Everything you have ever wanted to know about affiliate marketing in Nigeria

Affiliate marketing is a process whereby an affiliate (a person or organization officially attached to a larger body) earns a commission (token or percentage of money) for marketing another person’s or company’s products.

The affiliate searches for a product he/she wishes to market then promote the product and earns a piece of profit from each sale they make. The sales are tracked via links from one website to another.

Niel Partel defined affiliate marketing as the process of spreading product creation and product marketing across different parties, where each party receives a share of the revenue according to their contribution.

Reasons why affiliate marketing is a good option.

Affiliate marketing is one of the many branches of e-commerce. It is an online marketing strategy that is beneficial to both brands and affiliate marketers.

The e-commerce world is getting over-crowded over the years in Nigeria. For example, Nigeria has a population of over 190 million people, about 86,219, 965 are internet users in Nigeria.

According to recent research, 50.10% of the country’s population are Internet users. To break it down, there are 28,381,000 smartphone users.

Hence, on a futuristic analysis in some years to this period, smartphones will be used more and more widely for digital purchases.

The idea or permutation is that affiliate marketing will constitute more than 30% of e-commerce in Nigeria.

Therefore, in a situation where new businesses, online stores are developing every minute in Nigeria, it may be a smart move to carve a niche for oneself in the affiliate marketing world.

You have the power to pick your partners

One of the unique aspects of affiliate marketing is that you have the power to choose who to partner with.

For example:

I run a fashion blog where I discuss topics about the latest articles of clothing and designs in Nigeria. To help my fans get the latest brand or designers, I reached an affiliate agreement with an online fashion store.

This way, I could include some of their products into my blog with a call to action. By doing this, those who read my blog’s content could easily click on a particular product that catches their fancy.

This simple click takes them directly to the fashion store, where they make necessary transactions.

By doing this, I have used a single stone to catch two birds :

My readers could easily buy a product from my blog. By leading them to the affiliate website
I make some reasonable cash from every purchase that links from my website.

Targeted traffic

Just like the example highlighted above, all you need is working with affiliates that are in line with your niche. A fashion blog would work with affiliates in the fashion industry. For example, as a fashion blog, you do not waste your advertising budget attracting people who are looking for string instruments.

By working with affiliates that are in line with your industry, it makes the task easy for you. You tend to receive targeted sales from an already established audience.

A reliable investment return

A recent survey by AM Navigator shows that approximately 15% of all digital media industry’s revenue comes from affiliate marketing. Developed affiliate programs account for generating 15% to 30% of all advertiser’s online sales. Also, it is a fact that over 80% of brands worldwide use affiliate marketing.

80% of chief marketing officers admit affiliate marketing to be the least mastered area of digital marketing.

The reason for all these data is to show how relevant affiliate marketing is relevant in the digital marketing world. You are almost guaranteed an immediate return when you do your work well.

Access to the foreign market.

Affiliate marketing is one of the most efficient and effective ways to tap into the global marketplace. Being an affiliate to international based brands and networks,
It provides exposure to your brands and helps your brand have a genuine international exposure.

How does affiliate marketing work?

As previously explained, affiliate marketing works by spreading responsibilities across parties. It works on the efforts of different individuals to yield more efficient and effective results while all parties involved share returns.
The following are the different parties involved :

• Product manufacturers and suppliers
• The affiliate or advertiser
• The final consumer

Product manufacturers and suppliers (Merchant)

This is also the product producer, creator, and brand. This is the brand that produces the product or service to be marketed. It can be an entrepreneur, who brings the idea, product, or service into existence.

Such product could be tangible goods, or a particular service, like laundry service, catering e.t.c
Sometimes, the seller might not be actively involved in marketing. They may also be involved in advertising the product.

The affiliate or advertiser

Affiliates are also known as the advertisers or publishers, it could be an individual or a marketing company that markets seller’s products in an alluring and engaging way. In simple words, affiliates or advertisers promote a product with engaging content and platforms that persuade and convince final consumers to purchase a particular product.

If a consumer finally buys a product, a portion of the revenue is allocated to them.

The final consumer

The consumer is the final step of “affiliate marketing” without the consumer, there are no revenues to share between the product producer or manufacturers and the affiliates.

When a consumer buys a product, the seller and affiliate share the profit from the product purchased.
At times, the affiliates may choose to notify the consumer on the division of labor and the profits it gets from the product purchased by the consumer, other times, the affiliate might choose not to disclose. However, the transaction does not affect the consumer or the original price of the product. The consumer completes the purchase and gets his/her product as normal unaffected by the affiliate marketing structure which constitutes a major part.

How do affiliate marketers get paid?

The following are the ways through which affiliate marketers get paid.

• Pay per click
• Pay per lead
• Pay per sale

Pay per click :

Arguably, this is one of the easy ways to get paid as an affiliate marketer. This process pays by the affiliate ensuring that the consumer moves or clicks to the merchant’s site.
The basic idea is that the affiliate is paid based on the increase in web traffic.

Pay per lead :

This is quite a complex system, the affiliates get paid based on the conversion of leads to the merchant’s site. In this category of the payment system, the affiliate ensures to persuade the consumer to visit the merchant website and complete the desired action. E.g, subscribing to the newsletter, filling a contact form, e.t.c

Pay per sale:

In this system, the affiliates get paid a percentage of the profit generated from the sales of a product by the merchant site. In this program, the affiliates only get paid when the consumer purchases a product. In a nutshell, the affiliate must ensure that a product is purchased before being compensated.

The best affiliate marketing companies in Nigeria

• Jumia Affiliate Program
• Konga Affiliate Program
• Payporte Affiliate Program
• Web4Africa Affiliate Program
• Wakanow Affiliate Program
• Vconnect Affiliate Program
• Travelstart Affiliate Program
• Bet9ja Affiliate Program
• WhoGoHost Affiliate Program
• DealDey Affiliate Program
• Grammarly Affiliate Program
• Amazon Affiliate Program
• Shopify Affiliate Program
• AliExpress Affiliate Program

How to start affiliate marketing in Nigeria

The following are the step-by-step process to start affiliate marketing

1. Pick an area of interest:

The first step to take when starting affiliate marketing in Nigeria is picking a niche, or area of interest where you can focus on a specific audience. This will allow you to carve a niche for yourself in the industry you write about.

For instance, as a webmaster, you’ll have to carve out a niche to focus on. You could focus on a section of your industry. You could write about website development or other sections of your industry.

2. Begin to write on your area of interest:

this is the second stage to become a part of the affiliate marketing industry. Begin to write captivating articles that capture your audience’s minds. This will help you build a good audience that would be familiar with your blogs or articles.

3. Find affiliate programs:

the next stage is to find an affiliate program that’s within the niche you write about. At this stage, make sure you do not dull your readers by promoting products that do match your niche. Also, ensure you pick the best product in your niche to avoid boring interaction between you and your audience.

Promote affiliate marketing: this is the stage to promote the products you have used and make cool money. By doing this, you must ensure to drive traffic to products, get people to see and buy the products.

Note:  ensure to understand every rule of all the different affiliate marketing programs you have joined. This is very critical as every affiliate program has different rules and guidelines.

Here are some of the ways to promote affiliate marketing

• Paid traffic
• Email marketing
• Products reviews
• Placing affiliate marketing products on your blogs
• Search engine traffic.

4. Get paid cool cash

This is the juiciest stage of the entire process! As mentioned earlier, affiliate programs have different ways of paying their partners. Understand how the programs you have chosen pay. Most affiliate networks will pay you when you reach a stipulated threshold. There are different method of payment which includes, checks, Payphone, direct bank deposit, Paypal e.t.c

Affiliate marketing can be very tedious, however, the entire process is worth going through when you get paid your cool cash.