Affiliate Program Primer
Tuesday, 26. January 2010
What is an affiliate program?
Affiliate Marketing is a marketing practice in which one business rewards an affiliate for each customer or visitor referred by the affiliate’s marketing endeavors. Examples include paid to promote (visitor traffic per 1000), paid to complete (visitor completes survey, etc.), and paid per sale (percentage or fixed compensation).
The affiliate marketing industry has four key participants:
- The merchant (a.k.a. brand, retailer, or site);
- An intermediate company that recruits and manages affiliates;
- The affiliate (company or website owner);
- And the customer.
The most active affiliate marketing sectors are the adult, gambling, and retail industries. Three sectors expected to experience the most growth are the mobile phone, finance, and travel sectors. It is also reasonable to expect to see the sectors entertainment and Internet-related services.
The biggest impact on affiliate marketing in recent history is the explosion of Web 2.0. These include blogs, interactive online communities, and social networking sites. This new real-time media allows merchants to be closer to their affiliates and the improved communication between them leads to increased revenue for both the affiliate and the merchant.
As you can see, anyone who has a blog or website and participate in affiliate marketing. Next to direct advertising, affiliate marketing is a leading revenue source for bloggers and website owners. By starting in the infancy of a blog or website, you can control the success of your marketing strategy by tailoring your blog or site to produce concentrated content, thus making easy internet money faster.
