The Anatomy of Affiliate Network in India[Video]

 The digital revolution in India has brought several ways of making money online. One such trending way of making money is affiliate marketing. 

Source: smallbiztrends

It might surprise you, but 81% of brands rely on affiliate marketing as of 2020. That is an enormous figure that you simply can’t ignore! Once upon a time, email marketing was the king of digital marketing, but with this new revolution, affiliate marketing generates just as much as email marketing, if not more.

Email marketing comes with its drawbacks. When was the last time you checked your emails from companies? Most people direct the Zomato emails to their spam boxes!

To be honest, very few emails from a company’s email marketing list catch the eye of the customer. Pair it with affiliate marketing, and that’s a whole other story!

Even if you are new to digital marketing, you must have come across this term. Companies need affiliate marketers.  We’ve all heard about affiliate marketing, but what is an affiliate network?

 

What is an affiliate network?

We know that affiliate marketing is the process by which a blogger can earn commissions from eCommerce sites by promoting available products in their blogs, and compelling readers to purchase these products by clicking a link.

Source: zacjohnson.com

At its core, there are three types of people involved; The publisher, the advertiser (or promoter), and the buyer. For example, Amazon is the publisher, you are the promoter, and your readers are the potential buyers.

Let’s imagine the eCommerce industry as a typical marketplace from which you can buy your daily groceries. You might be thinking of cooking biryani. For that, you’ll need mirchi(chillies), aloo(potatoes), spices and rice.

What if the vendor who sells aloo and mirchi, the store that sells spices and another store that sells rice are all side by side, in their own little network?

The aloo and mirchi, spices, and rice are all compatible products. The vendor that sold you the aloo will recommend you to purchase rice from the store nearby. The sellers involved in a network look after each other and offer complementary or compatible products.

An affiliate network is a group of associated companies that offer compatible or complementary products and will often pass leads to each other.

But how can the spices vendor be sure that the customers he gets are because of vegetable or rice vendors? There needs to be someone who is checking each vendor and tracking each customer. This is where an affiliate network comes into picture.

We can apply the same analogy to the online world. Brands will come together and partner with other online channels (affiliate marketers) for the promotion of their products and services, which gets done through link sharing, and these online channels will be responsible for driving web traffic. However, both the merchants of these brands and the affiliate marketers need some sort of tracking service, which is why we require the presence of an affiliate network.

In the online world, an affiliate network consists of brands that team up with third-party online sales channels to promote their goods and services. These affiliate networks typically work through a system of link sharing. Members share links to other members’ products and a small commission for sales or web traffic is generated by their content when sales are made.

Read my article about how to make money off your website using Amazon Affiliate Marketing.

What makes a company choose to work with an affiliate network?

Let’s go back to our biryani example. If the spices vendor is left on his own, then he would have to go to every gully trying to sell his spices. However, if he teamed up with the vegetable vendor and rice vendor, then someone like you who is looking for biryani ingredients is bound to land in at least one of these stores. If you go to the rice store first, then the rice seller would recommend the spices vendor in his team. If you went to the spices guy first, then he would recommend the rice and vegetable vendors. Either way, it is a win-win situation.

Read my blog article on How to do Affiliate Marketing in India.

We can notice two features in the partnering of our spices vendor with other vendors:

1. It is cost effective; almost free.
2. It reduces individual efforts.

What if the rice vendor wants a commission from the spices vendor for each customer that comes to buy spices from him because of the rice vendor’s recommendation?

We face the following issues:

1. Should the spices vendor pay the rice vendor from his total earnings, or from his savings, or a certain amount from what each customer has given? How should the rice vendor be paid?
2. How can the spices vendor be sure that a customer came to him because of the rice vendor? How can the spices vendor and rice vendor track their customers?

Merchants and affiliates will have these questions:

How does an online company track transactions from the click on an affiliate’s website, generate individual reports for affiliates, process payments for affiliates, etc?

This is when a company requires an affiliate network.

Upon reading the above paragraphs, we have to answer the following questions on behalf of merchants:

1. How will I track customers?
2. How will I pay affiliates?

Further, on behalf of affiliates, we need to answer:

1.  Who will guarantee that I get paid for every consumer I drive towards the merchant?
2.  How can I keep track and report my progress?

Want a sure-shot way of earning an income through Amazon’s affiliate marketing program? Look no further than this video:

How does an online affiliate network function?

Things like tracking, payment processing, refund processing and reporting will be handled entirely by the affiliate network. However, there’s a catch: Networks will take some percent of the commission you have earned as an affiliate marketer as their commission.

Source: Digital Vidya

A few Important Terms:

You need to choose a program that employs a network that is known for the aspects that you want to promote.

CPA: Cost per Action

If you are an affiliate marketer employed in a program that will pay you a commission when a reader completes some sort of action, then you receive a commission according to “Cost per Action.”

The actions desired can include filling out a survey, registering for an event, or even downloading something as desired by the merchant.

For example, if Flipkart gives its affiliates a specific commission when a user installs the Flipkart app through the link, then that would be a Cost per Action, where establishing the app is the desired action the merchant, that is, Flipkart, wants.

CPI or PPD: Cost per Install or Pay Per Download

The Internet has a wide range of eBooks, softwares, stock photos and much more. This is when you receive some money when someone on the Internet downloads content (which is not free).

For example, when you buy a stock photo and download it through a link that an affiliate posted, the money will go to the owner of the image through an affiliate network.

CPS: Cost per Sale

This is where an affiliate marketer like yourself receives a commission when a purchase is made through your link. This is the basis upon which affiliate marketing programs like Amazon, Flipkart and Myntra work on.

It works like this: An affiliate has a blog about, let’s say, easy Indian recipes for bachelors. Suppose the blog mentions how the latest model of a roti maker is a must-have for busy bachelors. It just so happens that this roti maker is available on Amazon! The link to purchasing the product is in the blog itself. If the user clicks on the affiliate’s link andbuys it, then the affiliate receives a commission. 

CPC: Cost per Click

If you have a website and choose to include advertisements in order to monetize your website, you need to count the number of times a reader clicks on an ad. These are what ads with clickbait titles aim for.  Every time a reader views your website and clicks on the advertisement, you can bill the advertiser. 

Private networks are known for specific payment actions. It is crucial to choose a system that caters to your needs, whether you require CPI,CPA,CPS, or CPC.

E-commerce sites like Amazon India and Flipkart mostly engage in Cost per Action and Cost per Sale. When you receive a commission from Flipkart after a user installs the Flipkart app, it is under Cost per Action. If you receive a commission after a user purchases a product that your website has promoted, then you receive a commission under Cost per Sale.

Why does an affiliate need to know about all this?

“Being interested in food but not food production is absurd”.

Your job as a digital marketer is to identify which of the above your monetization falls under. The you need to choose a network that is known for what you need.

Not just that, knowing about the functioning of affiliate networks will give you an edge over other affiliates who do not know about the anatomy of affiliate networks in India.

Read my article on best affiliate marketing websites in India.

What does an affiliate network offer to both merchants and affiliates?

For the merchant,

1. Tracking: How do you know whether or not a user bought something from that specific link? You need a network that provides you a service that tracks a user and the link they click on. Tracking is usually done with the help of cookies, which have a certain lifespan. These cookies will manifest in the user’s system and check if they have bought something because of your affiliate’s link.
2. Payment processing: It is hard for you as a merchant, especially if you are a huge company, to individually check if an affiliate deserves a commission and pay them their commission. An affiliate network takes care of the hassle of paying members, following their track history.
3. CPA, CPS, CPI offers: You as a merchant might have many programs for which an affiliate can earn a commission. For example, Amazon India offers a commission to members both for promoting and successfully making a sale and if a user registers for an Amazon Prime account. The first one is CPS (Cost per Sale) and the second one is CPA (Cost per Action). An affiliate network will organize various offers, making the merchant’s task more manageable.

For the affiliate,

1. Reports: A well-rounded report will give info about how many users have clicked on a link they posted, how many added a particular product in their shopping cart, and how many of those people have purchased the product. Such reports will show affiliates what they need to work more on and encourage them to do better.
2. Payment: Since an affiliate receives a commission from the merchant through the network, the promptness a system offers is a benefit to members. With the help of a network, getting paid is much more prompt and more accessible with an affiliate network.

Tip: Check out this video for tips to succeed in E-commerce businesses.

An affiliate network can be imagined as a third party, or in technical terms, an outsourcing company to the merchant. It is something that the entire affiliate system cannot exist without, another reason why you should know all you can about it.

What are some of the best affiliate networks in India?

With the onset of the digital revolution, many affiliate marketers are earning handsomely in India. Here are some of the top affiliate networks in India.

vCommission

Established in 2008, vCommission is a well-known name in the Indian affiliate market. The best part: it offers services for all of the abov- discussed terms, be it CPA, CPI, CPS or CPC. It has worked with big names, like Amazon and Domino’s, so there is no doubt about how reliable the network is. Reviews about vCommission also lauded their prompt payments directly to the affiliate’s bank account.

Reviews about vCommission’s performance are positive, mainly about payment procedures and the reports generated.

According to vCommission’s official website,

“vCommission is India’s Leading Affiliate Network delivering performance on web & mobile to top Indian brands through a growing network of 18,000 affiliates.”

Cuelinks

Another network reputed amongst affiliates, Cuelinks too deserves its name in the list of the top affiliate networks of India. A blessing for bloggers, Cuelinks has even introduced a WordPress plugin. Cuelinks allows you to monetize your content automatically by identifying SEO keywords in your content and adding affiliate links within your content. Among other aspects, reviews state that their reports and payment procedures are top-notch, so Cuelinks is a network to consider.

The Cuelinks official website boasts more than 1000 campaigns, more than 20,000 publishers, and more than 10 million clicks per month.

Komli

Another Indian affiliate network with numerous advertisers and campaigns, Komli too like vCommission has an incredible number of CPA, CPI, CPS and CPC offers. Komli also employs social media advertising solutions, showing how much they care about their clients.

One drawback that reviews have mentioned is that Komli requires clients to send invoices every month.

According to Komli’s official website, Komli Engage works with over 500 advertisers across 4,000 campaigns, and has more than 7 years of experience.

Admitad India

Launched in India in the year 2015, Admitad India is known primarily for its Cost per Action affiliate programs. They employ a large number of advertisers and have a vast network of well-known publishers. Compared to other networks, the payment process is quicker, and money falls in your account in a little over a week. Indian users can further participate in global campaigns, widening their customer base.

Reviews suggest that their innovative tools which offer publishers an analytical approach are what make Admitad India such a great network. Big companies in India like Bewakoof, Emirates and Decathlon work with Admitad India.

Check out Admitad India’s official website for more info about the company which has more than 6,56,600 publishers.

Clickbank

Started in 1998, Clickbank is one of the most experienced affiliate networks out there. Owing to its establishment a long time ago, far before other networks, Clickbank has worked with several big names. It is known for how it generates visibility to vendors, i.e., vendors are provided with a wide range of services such as quality reports to keep track of its affiliates.

Clickbank’s official website lists the various products it offers, and more about the history of Clickbank

Optimise

A big name when it comes to Cost per Action, as well as Cost per Sale, Optimise is a trustworthy brand in more than 30 countries. It is known for its world-class marketing solutions to publishers. Previously known as OMG India, it is a network to look out for.

Learn more about Optimise from its official website.

iCubesWire

Known for its prompt payment procedures, that is, somewhere between 30 to 60 days, and its numerous Cost per Action and Cost per Sale offers, iCubesWire is a blessing to several publishers as well as affiliates. Big names like Flipkart and Amazon too have availed the services of iCubesWire.

For its official website, click here.

Though we have covered the major players in the affiliate networking world, many other companies offer affiliate network services.

Read my article on Beginner’s guide to Amazon India affiliate program.

What have we learnt so far?

There has to be someone who is checking up on affiliates and keeping track of transactions, along with paying members and providing reports to merchants.

Affiliate networks like Admitad India even provide their publishers with analytical tools, which will, in turn, help them understand trends and further improve their business.

Some of the best affiliate marketing networks in India include vCommission, Cuelinks, Komli, Admitad India, and Clickbank, among others. They provide well-rounded reports to affiliates, are prompt in paying and have efficient tracking services.

Source: thefutureorganization.com

As with anything worth it, becoming successful with affiliate marketing requires one to work hard and be patient!

We’ll end this article with a quote by Orison Swett Marden, “Every man ultimately falls into the company with which he affiliates. And he is the strongest who draws men to himself, who creates the company; and this is through having a positive quality – courage and physical prowess.”

Bring power to the companies you work for! Research properly before delving into an affiliate program, find out what networks they pair with and choose what works for you the best!

And now I would like to hear from you! Which strategy from today’s post are you excited the most? Or maybe you have questions about something you read. Either way, let me know by leaving a comment below.

Also check out How to find best Affiliate Marketing websites to Earn Income and 15 guaranteed tips for Amazon associates in India.