Where can you advertise with affiliate marketing?

Affiliate marketing can be one of the most cost effective ways to promote your e-commerce website. But it also has high set up costs and a long build up period.

So where can you advertise using affiliate marketing?

The short answer is almost anywhere.

But affiliate marketing is fundamentally different to the way you would normally advertise, so it's not quite as simple as that.

With the standard advertising model, a host website offers to display adverts and sets the price. You, as the advertisor, search for these sites and decide which you will advertise on.

With affiliate marketing, you create the affiliate marketing campaign and set the commissions you are prepared to pay. The host websites then search for the websites offering affiliate campaigns and decide which to join.

The roles are completely reversed.

So you're not directly controlling where your adverts appear (or how they appear).

Your adverts are likely to appear on lots of blogging websites and these will usually be specialist or niche blogs related to your industry. The effectiveness of these can be very variable, but are usually quite poor.

Review websites are another place where your adverts are likely to appear if you are retailing standard branded products. Authors will review products, or compare product specifications, then they'll provide links to websites where you can buy these products (ie. Your website). Again, the effectiveness of these can be variable. Most are quite poor but a few exceptions can be quite lucrative.

There are lots of price comparison websites that may join your affiliate campaign. Even if your products are unique and can't be bought anywhere else, price comparison websites (where you will be the cheapest simply by virtue of being the only one selling those products) can be a great source of extra exposure.

Voucher code websites are particularly keen to join as many affiliate campaigns as possible, particularly if you have regular voucher codes to offer. Most voucher code websites will advertise your vouchers for free. But if you have an affiliate campaign, it makes financial sense for them to make the extra effort marketing your site.

Reward websites are becoming very popular lately where customers can earn cashback (like a supermarket reward card) by shopping at certain online retailers. These rewards are paid for out of the affiliate commissions that you pay on each sale. Some of these sites can be very effective and can become one of your top sources of sales.

Obviously, the key advantage of affiliate marketing is that it doesn't matter if your adverts appear on websites that produce poor or no results, because they won't cost you anything. With other advertising methods, poor results can still cost you a lot of money.

For help with advertising your e-commerce website effectively, with affiliate marketing or any other method, contact us today on 0845 269 9624.