Who are the 3 Types of People Involved in Affiliate Marketing?

In your affiliate marketing journey, it’s very important to know that you’ll encounter 3 different groups of people. Knowing who they are is very important because you need to know how to deal with them.

Each group is different and poses its own type of challenges. By understanding how the different people in the groups behave, you’ll be better prepared to handle them and be in their good books.

Let’s look at the groups now.

The Publishers

The ‘publishers’ refer to affiliates just like you. These are the people who create niche sites or run YouTube channels or Facebook groups. Even the affiliates who use paid ads can be considered as publishers.

The goal of most publishers is to put out relevant content or ads that attract people who will click on their links and buy their affiliate products. The publishers are your ‘competition’ and you must watch them closely.

If you have a niche site on fishing tips, where you promote fishing-related products, the other sites that show up on the first page of the search results are your competition. They could be affiliates or actual brand name companies selling their products.

You’ll notice that there can be an overlap here because affiliates can sell their own products too. Let’s look at the next group to get a better picture.

The Advertisers

The ‘advertisers’ refer to the companies who create the products you promote. They recruit affiliates to do the selling and they also advertise on their own to boost their sales.

An affiliate who promotes other vendors’ products but also creates his/her own products to sell, now finds himself/herself in the advertiser’s group. Similarly, the company that’s selling fishing rods and publishes lots of fishing tips and content on its official blog is now a publisher too.

So, the groups can overlap. What’s important to know is that while fellow publishers can be your competition, you can also network with them to promote their products if they’re vendors too.

So, now your competition has become a mutually beneficial relationship.

At the same time, the vendor whose products you were promoting, might end up ranking for a lot of keywords that you’re targeting, because their marketing is on point. So, the vendor you were trying to support, has now become your competition.

Alas, the tangled webs we weave! Generally, companies try not to compete with their affiliates. But if you notice that the one you’re supporting is posing competition for you, you’ll need to reassess your marketing strategy and see if you wish to still support them.

The Consumers

This group is without a doubt the most important of the three. The consumers are the people who come online looking for information and solutions to their problems. Most of them don’t come looking to spend money or buy stuff.

They want help. Your job as an affiliate marketer is to give them enough information to help them a little and whet their appetite for more information that will help them solve their problems faster and easier.

If you have a website on back pain, the content in your site can talk about the different causes of back pain and natural remedies that could help. However, if they wish to bring much-needed relief, you can mention that the special ‘Pain Away Pulse Massager’ has been shown to help many back-pain sufferers.

Now, not only is the visitor better informed about his condition and has a choice of home remedies that he or she can try, but they have been subtly introduced to a product that brings much needed immediate relief.
What do you think they’ll do?

Soak in that Epsom salt home bath which is a home remedy… or get the pulse massager to ease their pain quickly?
Most of them will get the pulse massager. The content you provide is a vehicle that not only helps them become better informed but also transports them through the invisible journey that they need to traverse to go from reader to buyer.

Understand the different people who are involved in this affiliate marketing circle and you will be much wiser in your marketing efforts.