What is Affiliate Marketing?

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


The industry has four core players:

• The Merchant (also known as 'retailer' or 'brand') 

• The Network (that contains offers for the affiliate to choose from and also takes care of the payments) 

• The publisher (also known as 'the affiliate') 

• The customer The market has grown in complexity, resulting in the emergence of a secondary tier of players, including affiliate management agencies, super-affiliates, and specialized third party vendors.

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), e-mail 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. However, both are distinct forms of marketing and the main difference between them is that affiliate marketing relies purely on financial motivations to drive sales while referral marketing relies on trust and personal relationships to drive sales.


Affiliate marketing is frequently overlooked by advertisers, While search engines, e-mail, 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.

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is internet advertising that allows any online business to affiliate themselves with website owners (known as affiliates or publishers) using affiliate programs. Affiliates make money by generating sales, leads, and traffic for the Merchants business. Merchants who sell goods and services online or seek other affiliate business activity typically use one of the affiliate program commission payment models below:

• Cost Per Sale (CPA) 

A visitor referred by the Affiliate purchases goods and services from the Merchant. This payment structure is referred to as - cost per sale or cost per acquisition (CPA).

• Cost Per Lead (CPL) 

A visitor referred by the Affiliate completes a form on the Merchants web site. This payment structure is referred to as - cost per lead (CPL).

• Cost Per Click (CPC) 

A visitor to the Affiliates website clicks on a Merchant's banner and visits the Merchant's website. This payment structure is referred to as - cost per click (CPC).

Merchant and Affiliate:

Merchants - Affiliate marketing is an excellent way to build your own large online sales team and drive customers to your affiliate business website on a 'pay for performance' basis. As a Merchant, you can build your own pay per sale, pay per lead or pay per click Affiliate program and use graphic, text and custom HTML/Flash advertisements to promote and drive customers to your website.


Affiliates will join your program and display your advertisements on their websites, sending customers and traffic back to your site. All the Affiliate programs you build are free and provide you with comprehensive online management and sale reporting tools so that you can track your sales, impressions and the customer traffic reaching your website. You have full control over your Affiliate program, what country your traffic comes from and which Affiliates promote your program. You also have complete control over the rate paid for each sale (CPA), lead(CPL), click(CPC) or the display of one thousand of your banners(CPM).


Affiliates - Affiliate marketing allows you to earn high income from your website while providing related services to your visitors. You can start earning money today with your website by joining one of the thousands of Affiliate programs located on this site. Many online businesses offer Affiliate programs as a way of generating sales and traffic for their online businesses. These companies will pay you high commissions based on the traffic they receive from advertisements you place on your site. You can choose from pay- per-sale, pay-per-lead, pay-per-click or pay-per-display Affiliate programs. All the listed programs are free to join and provide you with online statistics so that you can track your commissions. Once you have joined an Affiliate program, you will be paid according to the programs pay type. (i.e.) a pay-per-sale program pays you each time a sale is made by a customer sent from your website; pay-per-lead programs pay you each time you forward a lead to the Merchant; a pay-per-click program pays each time an advertisement is clicked and pay-per-display of 1000 of a merchants banners(CPM). 


Smart Affiliate Marketing Strategies


Affiliate marketing is the process of earning a commission by promoting other people’s (or company’s) products. You find a product you like, promote it to others, and earn a piece of the profit for each sale that you make.

You’re happy because you earned a commission... The company is happy because they have a new sale from a customer that they might not have normally been able to reach... And the customer is happy because they learned about a product from you that will hopefully fulfill a need or desire. 

The beauty of affiliate marketing is that you don’t have to invest the time and effort to create a product to sell. You can begin selling something as an affiliate as soon as you have a platform to sell it on.