affilitate marketing

Affiliate marketing is a type of performance-based marketing in which a business reward one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought by the affiliate’s own marketing efforts.

Affiliate marketing overlaps with other Internet marketing methods to some degree because affiliates often use regular advertising methods. Those methods include organic search engine optimization (SEO), paid search engine marketing  (PPC – Pay Per Click), email marketing, content marketing and (in some sense) display advertising. On the other hand, affiliates sometimes use less orthodox techniques, such as publishing reviews of products or services offered by a partner.

Affiliate marketing is commonly confused with referral marketing, as both forms of marketing use third parties to drive sales to the retailer. The two forms of marketing are differentiated, however, in how they drive sales, where affiliate marketing relies purely on financial motivations, while referral marketing relies more on trust and personal relationships.

Affiliate marketing is frequently overlooked by advertisers. While search engine email and website syndication capture much of the attention of online retailers affiliate marketing carries a much lower profile. Still, affiliates continue to play a significant role in e – retailers marketing strategies.                                                                                                             Web 2.0                                                                          Websites and services based on web 2.0 concepts—blogging and interactive online communities for example—have impacted the affiliate marketing world as well. These platforms allow improved communication between merchants and affiliates. Web 2.0 platforms have also opened affiliate marketing channels to personal bloggers, writers, and independent website owners. contextual ads allow publishers with lower levels of web traffic to place affiliate ads on websites. Forms of new media have also diversified how companies, brands, and ad networks serve ads to visitors. For instance, YouTube allows video-makers to embed advertisements through Google’s affiliate network  New developments have made it more difficult for unscrupulous affiliates to make money. Emerging black sheep are detected and made known to the affiliate marketing community with much greater speed and efficiency.     Performance/affiliate marketing                                                                                 In the case of cost per mile /click, the publisher is not concerned about whether a visitor is a member of the audience that the advertiser tries to attract and is able to convert because at this point the publisher has already earned his commission. This leaves the greater, and, in case of cost per mile, the full risk and loss (if the visitor cannot be converted) to the advertiser. Cost per action /sale methods requires that referred visitors do more than visit the advertiser’s website before the affiliate receives a commission. The advertiser must convert that visitor first. It is in the best interest of the affiliate to send the most closely targeted traffic to the advertiser as possible to increase the chance of a conversion. The risk and loss are shared between the affiliate and the advertiser. Affiliate marketing is also called “performance marketing”, in reference to how sales employees are typically being compensated. Such employees are typically paid a commission for each sale they close, and sometimes are paid performance incentives for exceeding objectives. Affiliates are not employed by the advertiser whose products or services they promote, but the compensation models applied to affiliate marketing are very similar to the ones used for people in the advertisers’ internal sales department. The phrase, “Affiliates are an extended sales force for your business”, which is often used to explain affiliate marketing, is not completely accurate. The primary difference between the two is that affiliate marketers provide little if any influence on a possible prospect in the conversion process once that prospect is directed to the advertiser’s website. The sales team of the advertiser, however, does have the control and influence up to the point where the prospect either a) signs the contract, or b) completes the purchase.                                                                Locating affiliate programs.                                       There are three primary ways to locate affiliate programs for a target website:                           1. Affiliate program directories,                                                                                                 2.Large affiliate networks that provide the platform for dozens or even hundreds of advertisers.                                                                                                                               3.The target website itself. (Websites that offer an affiliate program often have a link titled “affiliate program”, “affiliates”, “referral program, or webmasters “—usually in the footer or “About” section of the website.)                                                                                                     If the above locations do not yield information pertaining to affiliates, it may be the case that there exists a non-public affiliate program. Utilizing one of the common website correlation methods may provide clues about the affiliate network. The most definitive method for finding this information is to contact the website owner directly if a contact method can be located