The Six Best Strategies for Affiliate Marketing in 2024

Edgar Suppes12/30/2023

How to successfully and safely run affiliate marketing in 2024

Table of contents
  1. What is affiliate marketing?
  2. You should know these six affiliate marketing strategies in 2024
  3. The essential tools and software for successful affiliate marketing
  4. Conclusion
Affiliate marketing remains one of the most popular ways to generate a continuous income online. This channel benefits greatly from the growth of e-commerce.
At Grailify too, we gave a lot of thought to monetising our project in the early stages in 2016, and finally settled on affiliate marketing.
In this article, I want to share our key strategies that have helped us to successfully run Grailify for over seven years and build our platform into one of the first ports of call for sneaker fans.

What is affiliate marketing?

The OMR glossary entry on affiliate marketing is very good for a short and crisp definition. A brief excerpt:
"Website operators or social media channel owners can use their reach to make money by setting links. They recommend products to their community. In the case of a purchase or even when a user clicks on the set affiliate link, they receive a commission."
Affiliate marketing is therefore a sub-area of online marketing and gives people the opportunity to promote products or services from other companies and be paid for it.

Recommended affiliate networks

On our comparison platform OMR Reviews you can find more recommended affiliate networks. We present over 60 solutions that are specifically tailored to the needs of affiliate marketing agencies, partner programs and companies. This affiliate network software offers comprehensive support in all aspects of affiliate marketing. Take this opportunity to compare the different software solutions, drawing on authentic and verified user reviews:

You should know these six affiliate marketing strategies in 2024

In affiliate marketing, companies (advertisers) work hand in hand with advertisers (publishers). This results in two different perspectives to consider.
Since we from Grailify have been successfully practicing affiliate marketing for over seven years now and maintain partnerships with over 100 different retailers and online shops, I feel qualified to view this post from affiliate publisher's point of view.
For this reason, I would like to go into more detail in this article about affiliate marketing strategies from the point of view of affiliates, or publishers.

Community is Key

Online business has countless advantages, but one major disadvantage: there is no walk-in customer that you can rely on. Bakeries or kiosks, for example, often have the advantage through clever site selection that they randomly get customers into their businesses.
In the depths and vastness of the internet, however, you depend on people becoming aware of you and ideally trust you in the long term.
In terms of TikTok, Twitch and Co., it is therefore imperative that you not only have customers, but fans of you or your brand.

Put authenticity above profit

This point ties in with the community aspect mentioned above. If you look a little closer at the currently most popular social media networks, like TikTok, Instagram or Twitch, you will quickly find that the most successful people or companies often have one thing in common: They are authentic and open.
Companies show the production sites of their products, explain individual steps of product development and generally give deep insights into their business. While successful influencers discuss very personal topics or even regularly disclose their advertising revenues.

Such brave entrepreneurs and personalities are rewarded with real fans. People who trust them.
If an affiliate manages to appear honest rather than accepting every x-believable advertising deal, short-term profit will be forfeited, but a very strong base of loyal fans will develop long-term.

Recognize trends early

Nothing lasts forever. This hackneyed phrase unfortunately applies nowhere else as strongly as on the internet. Developments in this area are so rapid that you can easily get lost if you are not right on the pulse of time.
We had to experience this with Grailify a few years ago.
In 2017, about one and a half years after the start of Grailify, we were able to grow our community on Facebook to over 200,000 users. The organic reach was considerable and we were able to continuously grow our Facebook community seemingly effortlessly through our content.
All that came to an end when Facebook decided at the end of 2017 to throttle the organic reach for companies. The "Facebook Apocalypse" caused reach to collapse. This trend continued into 2018, as OMR documented in a further article about Facebook and Instagram's algorithms.
Facebook Traffic Drops.png

As an affiliate, it is incredibly important to be aware of one thing: The community or reach you have built on a social network is not "yours". You can be denied access to the people from one day to the next.
That's why you should focus on making access to you and your content as easy as possible and distributing it across as many platforms as you can.

Remuneration is negotiable

As mentioned at the beginning, it's important not to accept every advertising deal, and not to promote products, services or companies you don't trust.
However, sometimes it's hard to promote a product or service that's actually very good but offers unattractive compensation.
We have found that the remuneration is by no means set in stone, but should rather be understood as a negotiation basis. In most cases, when we could provide good KPIs to the advertiser, the company was able to noticeably increase our commission.
Doubling of the commission is not unusual.
So if you're considering turning down partners because the offered commission doesn't look attractive to you, you should first get in touch with the company and start negotiations. You'll be surprised how often you get much better conditions.

Know your contact persons

By now, you've hopefully understood why it's so important to build a friendly and honest relationship with your community. It's also just as important to know the contact persons of the affiliate programs you're promoting to your community.
At the end of the day, there's a person taking care of dozens, perhaps even hundreds of different publishers.
If you have a partnership with this person, the affiliate partnership is also more solid and you may even benefit from exclusive advertising campaigns or commission increases.
Exchange in e.g. monthly calls about current developments, look at the performance of the past month together and talk openly about good and negative developments and the next steps. In this way, an anonymous collaboration between two companies becomes a personal business relationship.

Diversify your income

While Affiliate Marketing has many advantages you are ultimately still dependent on the success and development of an external company. If the company is doing badly, you will inevitably earn less. We have also often seen partner programs shut down.
Although we at Grailify are by and large advocates of this online marketing channel, we too diversify our income.
Spread your income, if possible, over multiple affiliate programs. Consider developing your own products or services or placing classic display advertisements.
There are a multitude of different possibilities. Even though this article is supposed to inform about affiliate marketing strategies, one of our strategies is to diversify our income.

The essential tools and software for successful affiliate marketing

Over the past few years, we have tested countless different tools and software. These are now indispensable for our daily work:
Later is a social media scheduling app that is also accessible via desktop. Originally developed for Instagram, you can now also schedule and publish posts for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and even TikTok via the platform. This allows us to effortlessly plan several days of social media content in one afternoon.
Hootsuite is a heavyweight in the field of social media. With over 16 million users, the platform is the most used social media management platform worldwide. The goal of Hootsuite is to manage "all" social media channels in one place. We mainly use Hootsuite for communicating with our community, reporting, and "boosting" social media posts with additional budget.
For creating new graphics or advertisements, we use Canva. This tool is unbeatably user-friendly.
Affiliate networks, like Webgains are the interface between advertiser and publisher. They provide the tracking technology, regulate the payouts and often also provide contact persons. Most companies that are interested in partner marketing are registered with at least one affiliate network.

Popular Affiliate Networks & Platforms

Conclusion

Even in 2024, affiliate marketing remains one of the most popular online marketing channels.
Numerous people and companies use affiliate marketing to generate their income. How sustainable and high the income ultimately is depends on the choice and implementation of the affiliate marketing strategies.
I hope I was able to give you a good insight into our mindset. Through the combination of the affiliate marketing strategies and tools shown above, we were able to build Grailify into what it is today.
Edgar Suppes

Edgar Suppes hat Marketing- und Kommunikationsmanagement studiert. Er ist Mitgründer der Sneaker Release Plattform Grailify. Die Plattform wurde 2016 gegründet und wird monatlich millionenfach von Sneaker Fans im deutschsprachigen Raum aufgesucht.

All Articles of Edgar Suppes

Software mentioned in the article

Product or service categories mentioned in the article

Social Media Suites
Social Media Suites are comprehensive software solutions designed to assist businesses, organizations, and marketing professionals in managing and optimizing their social media activities. They are aimed at users who need to simultaneously manage, monitor, and analyze various social media platforms, and are particularly useful for brands, agencies, and businesses of all sizes. These solutions are used in various areas. These include social media management, where they help plan, publish, and monitor content performance. In the area of community management, they support interaction with the community and response to queries. They also play a role in monitoring, where they enable tracking of brand mentions and relevant keywords to analyze market trends and customer opinions. Furthermore, they are helpful in the area of analytics and reporting, providing detailed insights into the performance of social media activities. To be considered in the Social Media Suites category, a solution should demonstrate the following features and characteristics: * Content management functions: Planning and publishing content across various platforms. * Community management tools: Options for interaction and communication with followers, including quick responses to queries and comments. * Monitoring and analysis functions: Monitoring of brand mentions, keywords and trends, as well as detailed analysis of user interactions, and campaign performance. * Reporting and data visualization: Creating clear reports and graphic representations for performance measurement and strategy adjustment. * Integration with other platforms and tools: The ability to connect the suite with other marketing and analysis tools, as well as CRM systems.
Social Media Planning
Social media planning tools help companies create, schedule, and publish posts for one or more social media platforms. Most social media planning tools also offer dashboards for analyzing key metrics.
Affiliate Networks
Affiliate networks are platforms where advertising companies (advertisers) can enter into partnerships with website operators (affiliates). The affiliates can integrate the advertising materials of the companies on their websites and only receive a commission when previously agreed services such as clicks, leads or sales are achieved. Advertisers increase their brand awareness and at the same time their sales through the use of affiliate marketing solutions. In the partner programs of the advertisers, website operators are provided with banners, links or logos, for example, which they can integrate on their website to guide users to the online shop of the advertisers or the respective product pages, and ideally to encourage a purchase. For this, affiliates receive a commission from the advertiser. In order to keep track of this, the steps of potential buyers are tracked - from the first click to the final purchase. This can be done via cookie tracking, postview tracking or even session tracking. Affiliate networks provide the technical requirements for affiliate marketing. This includes all steps from creating a partner program, networking the advertisers with the affiliates, to processing payments between the two parties. As a rule, advertisers have to pay commissions to affiliate networks. In order to be included in the Affiliate Networks category, a solution should have the following features and properties: * Tracking and Reporting: Precise and timely tracking of clicks, leads, and sales generated by affiliates, as well as detailed reports for a transparent performance evaluation. * Diverse advertising materials: A wide range of advertising materials (such as banners, text links, email templates), allowing publishers to effectively promote products. * Commission Management: Flexible and reliable systems for calculating and paying out commissions to affiliates. * Affiliate Relationship Management: Tools for maintaining and managing the relationships between advertisers and affiliates, including communication resources and support for campaign optimization. * User-friendly interface: An intuitive, easily accessible platform that is suitable for both beginners and experienced users.
Public Affiliate Networks
Public Affiliate Networks are a specific subgroup of affiliate networks that act as an interface between advertisers (merchants) and publishers (affiliates). The main difference to private affiliate networks lies in their public nature, which means they are accessible to a wide range of advertisers and affiliates. These networks aim to create an efficient and transparent environment for promoting products and services. Due to their public accessibility, merchants can advertise their products through a variety of affiliates, who in turn are compensated for each action performed (e.g., click, purchase, lead generation). The main target group for Public Affiliate Networks are businesses and advertisers on the one hand, and online publishers, bloggers and influencers on the other hand. Advertisers are looking for ways to promote their products or services and increase their reach, while affiliates want to generate income through product promotion. The areas of application for Public Affiliate Networks are wide-ranging and include online advertising, sales promotion, content marketing and influencer marketing. They are applicable in various industries such as retail, finance, travel, education and many others. The networks provide a platform where advertisers and affiliates can come together, negotiate contracts and track the performance of their campaigns. In order to be included in the Public Affiliate Networks category, a solution should have the following features and characteristics: * Transparent tracking and reporting tools: The ability to track and analyze the performance of affiliate campaigns in real time. * Comprehensive publisher database: Access to a wide and diverse selection of affiliates to ensure the best possible match between advertisers and publishers. * Automated commission systems: Automated systems for calculating and paying out commissions to affiliates. * User-friendly interface: An intuitive user interface that enables both parties to work efficiently and achieve their goals. * Support and training: Provision of support and training resources to maximize the success of affiliate marketing campaigns.

Related articles