Affiliate Marketing Interview Questions & Answers

Question 1. Explain Affiliate Marketing?

Answer :

Affiliate Marketing is derived from the concept of revenue sharing. Here the affiliate partner advertises a product or service on his website/ blog for some percentage of profit. This type of marketing is also known as performance -based marketing.

Question 2. Why Is Affiliate Marketing Considered By Marketers?

Answer :

Affiliate marketing is considered by marketers because it gives them the ability to connect with the global audience. It offers larger coverage. This advertising channel is also less expensive as one has to pay only when the agreed action has taken place. The brand is advertised for free.

Sale of a product, getting registrations through the affiliate partner's website could be some of the agreed action. This kind of marketing is said to generate a steady income and doesn't need you to be an expert in marketing.

Question 3. What Are Native Shopping Ads By Amazon?

Answer :

Native Shopping Ads is a very creative form of advertising the products sold by Amazon on its affiliates websites. These products are highly relevant to users search and are presented in a creatively designed ad units which are responsive in They can be placed at the end of the content or somewhere in between.

Question 4. What Are The Various Types Of Links You Can Create Under Amazon Associate Program?

Answer :

Under Amazon Associate Program, you can create simple text links, Image and text link, banners etc.

Question 5. What Do You Know About Amazon Associate Program?

Answer :

Amazon Associate Program is an affiliate program run by Amazon. It was started in the year 1996. Under this program you need to advertise products sold by Amazon and link to them. This could be in the form of a product review, more information about the product etc. When a user clicks from your website, reaches the products page on Amazon's website and buys it, you get a percentage of the money earned through sales.

Question 6. What Would You Do To Increase Your Earnings With Amazon Associate Program?

Answer :

You can increase your earnings with an affiliate program if you study your reports regularly and take required actions. However, there are certain other things that would help you:

Write regularly about the products from different perspectives. 

1. Target different kinds of products. You are paid on the whole purchase through your reference link and not just the advertised product. 
2. Advertise recommended products.
3. Promote a little costly products to earn a better commission. 
4. Create a list of recommended products as per the season. For e.g. have your listed posted before Christmas or Valentine day to take advantage of sales during that period.
5. Optimize your site to increase your traffic and conversions.

Question 7. Is There A Room For Improvement In Our Affiliate Marketing Efforts?

Answer :

Now with the above question once you have given them your opinion, the interviewer would want to know what can you do to get better results out of their program. You can be innovative while answering this question and what you can bring in with your experience of affiliate marketing.

Question 8. Is Affiliate Marketing And Referral Marketing One And The Same?

Answer :

Affiliate Marketing and Referral Marketing are often considered same. But there is a slight difference between the two.

Both use an affiliate website or a third person to make sales. In Affiliate marketing, the money you make motivates you to drives sales whereas personal relations and trust are the motivational factors that drive sales in referral marketing.

Question 9. What Do You Understand About Scrubbing Leads In Affiliate Marketing?

Answer :

Scrubbing Leads is a practice where you ask the affiliate not to promote the service or product of the owner anymore. This is usually done when the affiliate is not getting the desired leads and is not performing well.

The affiliate may misrepresent the product or service, or communicate poorly about the service, or simply promote the product poorly which might harm the owner's reputation.

Question 10. What Do You Know About Shaving Leads In Affiliate Marketing?

Answer :

Shaving leads is a practice where some of the leads sent by the affiliate are discarded or not considered in the final calculations. This could be owing to the poor quality of leads, breaking the rules or may also arise due to the unethical behavior of the master in the affiliate relationship.

If the commission is not paid or reduced without any notice or no explainable reason, it is unethical.Sometime, in order to limit the affiliate's earnings, once a certain number of leads are reached the company shaves off the affiliate's id.

Question 11. What Are The Important Tools That An Affiliate Marketer Should Use?

Answer :

Now there many tools that an affiliate marketer can use and every tool have a different role to play. As an affiliate marketer one cannot afford to buy all the tools but some of the important ones are:

1. Google Keyword Planner - In order to develop good and engaging content for your readers you need to target the right keyword. Google Keyword Planner helps you to find the relevant keyword for your affiliate business.
2. Ahrefs - This tool provides a good competitor analysis. It tells you how much traffic a competitor website is getting for a particular keyword. It also helps you in backlink research along with the content you should publish for your target audience.
3. SEMRush - This tool helps you find the powerful keywords for your posts and identify advertising opportunities. It also lets you understand what's working for you and your competitor as well.
4. Google Search Console - Google Search Console helps you to check the performance of your site. It tells you if your site is mobile friendly, it helps to highlight the data and also you can check if Google has any problem accessing your site.
5. Instapage - Instapage helps you create good quality landing pages as per your requirement within a few minutes.
6. Buzzsumo - Buzzsumo is a planning tool which helps in content marketing research and lets you develop smart content strategies.

Question 12. What Are The Shortcomings Of Affiliate Marketing For The Business?

Answer :

While Affiliate marketing provides advantages such as steady income, larger coverage, etc, there are certain shortcomings.

Some of them are as follows:

1. Fraudulent : A marketer should carefully choose its affiliate partner as there are many fraudulent programs out there. 
2. No control : If you want to make changes in the pattern or you have some idea, you have to depend on your affiliate partners as you do not have control on the marketing programs.
3. No customer base : As the customers are connected to the affiliate partner you do not have a customer base of your own. A repeat purchase will be done from the affiliate partner's website.
4. Affects Brand Image : The affiliate partners may market the product in an undesirable way which can negatively impact the brand image of your product or service.
5. Competitive : This marketing channel is quite competitive as there are many affiliates who offer the same kind of services.
6. No Revenue Guarantee : Here the traffic does not guarantee you good payment. The traffic must be converted into sales which can help you make some money. And the reasons for lack of conversion could be numerous, even out of your control.

Question 13. Why Does Affiliate Marketing Have A Negative Reputation?

Answer :

Some affiliate marketers use unethical methods which impact the whole industry and lend it a bad name.

Some of the unethical practices used by the marketers are:

1. Trademark Infringement
2. False or misleading advertising
3. Spamming
4. Cookie Stuffing
5. Typosquatting etc.

Question 14. We Are Launching A New Product. How Will You Promote It On Social Media?

Answer :

As you know that affiliate marketing uses an affiliate website to promote a product or service. An affiliate marketer can use social media to effectively promote the products or services to a large number of audience at once. To be successful, one has to be active on social media by posting regularly.

Here are few more ways by which you can promote your products more effectively on social media:

1. Good Photos - In affiliate marketing you can use good and effective images to promote your product and helps you to draw the reader's attention to your post.
2. Quality Content - An affiliate marketer should focus on high quality and effective content to get the social media audience to connect with the product and service.
3. Use your affiliate product carefully - You have to promote good quality affiliate products which will make the audience more interested in it. An affiliate marketer should believe and know about his or her product in and out and should love his/her product.
4. Communication - Effective Communication keeps your audience engaged and connected with your service and product.

Question 15. As An Affiliate Marketer, Why Should You Use Your Social Media Platforms?

Answer :

As an affiliate marketer, one can use the social media platforms to make their brand or service known to the people.

The other benefits of using social media are:

1. Flexibility to handle their own account. 
2. Social media involves no cost for its basic features.
3. Large target audience can be reached on social media platforms.
4. You can place as many links as you want to.

Question 16. If You Were The Interviewer, What Qualities Would You Look For In An Affiliate Marketer?

Answer :

With this question, the interviewer wants to know if you are aware of the personality traits of the affiliate marketer and if you have those in you. Apart from willingness to learn and absorb the training an affiliate marketing professional should be thoughtful.

Some of the other qualities are as follows: 

1. Planned and Organized: Affiliate marketing needs the person to take care of many things at a time, including content marketing, social media marketing, email marketing, website maintenance etc. This needs you to be organized and have realistic goals.
2. Consistent: It needs consistency in your efforts with content development and promoting it.
3. Socially Active: A marketer should be sociable. He/she must use social media platforms fully to make valuable relationships with the potential customers.
4. Patience: Efforts take time to materialize into results and this needs you to be patient.
5. Confident with product: The affiliate marketer should have the authority and be confident about the product or service he is marketing for.
6. Self Determined: An affiliate marketer should be self-determined and self-motivated because many a times you would need to work in isolation.

Question 17. What Trends Do You Foresee In Affiliate Marketing?

Answer :

Affiliate marketing is becoming more recognized and more and more marketers are opting for this marketing channel.

Some of the trends to watch out for in the future are as follows:

1. Content will become powerful: Content will remain to rule all the marketing channels including affiliate marketing. Good content attracts traffic that turns into sales. Within content, there are new trends which are coming up such as Semantic content which helps to evaluate digital content.
2. Discounts, Cashback, and coupons: Coming days would be the days of discounts and other financial benefits while buying from affiliates.
3. Digital Influencer: The influential people with large number of followers can help the affiliate marketers by sharing their links, writing about their products or simply writing a guest post for them.
4. Laptop to mobile Tracking and vice-versa: A person might check a link on the laptop and later on mobile phones. Earlier there was no proper tracking tool. Now there are a lot of companies which are providing a solution to track this data which is helping the affiliate marketing grow.