Affiliate link – what is it and how to use it?
The affiliate link allows you to advertise products on your pages in a creative and a not so obvious way.
When you begin your adventure with affiliation, pay special attention to this link, because it is the most used tool in affiliate networks.
Technically speaking
An affiliate link (also known as a deep link) is simply a unique URL that you create in the affiliate network system and then you place it on your platform to direct users to the right place. This may be an advertiser’s site, a specific product or category.
The bare affiliate link looks like this: http://webep1.com/See/To?a=26504&mp=286&r=L3phcmFiaWFqLW5hLWJsb2d1Lw2 and its abbreviated version is: https://goo.gl/BnA8pb. Of course, putting it on the site in this form would be completely ineffective, because it would only reject potential clients. Fortunately, the affiliate link can be easily attached to a selected piece of text or graphic, which will encourage your users to shop.
Remember that you will receive a commission for each finalized transaction, which came from the affiliate link!
Where can you use the affiliate link?
Everywhere! This is its biggest advantage. It does not matter if you have a website, a blog, a fanpage on Facebook, an Instagram profile or a Youtube channel. Affiliate links are universal and can be used in any on-line activity. Therefore, you do not have to limit yourself to just one platform. Click here to find out more about that.
How to use the affiliate links?
This is definitely the most important question. We can use an affiliate link freely, but keep in mind that the potential user does not like omnipresent advertisements on the web and very often ignores them. The more camouflaged they are, the easier it is to get someone to click on them. Often times, publishers try to creatively veil an affiliate link, so that their users can not guess, it is just an advertisement. Let’s look at an example:
Kate and Monica are fashion bloggers who have recently joined the affiliate network. Kate often places affiliate links at the very beginning of the text, in order to get her readers to shop in a given store, but the results are not very satisfying. In fact, it results in her readers often ignoring her entries containing insistent ads. A completely different strategy was adopted by Monica, who links the deep links in a non-obtrusive way, which does not suggest to the readers that this is a direct advertisement. Usually, she describes a product, inserts a link to it, but does not encourage a reader to buy it. Her results are much better and she generates more transactions than Kate.
Therefore, before we place an affiliate link, it is a good idea to think about how we want to recommend a given store to our users. Often a creative, less intrusive approach, is much more effective than placing an advertising message straight out.
In conclusion, let’s summarize the biggest advantages of the affiliate link:
– it is universal, we can use it on every platform
– it is easy to use, just one click is enough to generate it
– it is safe, we can be sure that it will count all our transactions
– it is unobtrusive (unlike, for example, an advertising banner), we can use it for indirect promotion of products
– it is the easiest tools to earn in affiliate networks!
