A Quick Guide to Flipkart Affiliate Marketing

Flipkart’s made its mark in the Indian eCommerce industry. You can do everything, from selling handmade jewellery to booking flights on it. As the services it provides increase, so do the costs. Just like many others, Flipkart too announced its affiliate program until 2018. If you’re looking to compare affiliate programs or continue with earning commissions if you’ve signed up before May 2018, then this guide is just for you.

Affiliate benefits with Flipkart

• Flipkart developed its technology instead of outsourcing all of it, which means it has a better understanding of client needs. 
• With a variety of products for sale, there’s no wonder how it achieved its massive web traffic. More people means a higher chance of successful promotions. 
• Flipkart Affiliate Marketing is performance-based; It constantly encourages affiliates to drive conversions. 

Nitin Mathur, Co-founder and Business Head at 91 Mobiles said, “Flipkart runs one of the best affiliate programs in India. They have a wide range of products to promote, and the tracking is accurate, the fee is competitive and always paid on time. The account managers are very professional as well, and give prompt support when required.”

The prerequisites are simple: A valid bank account under your name and a website or blog to promote products.

For a successful affiliate career:

• Get your Website/Blog ready:

If you have a blog on a public domain like Quora, consider setting up a website to be able to customize your viewers’ experience. For those of you who want to stick to a blog, read my article on pro blogging tips. You can ensure a prompt set up of your website by following the given tips:

1. Find a good domain name for your website. Name it such that it shows the viewer what your blog deals with and how you can help them. For a blog dealing with electronics, you might name it gogadgets.com. Any user looking for help with electronics will end up on your website!
2. Find a good blog hosting service. Remember that this will affect your income, so go for a reliable hosting service. Even fake services take real money, so be cautious, even if it means spending a tad bit more. Hostgator and Bigrockhosting are good servicing agents.
3. Install a good theme of your choice. Never underestimate the power of beauty! Use a font that’s easy to read on both desktop and mobile platforms. Try to avoid colours from the ’80s.

source:gograph.com DO NOT hurt your viewers’ eyes.

Go for calming, clear color palettes, such as blues, greys, and subtle oranges.

source:color-hex.com  Doesn’t that remind you of a train ride with a pleasant rainfall?

4. Master SEO and get to the first page.

As you all may know, SEO makes your website more discoverable. While a few plugins will make a little difference, to conquer the competition you’ve got to go the extra mile:

1. Short URLs, meta titles and meta descriptions for each page, keyword optimization everywhere. Never forget always to have these in order.
2. Your landing page is the first impression. If you need aesthetic help or are looking to spruce things up on an old website, Canva has some great free options. For stock-free images, turn to Unsplash. 
3. Make your website mobile-friendly. The AMP plugin on WordPress does most of the work for you; all you’ve got to do is install it. To test how mobile-friendly your website is, visit Google’s mobile-friendly test. 
4. Link to sites that have high domain authority. Google reads reliable websites in your webpages and thinks this guy’s got to be trustworthy if he’s linking only to trustworthy websites and bumps your SEO score up.

• Improving website traffic

Here are some ways to improve traffic on your website:

Make use of forums:

Find a forum that relates to your niche. If you’re into haircare, look for a company that specializes in hair care products. The forum is meant only to connect you with your target audience, not to spam it with affiliate links. Drive visitors, not their hate. 

Social Media:

Why do successful bloggers like Neil Patel and myself also have a YouTube channel? Why does Patanjali, an ayurvedic company, need an Instagram to handle? Social media isn’t just about connecting. It’s about outreach marketing. The people who follow you are interested in either of two things: you (your friends and family) or your content (the audience you’ve earned). Promoting links on social media handles comes with your testimonial. We’re more likely to buy fitness gear if P.V. Sindhu recommends it, your followers are more likely to buy if you recommend it. Here’s how to leverage social media to promote your business.

Word of mouth:

Get people talking! Drop a few words to your friends and family about your blog, share its link in WhatsApp groups, and ask your friends to include it in their statuses. To get that positive impression, look up questions you think you can answer well on Quora, Reddit, and Answer.com with a link to your blog.

Take advantage of festivals.

We Indians certainly love our festivals! When a celebration is around the corner, there are millions of people looking to spend their money to make it even more special. Flipkart too will have its own set of discounts and offers in store for consumers, so go full-on with promotions. Highlight the never before seen drop in prices. Bonus tip: A lot of birthdays are in July, August and September, so keep that in mind and promote gift ideas during these months.

• Selecting your niche

While it is crucial to write only about what you have expertise with and passion about, you should also focus on the demand and availability. There’s no point in writing about tools that help you communicate with the deceased if Flipkart doesn’t sell Ouija boards. Before choosing your topic of interest, 

1. Go through the Flipkart categories, and choose the one you relate the most to. 
2. Go through the products in that category, and critique your expertise on them.
3. Suppose you can write an intermediate level on at least 40% and at an expert level on at least ten products, then congratulations! You’ve found your niche.
4. The commission rates do justice to all products of all categories, take a look for yourself:

Source: https://affiliate.flipkart.com/commissions

Remember: Just because the commission is high, it doesn’t mean you’ll be earning more money for promoting that product. Gemstones have only a 0.1% commission, but the average cost is around 2,000 rupees. That means you’ll receive a commission of 200 rupees. On the other hand, a 10% commission on a book worth 400 rupees will give you only 40 rupees. So focus on your niche, not commission rates.

• Writing reviews 

We’re humans; we believe testimonials over facts and figures. Assuming your niche is something you’re passionate about, and you’ve tried and tested products, then go ahead and write reviews! An honesty that isn’t brutal and persuasion that isn’t overbearing is key. Write as little as you have to about the product, and consider doing an unboxing and testing video, embedded in your blog. List the pros, cons, and ingredients (if applicable) in your blog, followed by a final verdict. Write a few honest, negative ones to gain trust before delving into positive ones that have your affiliate links. For inspiration, look at Technical Guruji’s blogs and videos. The dialect that appeals to Indian audiences, length of blogs and videos, and technical explanations that don’t confuse us with jargon are all brilliant examples you can follow.

• Creating Affiliate links and Promoting Products:

The link through which a visitor on your website can access Flipkart for shopping is called the Affiliate link. You can simply generate an affiliate link, by clicking on the “Affiliate link generation” on the dashboard.

You can refer users to the products on Flipkart by putting up banners promoting them on your website, and links that directly take users to the respective pages where they can buy them. So when visitors follow these up to flipkart.com and purchase products, you earn money (up to 12% for every user clicking on the banner or link!). 

Don’t go paranoid if you are running out of ideas to get users to Flipkart. Flipkart’s affiliate marketing programme offers you a wide range of options, using which, along with some professionally designed tools, you can build multiple avenues to link Flipkart to your website.

Let’s look a little closer at the various “tools” that I mentioned earlier:

Product Links – Banners  

This duo is the simplest, yet the most compelling of all tools, to link Flipkart to your website.

Like other online shopping portals, Flipkart has a wide range of products which are grouped under certain “categories”. You can easily create a banner for individual products. That is, you can create individual banners for different products that may be from various categories. For example, I can create a banner for the new iPhone, and another banner for the latest Amish Tripathi novel. The best part is that you can customize these banners over a spectrum of colors and dimensions.

 Here are some customizing options:

 Product links:

• You can choose between a text link and a button link.

• You have an option to edit the text link.
• Regarding button links, you can choose from 3 options as below.

Product Banner:

1. You can choose the text colour, link colour and background colour.
2. Content border
3. Price details (you have an On/Off option on this).

       You have to follow a sequence of 4 steps to put these links and banners on your website.

• Search for the product. Choose a product that you think can attract a lot of visitors who come to your website. Select the product that would look good on your website, and would also bring in customers.
• Customize the link/banner using the options given above.
• Generate the code
• Add the code on to your website. 

These links and banners further enrich your website and app content and also are very compatible with mobile and desktop screens. Your affiliate IDs will be included in the links, and so every time someone purchases something using your link, you get that commission coming!

• Widgets

Widgets, similar to banners, are customizable, dynamic content. That means any changes in the product’s price or offers on Flipkart will be reflected in the widget on your website, meaning the link will be ‘up-to-date;’ All the info in the widget is the latest info available on Flipkart about the product.

Widgets are one of the most attractive tools Flipkart has to offer. They are up-to-date and interactive and give info to the viewers without requiring them to click on the link.

• Search Tools:

By this method, you can help your visitors access the Flipkart search bar through your website so that they can go through the process of exploring the products, undistracted from their current website underuse. Search tools are useful because users can access a wide range of products available on Flipkart with your content by the side. So if you are writing about how cool the iPhone is, a user who might think Apple products are not affordable can access the search bar through your website, and search for phones with the similar features that you have discussed. By doing this, you are providing a wider range of products to offer your users, and since they will click all these products through your link, your chances of earning a commission increase.

• API

API stands for Application Programming Interface. The advantage with APIs is that they enhance the scope of discovery of products on Flipkart by providing exclusive access to their product catalogue. Along with the link, any new info on discounts will be displayed. Through such access, you will be able to promote products based on their search frequency, description and other features. 

For example, if the search frequency for Banaras sarees is increasing, then APIs enable you to promote Banaras sarees, even if your category of choice is simply Indian Ethnic Wear.

Search tool and APIs will do better to the right side of your blog while keeping your content free from obstruction.

As for banners with offers, put them near the top, so that its the first thing the reader sees. We’re not promoting the product; rather, we are promoting the offer.

Coming to the placement of your links, include them wherever you’re talking about the pros of the product (provided your final verdict is a positive one). Don’t try to promote products where you’ve listed more cons than pros; It’ll just leave an impression of unreliability on your viewers.

One kind of link might work for someone else’s blog, but could be a misstep for you. If your blog is about a product that has more affordable or more aesthetic variants, choose the search tool to allow readers to browse while still on your blog. If it’s festive or birthday season, go for the banners that boast attractive offers. If you’re promoting something that has a lot of price variations (like gold), then choose widgets or APIs that can reflect those changes.

Some things to keep in mind:

Flipkart, along with its access to tools, has its restrictions. While promoting products and trying to earn affiliate commissions, you must be aware of certain catches:

1. You will not receive a commission if the user does not purchase through your link. So if a user comes across your link, clicks on it, decides to take some time to think about purchasing it, and does not purchase it through your link but by searching for it on his or her own through Flipkart’s website, then you will not receive any commission.
2. The purchase of a product through your link must occur within one session, i.e., within 30 minutes. A session begins when the user first clicks on the link in your website and ends either when (a) the user adds the product in your link to their shopping cart or (b) the time elapsed from clicking on your link exceeds 30 minutes. So, to earn a commission, the user must add the product in his or her shopping cart within 30 minutes of clicking on your link.
3. If the product that the user has added to his or her shopping cart is returned or removed, your commission may get cancelled.

Comparing it with another affiliate program: eBay Partner Network

Numerous e-commerce sites offer affiliate marketing programs. While eBay is not as popular in India, comparing it to Flipkart provides us with insights. 

The differences between the two programs are as follows:

1. On eBay, a session is not 30 minutes, but 24 hours. Though this may make it seem that eBay is better than Flipkart, many affiliate marketers view this as a disadvantage. However, many other affiliate marketing programs, such as Amazon, give its affiliates a commission if a user purchases within 30 days.
2. Through invite, there is a special affiliate program for affiliates who drive a significant amount of traffic to eBay and contribute to purchases, which is a sort of “elite” affiliate program for exceptional marketers, which encourages affiliate marketers to do better. 
3. eBay offers a comparatively lower commission rate. Affiliate marketers generally earn only 1 to 6% on purchases by users as commission.

The GoDaddy affiliate program:

Let’s now look at the differences between Flipkart and GoDaddy concerning their affiliate programs.

Note: Affiliates to GoDaddy are promoting GoDaddy products, which are mainly domains for websites. It is very different from the e-commerce sites like eBay and Flipkart that we have discussed, so there will be a significant change in how these programs work.

1. The average commission rate is 10%, and top performers get up to 30%. You can instantly see that the commission rate is higher. The increased commission rate for top performers is an advantage that both eBay and GoDaddy offer, something that would encourage affiliates to work harder and earn more.
2. Similar to Flipkart in India, there is strong brand recognition, a major plus point because users will trust names that they know of. The brand name recognition should be exploited; New affiliate marketers should go for partnering with brands that many people already know of.

SUMMARY

1. Before signing up with any sort of affiliate program, make sure you have your website or blog ready.
2. Plan your promotions so that you can get the most out of festive seasons and discounts.
3. Write honest, to-the-point reviews that will help readers make a decision.
4. Utilize the several tools that Flipkart has to offer.
5. Make sure you know all the terms and conditions of Flipkart like the back of your hand. 

Don’t be disheartened if you couldn’t make it in time to sign up to Flipkart’s affiliate program! The Amazon Associate program, Myntra’s affiliate program, and vCommission’s program are all just as great, if not more. With what we’ve discussed kept in mind, along with a little familiarity about the specific program, you could be the next self-made promoter that’s making thousands from the comfort of your home. Check out this blog for info on Amazon’s program, to learn more about the Amazon affiliate program. Don’t forget to check these 15 Tricks about Flipkart Affiliate Program to boost your sales.

Let me know in the comments down below about your affiliate marketing journey!