Affiliate marketing is not necessarily right for everyone, whether you are the business hosting the affiliate program or the person participating in an affiliate program. Before deciding to participate in affiliate marketing, ask yourself these questions:
Does it make sense?
How much effort are you willing to put into it?
Am I comfortable promoting someone else’s product or service?
Let’s talk about each of these questions and how they relate to affiliate marketing.
Does it Make Sense?
When searching for an affiliate program to be a part of, your first thought needs to be, does this make sense? Is it going to make sense for you to promote that product/service, or will it feel like a random pitch to your audience? It will be very difficult to be successful if you pick an affiliate program that does not work for you.
Example: If you are a bakery, it makes sense for you to have an affiliate program with a baking utensils company. It does NOT make sense for you to be pitching SAAS programs to your audience – they are there because they like baked goods.
The best way to pick a program that will work well for you and your small business? Join programs for products/services that you actually use! This way you can share your personal experience with your audience.
Effort
How much effort are you willing to put into it? Affiliate marketing does involve effort, but the amount of effort depends on: you, the program, and what is necessary to be successful.
The more time you spend promoting the product/service, the more money you are likely to make – but do you have that sort of time? Make sure you are clear with yourself about the amount of time and resources you are willing to spend on affiliate marketing.
The program itself will likely have ground rules that they want you to follow when it comes to promoting their product/service. Make sure you read all of the contracts and texts given to you by the company so you fully understand what they are expecting of you.
Promoting Someone Else
When you participate in affiliate marketing, you are taking time and resources (things that are scarce for small business owners) to talk about and promote someone else’s product/service. Before you decide to join an affiliate program, really think about if that is something you want to do. There is no right or wrong answer, just whatever works best for you and your small business.
Again, we suggest you become affiliates for products/services that you personally use in your business. This way you have a connection with the product, you have personal experience, and you are much more willing to take the time to talk about it to your audience.
Here at The Seasoned Marketer, we use Flodesk to send out emails. We LOVE Flodesk and are here to share with our audience how this company can help small businesses with their email marketing – and THIS is why we joined their affiliate program. We were already going to spread the word about Flodesk to our audience, might as well become an affiliate.
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Feel free to share your thoughts with me, I can be reached at vivian@theseasonedmarketer.com!
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