What is Affiliate Marketing?

Whenever you read something and question to yourself how someone can sustain a business without selling you anything, you’ve probably come across affiliate marketing. Essentially it boils down to a mutually beneficial relationship between a blogger and a business hoping to get more eyeballs on their brand. 

A company will look for an online personality, often a blog, that fits with their style. The company then pays the personality to bring attention to a product, service, or brand. This can occur in different ways depending on the degree of relationship that the blog has with what they’re promoting.

Unattached Affiliation

This level of affiliate marketing is the least connected to the employed personality. This means that the blog might not have much to do with the sort of product they’re promoting. This also puts less burden on the affiliate as they have more distance from the product and therefore aren’t an authority to endorse it, which absolves them of any necessity to recommend it outright.

Related Affiliation

The next degree of removal finds the affiliate closer to the brand than at the unattached level. This is the stage where you can discern a clear through line between the blog and the product, think a golf blog mentioning a new club. The relationship between the affiliate and their niche is employed more heavily at this level, and it’s this relationship that builds trust for the affiliate as an authority on the product they’re promoting. The audience that the blog has cultivated is more likely related to the brand being mentioned and therefore is more likely to flow traffic toward it. 

Involved Affiliation

As the name implies, this is the most connected an affiliate would find themselves to a product. This is more often than not a direct endorsement, which needs support from personal experience with the brand. This tethers the affiliate with the product, and any positive or negative attributes of each party will be related together. The personal connection to the brand will serve as a complete authority of, and support towards, the product. This is the most impactful form of affiliate marketing, but blogs could receive backlash from negative customer experiences with the promotion. 

How is it Monetizable?

In most cases, and especially for bloggers, the money isn’t simply a payment for mentions. Rather, companies will pay the affiliate based on actual delivered sales. This is often tracked through affiliate links. Affiliate links are specific hyperlinks located somewhere in the blog’s promotion, no matter the degree of relation. These links will take you to a landing page for the promoted brand, often directly to the products mentioned. Affiliates will then get a portion of profits from the company they’re promoting. Sometimes it’s based on the number of people who clicked the affiliate link to the landing page, but more often it’s based on the amount of sales made from people who navigated there from the link. 

The return on these can often be higher than you might think. How big the slice an affiliate receives will vary depending on your deal, but it will often be anywhere between 20-50% of the profits, with some reporting as high as 70% commission. It’s important to remember that only sales made directly from the links apply to these numbers.

This number can get so high because the value the affiliate brings to the company is directly trackable. The business will know how many people came to their landing page as a result of the blog. This also incentivizes bloggers to create better promotions for the company to receive more commission. It’s a win-win. 

One of the best details about deals like these is that the affiliate link will do most of the work for you after posting. This can turn into a lucrative a potentially lucrative source of passive income for any blog. However, in some cases, deals will have a date at which the cookies that track purchases made after clicking the affiliate will expire. This could make your link more time sensitive to maximize profits in the short term. This method is most often reserved for seasonal or limited-time promotion, but it’s important to check the fine print either way.

Conclusion

Affiliate marketing is a great source of revenue for any existing or future blog endeavors. Affiliate links offer a results-based, trackable way to determine the value of blog promotion. The potential to make money through blogs can be quite high depending on your audience and traffic, but in most cases, this is one of the most mutually beneficial ways to make money for both the blogger and the company that hires them.

The post How Bloggers are Making Money with Affiliate Links appeared first on The Blog Herald.

Hot off the heels of an announcement of the M2 Ultra, some rumors are saying that the M3 chip is already in early testing stages with the potential to see a release in 2024. What does that mean for Apple customers, and how is the new chip expected to stack up to previous iterations? Here’s all you need to know:

What is Apple Silicon?

Apple Silicon is the newest processing architecture to hit the computing world in recent memory. After the groundbreaking news from WWDC 2020, Apple announced its departure from Intel and all further use of Intel processors. In tandem with this, the tech giant also announced what it would replace the Intel chips with, Apple Silicon.

This was a pretty momentous move on Apple’s part, and while some met this news with apprehension, early adopters were quick to praise the switch. From a business perspective, it made sense for Apple to make the change to create its own processing infrastructure. It primarily gave Apple developers more control over the processing chips. Therefore this allowed them to make them more compatible with their products. Additionally, it was cheaper to build in-house than to purchase from an outside source. Along with the announcement of the new architecture came the announcement of the actual chips that would use that infrastructure: the M1.

The M1, Apple Silicon’s First Chip

The first to appear in Apple’s family of computer processors was the M1 chip. The announcement of Apple Silicon in June 2020. The first computers to come equipped with the new architecture came in November of the same year. Along came the 2020 Macbook Pro with the M1 launching with it.

The performance of the M1 chip in the Macbook Pro was impressive to many. It immediately seemed to outperform the previous Intel processors. While it did not come without its flaws, consumers were quick to accept the new chips as standard. The major shift in power came due in large part because of the new united memory architecture. Instead of having to expend energy swapping between pools of memory like on the Intel processors, Apple’s chips were now connected through one channel of data.

Apple would later go on to release the M1 Pro, the M1 Max, and the M1 Ultra. Each of these are larger, more powerful versions of the original M1 processor.

The M2, a Step Up

If the M1 was the first step into proprietary processors, then the M2 was where Apple began to hone its chips. First appearing in the 2022 Macbook Air and Pro, the M2 chip was a standard iterative upgrade to its predecessor. Boasting about a 20% increase in processing speed, the M2 was also more battery efficient than the previous M1.

Some months after the M2’s release was the introduction of the M2 Pro and the M2 Max. These followed the development line that the M1 began, each at a higher strength capability than the previous.
The most recent addition to the family of M2 chips was the announcement of the M2 Ultra. As of the June 5, 2023, Apple press release on the matter, the M2 Ultra is the highest power processor the company has released to date.

“M2 Ultra delivers astonishing performance and capabilities for our pro users’ most demanding workflows, while maintaining Apple silicon’s industry-leading power efficiency,” said Johny Srouji, Apple’s senior vice president of Hardware Technologies. “With huge performance gains in the CPU, GPU, and Neural Engine, combined with massive memory bandwidth in a single SoC, M2 Ultra is the world’s most powerful chip ever created for a personal computer.”

What to Expect for the Silicon M3

Most of the conversation about the M3 is speculative, but some have been granted exclusive access to information about the chip. Mark Gurman of Bloomberg’s Power On wrote about the data collected from an App Store developer

“The company has begun putting next-generation Macs with the M3 chips through their paces, testing them with third-party apps to ensure compatibility with its software ecosystem,” said Gurman.

Power On’s also included information about the anticipated specs we can expect from the M3 compared to the previous editions. After reports of a tested M3 Pro processor, it’s going to host 12 GPU cores, 18 graphics cores, and 36 GB of memory. As expected, this eclipses the previous 10 GPU cores, 16 graphics cores, and 32 GB of memory of the M2 Pro as well as the 8 GPU cores, 14 graphics cores, and 32 GB of memory of the M1 Pro.

While all three processors are impressive, it’s clear that Apple is implementing their iterative evolution in their chips as well. It’s through this iterative evolution that we see the next step in Apple Silicon’s processors.

So when can we expect the shiny new M3s? Gurman’s expectation places it near the end of 2023 or into 2024.

“My belief is the first Macs with M3 chips will begin arriving toward the end of the year or early next year,” said Gurman. “While the first 15-inch MacBook Air with an M2 chip is set to arrive this summer, the company is already working on M3-based iMacs, high-end and low-end MacBook Pros, and MacBook Airs, I’m told.”

The post Apple Delays Launch of New M3 Apple Silicon into 2024 appeared first on The Blog Herald.

YouTube has been at the forefront of online video content creation since its inception back in 2005, but in recent years it’s been making changes to try and keep up with the burgeoning growth of bite-sized content like TikTok and Instagram. One of those changes was the 2018 implementation of ‘YouTube Stories’ reminiscent of the Snapchat feature with the same name. YouTube wasn’t the only adopter of stories, though. Both Instagram and Facebook added the disappearing posts back in 2016 and 2017 respectively, but what worked for those social media sites might not have for the video-housing giant.

Why Cut Stories?

It seems that stories simply didn’t live up to expectations, at least for YouTube. This short-form content existed too close to their other main source of quick consumables, YouTube Shorts. Similarly to how YouTube tried to emulate the success of Snapchat stories, the shorts are reminiscent of TikTok’s video length or Instagram’s Reels. The main differences between stories and shorts are the form of content and that content’s shelf life. Stories could host photos or videos that would disappear seven days after posting. Shorts, on the other hand, are exclusive to videos, up to 60 seconds in length, that exist on a dedicated scrollable tab, and they exist indefinitely. 

For YouTube, stories existed to be an outlet for creators to create quick, easily digestible content for their viewers. However, on a platform based almost entirely on lasting video, they felt disjointed. Additionally, YouTube felt that stories were vastly underperforming compared to regular posts or even shorts, and thus the decision was made to get rid of them. 

How Can Creators Interact with Viewers Now?

Creators shouldn’t worry too much about the removal of YouTube stories. There already exist a couple different tools they can use that work even better.

As mentioned, the main competitor to YouTube stories was YouTube’s own shorts page. This, of course, can fill in the potential hole of short-form videos. These videos help to garner more engagement in a channel’s main posts, as well as to be a forum for creators to cater their content to their viewers.

Another tool creators can use to get direct feedback from their audience is through the “Community” page. Anything from polls to announcements to Q&As gets posted there making it a great resource to get direct feedback. YouTube also plans to roll out more features for the community page in 2023.

What Features to Expect from YouTube in 2023

Out with the old and in with the new features. YouTube has dropped several new features already this year, and with more on the horizon, there’s a lot for both creators and viewers alike to be excited about. 

What’s New?

Some of the most exciting new features that YouTube has already implemented in 2023 include changes to shorts, monetization, and how viewers can interact with creators.

Shorts received a makeover recently. Unlike before, creators can now create and choose custom thumbnails for their quick videos, allowing for more engagement and expression. Additionally, shorts will join the YouTube partner program later this year.

Monetization looks different, too. Now audiences have more outlets than ever to support their favorite creators. The most prominent of these outlets is merchandise. Now, instead of having to search for creator merch, YouTube now allows creators to tag products directly in their videos. In addition, YouTube expects to do a complete overhaul of its membership system and direct fan funding. 

Fans of YouTube live streaming will also be excited to see live reactions coming to the site. A common feature of contemporary streaming sites, YouTube has caught up to the trend.

What’s Next?

In the latter half of the year waits some of the most anticipated additions to YouTube. The aforementioned changes to monetization through the membership program and additions to the community tab are just some of what we can expect in 2023. 

One of the most welcome additions YouTube has announced is its changes to audio in their videos, and how they can use owned media without risking copyright infringement. This will come to us in the form of a vaster library of YouTube-owned music for creators to freely use, as well as an option to license popular music while maintaining revenue from videos the music is used in. This will offer creators more stability in monetization when utilizing songs from big-name artists. 

More features for engagement are also expected in 2023. Multi-language videos are on the docket, allowing creators to add multiple audio tracks to a video depending on the region it’s shown. This feature was tested by popular creator Mr. Beast and has shown itself to be of great success. 

Lastly, YouTube plans to add A/B testing for thumbnails this year, one of the most highly requested features from creators. This lets creators use two different thumbnails early in a video’s publishing to test for engagement. 

What else YouTube plans to add to their site, we’ll just have to wait and see. So far the changes appear to be in favor of users on both sides of the content line. 

The post YouTube Plans to Sunset Stories: What’s Next for Content Creators? appeared first on The Blog Herald.