Introduction
Affiliate marketing requires time, effort, creativity, and communication. It is essential to build relationships with your advertiser partners and consumer followers. Once you join Rakuten Advertising as a publisher, you can access leading brands, updated tools and technology, and outstanding support when needed.
To begin a successful affiliate marketing channel, you must have:
- Your own live website, blog, or customized social media site.
- Unique, quality content that adds value for users.
- A well-designed business plan.
Below are some essential steps and common terms to help you get started with affiliate marketing and your Rakuten Advertising account.
Note
Please review these requirements and recommendations before starting your affiliate marketing efforts.
Step 1: Sign Up
- Sign-up
- Signing up is free. Enter your email and password, then validate your email and answer a few questions. After completing the registration process, you will be brought to the Publisher Dashboard.
- You can always go to Rakuten Advertising and click Login, then Affiliate Publisher in the upper right corner of the page.
- Log In
- From the Publisher Dashboard login, enter the email and password you provided at registration and click Login. The New Publisher Dashboard (Beta) will open. Review the Help Center or contact Customer Support if you need any help.
Note
There are currently two Publisher Dashboards. The Legacy Publisher Dashboard is still accessible while important features are migrated to the New Publisher Dashboard (beta).
Step 2: Partner with Advertisers
Now that you are in the Publisher Dashboard, here is how to start.
Success Tip
You may be asked for your SID if you were invited to a campaign. This is located in the top right-hand corner of the Publisher Dashboard.
- Find and Advertisers
- You will want to work with advertisers in the content categories you promote. There are several ways to find these advertiser programs in the Publisher Dashboard.
- Apply For a Program
- To start promoting advertisers you must be approved into their programs. Advertiser's Terms and Conditions vary, so read them thoroughly. You will receive a system email or notice email or notice once approved.
Step 3: Products and Links
- Once your applications are approved, you can link to an advertiser's site and products. You will earn a commission when your links and codes are used to make purchases.
- Links
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Advertisers offer a variety of link types that contain affiliate codes and other information that ensures you receive proper commissions for any sales you generate.
Under the Links tab, we have Deep Links that direct your visitors to a specific page on an advertiser's site rather than just the homepage. You may need to shorten the links for social media or email communications.
Step 4: Earn
-
Success Tip
Set up your account in the Publisher Dashboard to ensure you get paid. Pay particular attention to setting up your US Income Tax, Non-US Tax, and Payment Method information so you can receive your commissions.
- Getting Paid
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There are several things to keep in mind about getting paid. There are multiple options for payments, and they may vary with location. Our payment cycle occurs weekly on Wednesdays; however, advertisers are invoiced monthly. You must also meet a minimum threshold before a payment is generated.
The timeliness of receiving payments depends on the advertisers; some pay out quickly, while others may take time to process invoices and payments. You can monitor this in the Publisher Dashboard Payment Reports.
Terminology
Affiliate marketing has its own set of terms. There is a comprehensive glossary of terms available. To get you started, here are a few important ones you should know:
- Advertiser, Merchant, Brand: A person or organization selling products or services on the web.
- Publisher, Affiliate: You may think of yourself as a discount site, content creator, or any other of a number of things. The industry term is publisher, a person or organization running a website that partners with one or more online advertisers. The publisher places links on their site to promote the merchant's products or services. In exchange, the publisher receives a commission for all valid transactions referred.
- SID: Site identification is a unique number used in our network to identify your publisher account. Please include it in all communications with us.
- MID: Merchant identification is a unique number used in our network to identify the advertiser’s affiliate program.
- CTR: Click-through Rate is a way of measuring the effectiveness of a campaign by dividing the number of clicks by the number of impressions.
- Impression: A single instance of a link shown to a user.
- Orders/Click: Orders per click, also called conversion rate, is the percentage of clicks on an affiliate link that leads to a sale or other commissionable action.
- EPC: Earnings per click are obtained by dividing the commissions earned by the number of clicks, or click-throughs, that generated these commissions.
- AOV or AOS: Average order value or average order size represents the sum of sales divided by the number of orders.
Next Steps
As you continue your Affiliate journey, we recommend the following steps:
Comments
Hi King Hiong Chew, welcome to Rakuten Advertising! You'll need to work with your website developer to create the types of ads you desire and incorporate the links in them. Here is an article with the basic steps to publish links on your site: https://pubhelp.rakutenmarketing.com/hc/articles/201653243-How-do-I-copy-and-paste-HTML-link-code-onto-my-website-blog-or-social-media-site-
Are we able to include links in our newsletters?
Hi Gloria, you'll need to confirm that the advertiser allows affiliate links to be used in your newsletters by checking their terms and conditions, and also making sure you list your newsletters in your site description so there is transparency for advertisers about where you are posting their links.
That's really cool
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