Understanding Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate Marketing is a online phrase used to describe the promotion of internet businesses by the channel of affiliate programs and the marketing of these products on websites and it dates back to the mid 90’s.By doing this the vendor compensates the affiliate (also known as the publisher) a approved percentage of commission based on the amount of trade their website brings the merchant company.
Some companies such as Clickbank, Paydotcom and Shareasale typically have set percentage rates for affiliates which can be up to 75% for some products. Some consider affiliate marketing to be a form of revenue sharing or another term regularly used is commission based advertising.
In the early days of “affiliate marketing”, it was associated as another structure of network marketing or multi-level marketing (MLM) and as a result of this misconception allot of online businesses made the decision to use the expression “performance marketing” to steer clear of any relation to affiliate marketing. This also created a large problem for affiliates in the past, as many online users had a propensity to frown on whatever thing that even looked like multi-level marketing.
Over time and with a great deal of determination from those that are now established as super affiliates it has turned out to be the most cost effective way for merchants to market their products or services online as it is very efficient in the fact that the affiliate has to do all the work to make the sale. So as a result of this, many online companies especially those that embraced this form of marketing in the beginning owe a tremendous amount to affiliate marketing as a perfect example just take a look at amazon.com and the way it has become the done thing for online companies to include affiliate marketing in many of their online strategies to promote their products.
The Advantages Of Affiliate Marketing
The model of revenue sharing has been around for some time, allot longer than online business and the internet. But the idea of affiliate marketing has taken it to new levels, and become a primary form of advertising and bringing in business for all types of e-commerce. Internet merchants find affiliate marketing highly advantageous due to the fact that it presents little to no risk both for the merchant and the ‘affiliate”.
Here is how it all works, the affiliate will earn money if the affiliate brings to the merchants website, either through on-line links on the affiliates website – or through email, blogs, RSS feeds and many other kinds of on-line communication that are available to the affiliate. If a sale is made or the desired action is accomplished then the affiliate will earn a designated commission payment from the vendor or affiliate network.
Some merchants (only about 1% of affiliate marketing) use a cost-per-click remuneration system but this is now starting to grow as a viable form of money generation from main stream affiliates by using the CPA marketing networks, which simply means that the affiliate earns some form of commission every time a website visitor clicks on an advert on their site or when you send out an email with a affiliate link.
However in the past and mainly due to the many “blackhatters”and fraudsters online that were taking advantage of this method by way of creating such things as (ad-ware, sending spam, or keyword heavy and useless indexing sites) this form of remuneration is now allot more regulated and even to the extent of having IP addresses tracked and accounts canceled if you are generating what is considered as fraudulent clicks and for many in the past this form of advertising had become too risky for merchants to use.
What Are The Distinctive Forms Of Affiliate Marketing
There are a few different ways that an affiliate can earn commissions online. Firstly you need to decide which of these is right for you and then join the merchant affiliate program this is so any payment can be received through any referrals from your website to the merchant, Here are four methods that are currently used online today, however you need to read the terms and conditions of each affiliate program you wish to join.
- Pay Per Click Marketing is simply a strategy that affiliates use where they display advertisements on their affiliate site and they are then paid when a customer clicks on that website advertisement whether it is a text link or image link.
- Emailing your subscriber lists sending legit emails to your website opt-ins with your affiliate link embedded “Spam Is Not Tolerated” make sure you study the TOS of the affiliate program before doing this.
- CPA Affiliate Marketing is when one of your website visitors registers with a specific site whether this is a free newsletter or subscription, free offers from other companies are represented and advertised through this form of marketing as well.
- Clickbank, Shareasle, Paydotcom are all affiliate marketing networks they have many thousands of products or services for you to choose from as well as being free to join. Some programs even allow multi-tier or what is called a recurring payment structure set up.
Hopefully our article has helped you to understand more about affiliate marketing and we would like to wish you well in all of your undertakings online.
