Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is also another fantastic way to get my game out there and onto the peoples screens. The form of marketing consists of the merchant (myself), the Affiliate (Influencer or publisher), and the Consumer (Rizzi, 2022). The merchant is the person who has created the product, and in this case, the game developer! The affiliate is the influencer or publisher that the merchant is looking to use to promote their product. And finally the consumer is who the merchant is trying to sell to.

The influencers will regularly be making content and may use an affiliate link in their content which can be used to track how many people they direct towards the product they are promoting (Roche, 2022). From this, the affiliate will then receive payment based on the number of people who used the link. The use of an affiliate link can however prove to be inaccurate as people may not use the link and instead look the product up elsewhere. To combat this, some influencers will request an upfront deposit instead to remove this (Roche, 2022).

As well as affiliate links, influencers will sometimes talk about the product within video content (Patel, 2015). This can be both directly mentioning the product in a promotional way or indirectly through simply playing a game that they have been paid to review (Patel, 2015). ith affiliate marketing, it is important for the affiliate to make sure that it is clear what is paid promotion (Practice, 2021).

Getting any sort of influencer or publisher to promote a produce such as my game can be quite costly, especially larger influencers, but contact can be made using email marketing and using the AIDA marketing strategy to spark an interest. Creating contact is where affiliate marketing all begins. 

Patel, N. (2015). Affiliate Marketing Made Simple: A Step-by-Step Guide. [online] Neil Patel. Available at: https://neilpatel.com/what-is-affiliate-marketing/.

Practice, A.S.A. | C. of A. 2021. Online Affiliate Marketing. [online] www.asa.org.uk. Available at: https://www.asa.org.uk/advice-online/affiliate-marketing.html.

Rizzy, Virginia 2022. What is affiliate marketing? Guide for merchants. [online] Available at: https://knowledge.glass.digital/affiliate-marketing-for-merchants#:~:text=Affiliate%20marketing%20is%20a%20form.

Roche, N. 2022. Youtube Affiliate Marketing: Who Does It And Is It Worth It? [online] https://www.authorityhacker.com/. Available at: https://www.authorityhacker.com/youtube-affiliate/.

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