Affiliate Marketing Networks Are Not Affiliate Friendly

Affiliate is missing advertising fee due to poor affiliate marketing networks strategies

If affiliate marketing networks answer the following questions they are affiliate friendly otherwise they are not. I tries to query google the following questions.

1. how much revenue amazon is earning through affiliates
2. how much income amazon is making through affiliates
3. how much income companies are earning through affiliates

There is no answer. No display what so ever with the above search. My idea is to know how much affiliates are contributing to the companies to promote their products are services? I do not why there is no statistics on this subject? But I got the clue. Working in the reverse way may offer me the answer. How much affiliate make through affiliate programs. If I calculate on a percentage commission he got through affiliate promotion, I vaguely get the revenue he or she earned to the company.

Investopedia says in an article on affiliates contribution to companies as under

The affiliate marketing industry is growing steadily. Statista reported that spending on affiliate marketing in the U.S. was predicted to reach $8.2 billion by 2022. That’s up considerably from $5.4 billion in 2017 and $1.6 billion in 2010.

Another study from VigLink offers a closer look at just how much income affiliate marketers are making. According to the survey, 9% of publishers produced more than $50,000 in affiliate income in 2016. The majority of merchants—65%—said they were making between 5% and 20% of their annual revenue from affiliate marketing.

65% of merchants said they were making between 5% and 20% of their annual revenue from affiliate marketing.

In a survey by STM forum reveals the following fact.

The above paragraph is give a synopsis on ” how much the brands are maling through affiliate contribution. Very huge. Why not they ease the work of small affiliates without wasting their time only building link.s> thay have more important ask to do? Promoting the link pages to visitors. This in view the I feel the brands or affiliate networks have to do much more than just giving a link page. They have to finish the tedious work of joining individual programs for all their locales and create individual links or if joining the individual programs is a must for th technical reasons, offer a ‘one link concept to all local networks. Amazon did a bit towards one link. But they did not extend to their entire network. I do not know why?

Amazon top affiliates:

This duo the Paula and Wanda are top notch amazon affiliates since 2003. This duo started their career as amazon affiliate program plan developers through their ebook. They use different tools to reduce their work of promoting the affiliate posts and use different plugins to do so. They have reached a stage now where they are helping others to follow their success path. They have ASMR Academy, ASMR HQ, ProBlogHQ.

In warrior forum Gaz Cooper, a member wrote that Wanda duo displayed the largest Amazon Check for over $30,000 and he says it is real, not some screenshot that can be made in 5 minutes in photoshop. Imagine how much revenue they have earned to the main company.

From stocking the selves for few dollars, Jim Harmer, started a small blog https://improvephotography.com,. Later he started many websites and blogs with the same interest for affiliate marketing. They are

• PontoonGuide.com
• IncomeSchool.com with my life-long friend Ricky Kesler.
• EmboraPets.com: 100,000 pageviews per year
• CamperReport.com: earns $10,000 per month in passive income
• OutdoorTroop.com: 100,000 pageviews per year
• DirtBikePlanet.com: earns around  $2,000 per month.
• and more.They are experts in driving traffic quickly. Source:https://incomeschool.com/about-jim-harmer/

Types of Affiliates

In these reports above the affiliates are divided into the following categories.

• Those who started their affiliate carrier are loosing money in terms of advertisements.
• First level or basic affiliates are earning $300/day;
• Experienced affiliates earn from $300/day up to $3,000/day;
• Top level earn above $3,000/day;
• Affiliate gurus earn around $10,000/day.

Affiliate marketers contribution to affiliate networks – Proof above

1. How are they helping international affiliates? Affiliates are bloggers and website owners. Their main job is developing informative content to the visitors. They become affiliate program to earn extra income. They are helping the companies to promote the products for a small commission. For example if the affiliate paid 1% commission for product that costs $100. The company gets more profit and saving on advertisements and promotions. Affiliate takes all the hard work.
2. Why should affiliate join so many locale programs for the same network? Why not they make one login and they then redirect the visitors to their destinations?
3. How they can protect the affiliate from affiliate link hacking and save their commissions?

Affiliate programs are a way to earn passive income through advertisement fee. It sounds good. But when it comes to creating links for different geo locations, affiliates face real problem. Affiliate networks are spread around countries and affiliate will not know to which country the affiliate link snippet on search result reaches. Affiliate takes all trouble in developing the content to satisfy search engines to rank the article. Affiliate takes all care and crafts his topic to give unique information to the visitor. Brings the visitor to his webpage where he promotes the affiliate links. The problem starts now.

The visitor clicks an affiliate link and reaches the promotor’s webpage. The visitor purchases a product and affiliate expects a commission for his hard work. But when he goes to his earning report he finds no affiliate earning recorded. He tries to find out the reason. Surprisingly he finds one or all of the the following facts

• The visitor has purchased the product from a different network location for which the affiliate is not a member.
• The visitor reached the network page through another country affiliate network. Though the affiliate is a member to that country’s network, the link through which the visitor reached the page is not same.
• The cookie time expires. The visitor takes a decision to buy the product later but not on the time he reaches the promotor’s page.

Let me explain the above situations in detail with some affiliate networks. Amazon affiliate program is a famous and popular affiliate network for earning passive income for a blogger. Any blogger loves to join this network and promote millions of products under amazon shopping malls. Blogger joins this network. Blogger goes all the way to allocate large budgets for amazon affiliate link page promotions. They create exclusive amazon stores for various products. He spends time and money to so many application and plugin developers to develop the product stores and promotion needs. Those developers do these services to promote amazon stores for a price. Thousand of developers are making huge revenues through these development jobs. But poor affiliate is mission his small commission after all the effort.. Why is this happening.

Amazon affiliate earning conditions:

Amazon has their affiliate programs in 12 countries – US, UK, Germany, France, Italy, Canada, Japan, Spain, India, Brazil, Mexico, China, and Australia. If an affiliate wants to earn advertising fee from all these countries (international earning) they have to join all locate programs and build links. Promote all links. Develop separate amazon pages for each locale and promote them through geo targeting. It may be possible for paid advertisements. For generic ranking of an amazon page informative content helps the affiliate and nothing else. Informative content that competes other affiliate articles will get back links and traffic. The visitors will be from different countries and there is confusion among visitors which affiliate link to click his desired destination. Visitors will not have patience to check their country link and reach the ultimate page. They are even not interested to promote an affiliate. Their goal is to buy the product. They will go straight to the amazon site without following the affiliate link. They may also click some link which will lead to different destination. Ultimately affiliate looses his revenue. Amazon made it easy with one link concept. It is great.

But this one link concept will work only for US, United Kingdom, Canada, Italy, France, Spain, Germany, and Japan. How about other countries like India, Brazil, Mexico, China and Australia. Are not affiliates loosing these potential earnings? What is the solution for this dead lock from Amazon?

Same story repeats for many other affiliates programs and networks. Hosting affiliate programs like bluehost, host ripples have two different programs for different countries. One for USA and other for India.

Solution for this issue:

As an affiliate I can suggest a solution. This solution helps affiliates to create more useful content and concentrate on promotion methods, instead of wasting time on affiliate link building and dumping different links for the same company.

• Amazon affiliate program can extend their one link concept for all countries like India, Brazil, Mexico, China and Australia. Other affiliate companies also implement this one link concept.
• All affiliate networks offer same size banner promotion scripts. Once again amazon network does not have affiliate banners with 486×60 size which is available for US affiliate network. Same size banners will help affiliate to create rotating banners for his blog or website.

Affiliates are switching to other program ‘Drop Shipping’ – Why?

Affiliates are slowly switching to drop shipping programs because of the advantages they have over affiliate programs. Here under are the basic similarities and differences between the two.

Similarities:

• No inventory storing hassles nor shipping products.
• Good business models with less investment
• Earning commissions depends on moel promotion techniques High earning potentials i both models
• Easy to start and immediate results
• Skill requirement is same for both models. Promotion technique are same.
• Start up costs are low for both models

Differences

• Affiliates can not fix product prices while drop shippers can decide their own prices, This give huge margin of profits to drop shippers
• Affiliates do not have hold on the brands they are promoting where as dropshippers have their own brand. Drop shippers have their own asset.
• Affiliates can not retarget their audience because they send traffic to someone’s website. In drop shipping retargeting the visitors is easy and more efforts you put, the more yield you have.
• In drop shipping business, you can develop your own team of affiliates to promote your products
• In drop shipping you have your on stores, brand and products.

To sum up the points:

• Affiliate networks have to do lot more to publishers or associates or affiliates to release their time to create content.
• They have to join and login for all there local networks and takes the steps to redirect the visitors to appropriate product or service page
• If it is not possible to offer one link concept that Amazon did.
• Amazon has to extend their one link concept to all other locale networks including India.
• Better security platform for affiliates from link hacking treats.
• Amazon has to raise their recently changed commission rates to encourage affiliates and not loosing them for different business like drop shipping.

Useful Resources:

• https://www.oberlo.com/blog/dropshipping-vs-affiliate-marketing
• https://www.viglink.com/blog/2017/05/15/state-affiliate-marketing-survey/
• https://www.statista.com/statistics/693438/affiliate-marketing-spending/
• https://bloggerspassion.com/online-marketing-gurus/
• https://www.bloggingcage.com/internet-marketing-gurus/
• https://affko.com/blog/top-5-affiliate-marketing-gurus-on-youtube-learn-from-proven-marketers/