"Australia is only on the cusp of embracing the whole affiliate sale network,” says Styling You editor Nikki Parkinson. Still a relatively unknown concept in Australia, bloggers are among those who believe affiliates are something both brands with online stores and publishers should be jumping on. It’s pretty much standard for every online store in every other part of the world, except Australia,” reveals The Plastic Diaries editor and online media consultant Kimberly Nissen. beautydirectory sat down with the directors of beauty e-commerce sites and influential Australian bloggers to discover what affiliates are and how they can help the whole industry.
What exactly is affiliate marketing?
Affiliate marketing
Affiliate marketing sees publishers (affiliates) displaying advertisements online through links, banner ads, leaderboards or MRECs that direct consumers to a company’s online store to help drive sales. The affiliate (publisher) receives a commission every time a consumer makes a purchase from an online store that they visited due to clicking on an affiliate link. Basically it’s a commission scheme to share referrals,” explains Nissen.
Affiliates can include everyone from content producers, bloggers, a social media page or business website. A blogger simply needs to include a link to products and services that they believe the audience is likely to purchase or wants to know about in their article, and if that traffic turns into a sale, the blogger makes money.
It’s the internet’s way of starting a rewards program like Woolies or Coles where you get instant cash back. You can encourage customers to recommend your business and get instant rewards,” says James Patten, director of online shopping site Ry.com.au.
Affiliate networks
To make things even easier, there are lots of affiliate networks out there that both the brand and blogger can sign up to. These networks bring together a multitude of brands in the one place so a blogger can simply choose which online store they would like to include in their post from the list available from their chosen network.
The networks also take care of payments. It changes from store to store, but affiliates tend to earn around 8 per cent of the sale from each beauty product sold. Online stores supply their network with the advertising artwork, so bloggers simply grab the html coding from their chosen store to incorporate the ad on their blog.
For me, because there are so many affiliate websites out there, I run through an affiliate network program,” says Nissen. For example, LinkShare is a program that runs hundreds and hundreds of affiliate networks. All I’m doing is signing up once to them, and then I can look through all the stores they represent and I can just add whatever stores are suitable to me.”
It is free for publishers to join affiliate networks. For brands wishing to join a network, many opt to pay a commission per sale although there are other payment options. Affiliate programs are a really good value-for-money type of online marketing, mainly because you really only pay for performance. You only pay for the sales you actually get,” says adore beauty founder Kate Morris. adorebeauty aims for around 10 per cent of traffic to the site to come from affiliate links.
How affiliates can help bloggers
Remuneration
The number one benefit for bloggers using affiliates is that they are a handy little revenue raiser. In a nutshell, it’s just another income source for bloggers or website owners,” says Parkinson. It’s another thing in the whole pie of making an income through your blog business. I treat it like a bonus. If there is something there and someone happens to click through – awesome, great. It’s an extra.”
While Parkinson receives most of her income from advertising, affiliates play an important part in keeping Nissen’s blog afloat. I do have ads on my site and that creates a bit of revenue, but without the affiliate stream, I wouldn’t be able to survive,” says Nissen. At the end of the day, yes I’m a blogger, but I’m a business woman as well and I still need to maintain my small business.”
Hair Romance editor Christina Butcher has only been using affiliates for a couple of months, so it is still a relatively small income earner for her. I do know from speaking to a few people at [affiliate network] rewardStyle that they do have some bloggers on their books, more fashion bloggers, that are earning commissions of $20,000 a month,” she reveals. Before your eyes start brimming with dollar signs, this is not the usual earnings for a beauty blogger - Nissen averages out around $100 a month from affiliate links, while Parkinson receives $34.20 a day.
Referring links
Affiliate links can help add value to your blog as you are directing readers to where they can actually purchase the product you are talking about. It’s a service for everybody,” says Morris. The blogger gets commission for showing their readers where to find the product, and the reader gets an easier job of it because all they have to do is click on the link and somebody has already gone and found the product for them.”
While it would be easy to get a little carried away with adding in affiliate links knowing that you’ll receive a percentage from every purchase the consumer makes, it’s a good idea to keep the links true to your blog. It’s all very well to give real estate to a particular brand or an online store, but if that’s not something where your readers would actually shop, then you’re not going to get click throughs and you’re not going to get sales off that,” says Parkinson. There’s no use putting something up there that doesn’t fit in because that’s going to stick out a mile.”
To ensure the integrity of their content, bloggers should first think of a topic and then look into whether there is a relevant affiliate. Beauty bloggers need to think about the content first and the bonus second, because it still has to be something you would have written about regardless of whether you were going to make money out of it,” says Parkinson. The editorial decisions are based on my content ideas, not what I could make out of it.”
For Butcher and Nissen, recommending products is part of the territory – so why not earn a commission from what they’re doing? I’m talking about products that people can buy online and generally want to – either way they’re going to do it and I may as well make my percentage of that,” says Nissen. Butcher agrees, adding, I recommend products on the site anyway, so I see it as just an extension of that word of mouth marketing. By using affiliate links, it’s a way that readers can support the site if they’re interested in buying the products that I’m talking about.”
How affiliates can help brands
Cost effective marketing
Affiliates are a great cost-effective way for online stores to help attract new customers. Morris explains why adore beauty was attracted to affiliate marketing: We’re an independent business, we don’t have a massive marketing budget to throw at magazine advertising every month. For us, we really focus strongly on cost per acquisition, and that’s something that you can really monitor and control with your affiliate network.”
While Ry.com.au invest in advertising across traditional print media and google ads, Patten likes the affiliate networks because you can clearly see how many sales you made and how much it cost you in advertising to make those sales. With traditional market advertising and particularly print media, you basically have to put your money up front and cross your fingers and there’s no way of reading how well a particular campaign went.”
On top of handing out a commission for each product sold, brands will also need to dedicate some resources to maintaining the affiliate program as new banners and advertising images will need to be supplied and updated.
New customers
Affiliate links and banners help drive new customers to your online store. We’re basically getting sales that we probably wouldn’t have had,” explains Patten. When a blogger adds a link to the online site, it is more likely to drum up business as the recommendation is coming from a source the readers trust. There’s nothing that works better than a true review!” laughs Patten. Morris agrees that, we would generally consider it a customer acquisition medium rather than a re-promote.”
Future
As online retail grows in Australia, affiliates are something brands should be looking into, especially if advertising budgets are tight. Parkinson says that as online businesses realise they require digital advertising budgets, they may see that affiliates are a way to get into that without a bigger expense.” Butcher believes Australian beauty bloggers would be sending a lot more links to Australian online stores if the brands offered affiliate programs. If they don’t want us going overseas, then they need to step up,” concludes Nissen.