Why Affiliate Marketing Works for Small Businesses

by Lindsey Winsemius - Posted 4 years ago

Traditional ways of advertising your business online, and offline, aren’t cutting it. Small businesses need to find different ways to connect with their audience.

It is no longer enough to put ads out there and hope your customers will find you. You need customer advocates that already interact with your audience to reach them and gain their trust.

How can you leverage the power of influencers on behalf of your business?

By using Affiliate Marketing.

Affiliate marketing has become an increasingly popular way for businesses to drive traffic and increase sales.

Last year, over 16 percent of all online orders were generated through affiliate marketing.

If you’re considering using Affiliate Marketing, you’re not alone. 81 percent of brands leverage affiliate marketing.

Main types of affiliate marketing programs:

PAY-PER-SALE (COST-PER-SALE)

This is the most popular payment offered by most of the affiliate programs. Under this program, the affiliate marketers earn commissions from the merchant each time they will send a client to the merchant website, and that client makes an actual purchase. Various affiliate programs offer a specific percentage of the sale as commission while others will pay you a fixed rate for every sale.

PAY-PER-CLICK (COST-PER-CLICK)

Pay-Per-Click is also considered as widespread and common affiliate agreement. Under this agreement, the affiliate marketers will get fixed rates depending on the number of clients who click on the links placed on the affiliate website that leads to the merchant website. Here a purchase is not necessary to earn commissions, all that has to be done is that the client clicks the link and stays at least thirty seconds on the merchant website. Regardless of what the visitor does on the merchant site, this will not affect the commission.

PAY-PER-LEAD (COST-PER-LEAD)

Here the affiliates are paid depending on of how many visitors are sent to the merchant website and then sign up as leads. For the visitor to sign up as leads, it means that the visitors will fill out the information request form on the merchant site.

Several leading ecommerce companies use Affiliate Marketing to increase their success. These companies include Amazon, eBay, Rakuten, ShareSale, and more.

Benefits of Affiliate Marketing

Affiliates are good for your ecommerce website.


Nearly 80% of ecommerce websites fail. What is the main reason behind this? Lack of traffic.

Affiliates are a simple and affordable way to continually drive relevant traffic to your website.

Affiliates boost your bottom line.


  • Twenty-one percent higher average order value (AOV)
  • Thirty-one percent higher per customer order average
  • Fifty-eight percent higher average customer revenue

Leverage the established trust of affiliates.

Affiliates spend their time building an audience that trusts them, either through blogging, social media, or other distribution channels. Your business can immediately tap into that established trust when you attract affiliates.

Building trust in a brand can take time and money. By using influential affiliates to talk about your brands and share your links, you’re fast-tracking that trust-building, which is what makes it possible for affiliates to boost your bottom line.

Affiliate Marketing is performance-based.

Unlike many traditional forms of marketing, where you pay for a campaign and then hope it works, you pay affiliate their commissions based on the sales you make or the traffic they send to your website. You can use your affiliate tracking software to identify your top selling affiliates and reward them so they continue to be motivated to talk about your business.



Looking for a better way to grow your business? Affiliate marketing is the key to success behind businesses like Amazon and eBay. Grow your business and attract more affiliates with TitanAffiliate.

If you're not sure if Affiliate Marketing is a good fit for your business, just talk with us. We offer free initial consultation.