SiteGround are some other options to get an inexpensive website.
A website is not always necessary for affiliate marketing.
Sometimes you can also go for pay per click model of affiliate marketing.
Here you can make an ad for a product or service and post it on social media sites.
• Decide Your Niche
This is probably the most important part of starting your career as an affiliate marketer.
Your selected niche will decide what content your website will have and it also decides what type of products you can promote.
While choosing your niche you may decide to choose a field that you are expert in.
However, this is not always mandatory.
People can also go with niches that they want to learn more about.
In this way, both you and your audience learn something new.
Another great idea is to get other creators to publish their content on your website.
Here, your website acts as a platform for others.
This method is similar to the concept of talk shows.
• Select Products and Services to Promote
After you have set up your website, it is now time to find some products or services to promote on the website.
As mentioned in the previous section, the type of products and services revolves around your niche.
The chosen niche also decides the degree of hard work you have to put in.
Now, for beginners, we would recommend going with the likes of Commission Junction.
This company will need you to promote a diverse range of products.
Such companies give you time to be sure about your chosen niche.
Some marketers who can offer their audience a slightly different content like software and e-books can get the opportunity to work with companies such as Amazon and PayDotCom.
• Attracting More Traffic to the Affiliate Program
The more quality traffic you can attract the more money you can make from the affiliate program.
Therefore, ensuring a huge quantity of traffic inflow is important.
You can do this by regularly publishing quality content on your website.
Content that is engaging and entertaining is bound to attract visitors to your website.
Content can also be given for free to other websites that may, in turn, bring in more traffic to your website.
Try to practice viral marketing.
In the viral marketing method, people are encouraged to pass on information about a product or service to other people.
You can achieve this by using a compelling line at the end of your emails or newsletters.
5 Best Indian Affiliate Networks and Indian Programs
Many people have the desire to work with Indian affiliate networks but are generally clueless about which one is the best and the most trusted affiliate network.
Here I am enlisting some of the best and the most popular Indian affiliate networks.
Some of the offers that they provide are in the form of Cost per Action (CPA), Cost per Sale (CPS), Cost per Install (CPI) and others.
One of the advantages of choosing an Indian affiliate network or program is that the commission amount can be directly transferred to your bank account.
Further, one disadvantage of choosing the same is that the commission for Cost per Sale is usually paid after a period of 45-60 days.
You can find some of the reputed brands like Flipkart and Shaadi.com in these Indian affiliate networks mentioned below:
1. Komli
The Komli affiliate network came into existence in the year 2006.
They have been associated with 400 advertisers and 4000 campaigns.
Numerous CPS, CPA, and PPC offers are available on Komli.
It has an excellent record of helping its clients and has enabled thousands of people to reach their goals.
Komli is known to utilize a range of different social media advertising which includes using platforms like Facebook and Twitter.
The Komli affiliate network has worked its way to become the most popular Facebook premium inventory reseller in Thailand and Phillippines.
They payout every 30-60 days.
However, you do need to send the invoice to Komli every month.
2. vCommission
vCommission is one of the top Indian affiliate networks.
It came into existence in the year 2008.
This affiliate network has been associated with some of the big names such as Flipkart, Amazon, eBay, P&G, Asian Paints, and others.
It has around 18000+ affiliates and provides numerous CPI, CPA, CPS, EPM, EPC CTR, and OSC offers.
If you are an Indian website owner or blogger looking to promote Indian products vCommision should be your first choice.
The payment method is also fairly simple, where you can either opt for Paypal or direct bank transfer.
vCommission pays once a month.
The threshold amount that you can draw from vCommission is $100 or Rs 6200.
3. Admitad India
Admitad was established in India in the year 2015.
Since then it has worked with thousands of advertising brands and boasts affiliates of more than 460000.
Cost per Action (CPA) affiliate programs are offered by Admitad India.
Admitad India is different than other Indian affiliate networks in the sense that it is the only Indian affiliate network that has its own in-house technological setup.
Its payment cycle is also short i.e. 7-10 days.
Advertisers working with Admitad India only need to pay when they are getting the results.
Again, publishers with Admitad India get the opportunity to score innovative products and global services for their promotional efforts.
Along with the opportunity to promote global campaigns, the publishers also get high conversion rates, great offers, and impressive advertiser deals with Admitad.
Admitad’s analytics tools and various statistics enable publishers to achieve their conversion targets.
Some of the well-known brands that Admitad India is working with are Flinto box, 1 mg, Emirates, Bewakoof, Decathlon, and others.
4. Cuelinks
Cuelinks works with some of the notable brands like Agoda, AirAsia, Amazon India, Airtel, BabyOye, Chumbak, Dominos, FabIndia, eBay India, Flipkart, and others.
Presently Cuelinks is working with around 600+ Merchants.
It is a great Indian affiliate network for any blogger or website owner who gets a lot of Indian traffic.
The major advantage of choosing the Cuelinks affiliate network is that it is absolutely easy to implement and use.
You will need hardly 10 minutes to set it up in your blog and then you need not worry about anything else as it will keep on doing its work automatically.
With Cuelinks you can expect to have complete content control.
This provides a good conversion rate and EPC.
You can also expect to get detailed knowledge about the clicks.
To start monetizing your blog with Cuelinks you need to set up the JavaScript code for Cuelinks.
Some facts about Cuelinks are:
- Revenue sharing model is 75% publisher and 25% Cuelinks.
- 500 rupees is the minimum payout amount.
Cuelinks automatically identifies keywords published on your blog and connects it with a product page with an affiliate link.
The process is even simpler for WordPress users.
Cuelinks has come up with a plugin for WordPress users.
Affiliate marketers can easily install the plugin and start earning from it.
5. iCubesWire
ICubesWire deals with some of the top brands like Zovi, Myntra, Bagittoday, Fashionara, Foodpanda, Bigbite, and RetailMart, etc.
They pay out after 30 to 60 days.
This is one of the fastest-growing Indian affiliate networks.
Numerous CPA and CPS offers are provided by this Bangalore based company.
You can get a host of different coupons, offers, and deep linking with iCubesWire.
They boast a figure of 15000 publishers who are working with brands like Dominos, Amazon, Flipkart, Qatar Airways, Go Air, and others.
Here affiliate marketers can get 5% referral commission along with 10% more in extra bonus commission.
Always go for quality and not quantity with affiliate marketing.
Don’t think that having many affiliates means more money.
The key is to find the right affiliates that deliver good results.
Therefore, do not run after more numbers, just concentrate on having a few quality affiliates.
In reality, concentrating more on a few affiliates is more rewarding.
Key Tips to Get Best Results from Your Affiliate Networks
• Working Round the Clock
When you enter this field patience should be your best friend.
You will not start earning money from the first day itself.
To convert your affiliate marketing program into a revenue-generating source you need to put in a lot of hard work.
The initial stages of affiliate marketing will demand a lot of your time and effort, so be ready for that.
Also, note that this field has cut-throat competition and many players are big marketing companies.
• Understand the Process
If you are a total beginner, it is advisable to take your time to learn about how affiliate marketing works.
Getting a clear idea about the process of affiliate marketing will enable you to make informed decisions after entering this field.
Let us give you a brief description of how it all works.
After you are done setting up your blog or website, the next step is to embed your unique affiliate links on your website.
Embedding an affiliate link on your website in no way affects customers or changes the links of the products.
When a customer clicks on your affiliate link, he/she is taken to the affiliate partner’s website.
Here, the customer may or may not purchase the displayed products.
You will earn a certain amount (commission) only when a customer buys something after clicking on your affiliate link in a given timeframe.
Therefore, earning in such cases depends on the commission percentage, the prices of the products, and the number of sales taking place through your affiliate link.
• Pay Attention to the Demographics
Based upon the niche you choose and the products you promote you will have particular demography of customers.
Try to know some details about your potential customer’s demography such as age, location, gender, interests, likes, dislikes, etc.
People usually give more attention to things that they feel connected to.
Knowing about your potential customers is a great weapon.
This knowledge can be used to craft your post content and the ad copy.
The Bottom-Line
Affiliate marketing is a content creator’s favorite source of passive income.
It has the ability to bestow people with the financial freedom and flexibility they seek.
However, you should not expect to earn huge amounts of money quickly through the affiliate marketing method.
It will take endless sleepless nights and passion to come to that stage.
If generating passive income through affiliate marketing is your goal, you have to deliver quality content that converts.
Once you start doing that, the day will not be that far away when you get to sip a mojito on the beach and still make money.
Our advice is to just be a little patient and keep on doing the hard work.
Good Luck!