The 2017 Holiday Intelligence Report recently published a study stating the fact that revenue from affiliate marketing from the 2016 holidays increased by 16% year-on-year. Furthermore, the UK market had the strongest year-on-year growth as well, increasing by 12%.

The affiliate marketing programme model, which is based on partnerships, is still evolving, and one of the key advancements of this industry is placing importance on the long-term value of a customer instead of just concentrating only on sales volume. Due to its unique model, there is valuable customer data to be unlocked within the affiliate marketing channel. To find out more about how affiliate marketing uses data to drive decisions, check out this helpful article.

Affiliate Marketing – A Scalable Business with Low Start-Up Costs

Affiliate marketing is essentially a middle man in online commerce. It is referral marketing with a commission. Most commission programs pay a flat rate or a certain percentage of the sale. Some are paid per action. One benefit of affiliate marketing is that you can earn money by marketing for more than one company at a time.

The affiliate marketing business is ideal for those who prefer minimal start-up costs. You don’t need to create your own product or services and there are no inventory costs. All you need to do is to set up a website and sign up for an affiliate program. All you need to pay for are website hosting and your site domain. New affiliate marketers should not rush the process. When you are starting your business, it is good to start with a small daily budget and continuously improve the content and the campaign over time. There are proven ways that a small business can scale to profitability. If you start generating passive income and you start being successful, you can hire additional people. However, your overhead will still stay low because there are no overhead costs such as office space and utilities.

Strategies to Make your Affiliate Marketing Business More Profitable

It is a highly scalable business, but amidst innumerable websites in the World Wide Web, scaling an affiliate marketing website requires employing specific strategies.

First of all, in order to further understand what an affiliate goes through, it is important to know the four main roles involved in affiliate marketing. The four main roles are Publisher, Merchant, Network, and Consumer. The Publisher is the affiliate marketer, who is responsible for developing a platform to sell products, services, or information. The next role is the Merchant, where the products, services, and information will be coming from. A Merchant that is relevant to your target audience is part of a larger Network of companies. The Network is a larger group of affiliate marketers that you can join. Affiliate marketers build content targeted towards Consumers. Consumers should find value in your content, which should be compelling enough in order to generate a sale. Here is an article that offers a more in-depth explanation of each of these four affiliate marketing roles.

There are specific strategies that could be used in order to become a successful affiliate marketer. One thing that you could do is to niche down your target audience as much as possible. If your content and audience are more focused, it will be much easier to promote. For instance, if you plan to launch into the lucrative UK online gaming affiliation market, you could niche it down further into betting sites or bingo sites.

Profitable Affiliate Marketing Categories

Most affiliate marketing categories or niches have numerous buyers. If done in the right way, most products can be very profitable. However, there are several categories that are extremely profitable. You can never go wrong with these affiliate marketing niches because they are proven to be always profitable. In fact, they are sometimes called evergreen markets.

• Hobby and Activities Niches

Hobby niches are very profitable as long as you target passionate customers who spend a lot of money on their interests. This is a fact that even psychologists agree on: when a hobby or activity makes someone happy, they would gladly spend for equipment, holidays, tools, and related services over and over again.

• Health and Wellness Niches

A massive amount of people worldwide are willing to spend a lot of money on their health. Popular health and wellness niches include Paleo diet, Diabetic recipes, Vegan recipes, fitness, and supplements.

• Wealth and Money Niches

Many people want to be wealthy just as much as they want to be healthy. Wealth websites cover internet marketing, employment, options trading, multi-level marketing, casino, betting, and bingo. One very popular affiliate marketing program involving wealth and money are sites reviewing and giving feedback on popular UK online gaming sites.