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📅 Week 6 · Thursday
day-34
What is Clarigital?.
Today you'll learn: what Clarigital is and why businesses pay for it — explained so clearly you could teach it to your parents by tonight.
⏱ ~20 mins
📖 Read + Quiz + Submit
✅ Need 3/5 to unlock
🔒 Thursday only
Week
Week 6 of 8
Day
34 of 56
Program
2-Month Program
📖 Read This First — About 8 Minutes
Affiliate marketing is the only acquisition channel where you pay only when customers actually convert. Designed correctly, it's essentially risk-free acquisition.
Affiliate marketing allows brands to pay third parties (affiliates) a commission for sending customers who complete a purchase. Unlike paid advertising where you pay for impressions or clicks regardless of conversion, affiliate marketing is purely performance-based — you pay only when a sale happens. For brands with healthy margins, a well-managed affiliate programme can become a significant and genuinely efficient acquisition channel.
The practitioner must understand both the publisher side (how affiliates work and what motivates them) and the advertiser side (how to design a programme that attracts quality affiliates without overpaying for cannibalised traffic). The central challenge is affiliate quality: a coupon/discount affiliate who captures customers about to buy anyway is much less valuable than a content affiliate who introduces new customers who wouldn't have converted without the recommendation.
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Affiliate marketing is a commission-based sales team you don't have to hire. Each affiliate is an independent salesperson who gets paid when they deliver a customer. Good management of this team — recruiting the right salespeople, giving them the right tools, and monitoring their methods — is what separates a high-performing affiliate programme from one that just rewards customers who were already going to buy. The recruiter's skill determines the team's quality.
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Commission Structure
Flat fee per sale (simple, predictable) vs % of sale value (scales with order size). Typical D2C rates: 10-20% of sale. SaaS: 20-30% recurring MRR. Balance: attractive enough to recruit quality affiliates without destroying margin.
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Affiliate Recruitment
Content affiliates (bloggers, YouTubers who review products - best quality), coupon/deal sites (high volume, low incremental value), loyalty programmes (cashback sites), and influencer affiliates (hybrid paid + commission).
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Tracking & Attribution
Affiliate-specific tracking links (UTMs or affiliate platform cookies). Cookie duration (30-day standard). Last-click vs first-touch attribution. Platforms: Impact, ShareASale, CJ Affiliate, or custom via Shopify apps.
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Fraud Prevention
Monitor for: cookie stuffing (affiliates placing tracking cookies without referral), brand bidding (affiliates bidding on your brand keywords in Google Ads), and order cancellation fraud. Regular affiliate audits are essential.
🔮 The incremental value test for affiliates: The key question for any affiliate is: would this customer have purchased without the affiliate's intervention? A coupon site affiliate who captures customers at the checkout stage (after they've already decided to buy) provides near-zero incremental value — you're paying commission for a sale that would have happened anyway. A content affiliate who introduces new customers through a product review provides high incremental value. Segment affiliates by type and evaluate incrementality separately.
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Read the reference page below before taking the quiz.
Why is an affiliate programme described as 'essentially risk-free acquisition' from an advertiser's perspective?
A
A: Affiliates never commit fraud
B
B: Payment only occurs when a qualified conversion happens - you pay for results, not for exposure or traffic
C
C: Affiliate networks guarantee minimum sales
D
D: Affiliate marketing is regulated to prevent losses
OK Performance-based payment means you only spend when a sale occurs. Unlike PPC (pay per click) or CPM (pay per 1,000 impressions), affiliate commission is paid only on completed conversions. The risk of paying for traffic that doesn't convert is eliminated.
NO Risk-free because payment is performance-based: you pay commission only on completed sales. No sales = no cost. This is fundamentally different from PPC or CPM advertising where you pay regardless of conversion.
Question 2 of 5
What is the key difference between a content affiliate and a coupon/deal site affiliate in terms of incremental value?
A
A: Content affiliates are more expensive
B
B: Content affiliates introduce new customers who wouldn't have bought without the recommendation; coupon affiliates often capture customers already at the checkout stage who would have bought anyway
C
C: Coupon affiliates generate more sales volume
D
D: There is no meaningful difference in incremental value
OK Content affiliate (blog review, YouTube video): customer discovers the product through the affiliate content and converts. High incremental value - the affiliate created the sale. Coupon affiliate: customer is already on the checkout page, searches for a coupon code, affiliate captures the commission. Near-zero incremental value - the sale would have happened anyway.
NO Content affiliates introduce new customers (high incremental value). Coupon affiliates capture customers already converting (low incremental value - you pay commission on sales that would have happened without them).
Question 3 of 5
What is 'cookie stuffing' in affiliate fraud and how does it work?
A
A: Legitimate use of tracking cookies
B
B: An affiliate places their tracking cookie on a visitor's browser through hidden code without the user ever visiting the affiliate's content - fraudulently claiming commission for organic or direct conversions
C
C: A technique for extending cookie duration
D
D: Adding affiliate tracking to email campaigns
OK Cookie stuffing: the affiliate places their affiliate tracking cookie without the user ever seeing their content. When the user later buys (from any source), the affiliate's cookie claims commission. The advertiser pays commission for a sale the affiliate had zero influence on.
NO Cookie stuffing: placing tracking cookies without genuine referral. The fraud claims commission for sales the affiliate didn't generate. Detect via: monitoring referral source vs cookie source discrepancies.
Question 4 of 5
Why should affiliates be prohibited from bidding on the brand's own trademark keywords in Google Ads?
A
A: It violates Google's advertising policies
B
B: Affiliates bidding on brand terms drives up the brand's own CPC and captures conversions that would have happened organically through branded search - paying commission for zero incremental value
C
C: It creates too much competition for the same keywords
D
D: Google prohibits affiliate advertising on brand terms
OK Brand keyword bidding by affiliates: the affiliate bids on 'YourBrand.com', their ad appears above your own brand campaign, captures the click, and earns commission when the customer buys. The customer was already going to buy (they searched for your brand name). You pay commission for a conversion that was 100% going to happen and actually increases your own brand campaign CPC.
NO Brand bidding by affiliates captures conversions that would have happened organically and drives up your own brand campaign costs. Prohibit brand keyword bidding in affiliate programme T&Cs and monitor with Google Auction Insights.
Question 5 of 5
What is the standard cookie duration for affiliate programmes and what does it mean?
A
A: 24 hours - affiliates must generate sales the same day
B
B: 30 days - if a user visits via an affiliate link, the affiliate earns commission on any purchase made within 30 days, even if they visit the site multiple times through other channels first
C
C: 1 year - permanently tracks all future purchases
D
D: Cookie duration is set by the user's browser, not the programme
OK A 30-day cookie means the affiliate gets credit for any purchase made within 30 days of the first affiliate-referred click, even through subsequent direct visits. This 30-day window is the standard balance between rewarding affiliates for long consideration cycles and not over-crediting for very delayed purchases.
NO Standard 30-day cookie: affiliate earns commission if the user purchases within 30 days of clicking the affiliate link, even through subsequent direct visits. 30 days balances affiliate reward against long consideration cycles.
–of 5
Answer all 5 questions, then check your score.
✏️ Your Task
🔒
Score 3/5 to unlock this
Complete the quiz above first. The moment you score 3 or more, this section unlocks.
🏅
🎉 Day 34 — done!
Day 35 opens Monday.
📝 Today's Task
Someone in your family runs a small business. In 3–4 sentences, explain Clarigital to them like you're actually WhatsApp-ing them right now. Your own words — not copied from the page.
Start like this: "So there's this platform I was reading about — it's basically for businesses that get too many WhatsApp messages to handle manually. It lets them..."
0 / 800
From your registration confirmation email. Can't find it?
Submitting before 11 PM IST on your assigned Thursday counts as Day 34 complete.
Week 6 · Coming Tomorrow
Day 35 — Influencer Marketing - Strategy, Selection & MeasurementOpens Monday on your assigned date.