Affiliate Marketing

The advertiser/merchant are typically referred to as affiliate merchants and the publishers/salespeople are referred to as affiliates. Where a third party advertises products or services on behalf of a retailer’s online store or website in return for an agreed commission for a sale or lead.

Affiliate marketing is a marketing practice in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliate’s own marketing efforts. Examples include rewards sites, where users are rewarded with cash or gifts, for the completion of an offer, and the referral of others to the site.

The industry has four core players: the merchant (also known as ‘retailer’ or ‘brand’), the network, the publisher (also known as ‘the affiliate’), and the customer. The market has grown in complexity to warrant a secondary tier of players, including affiliate management agencies, super-affiliates, and specialized third parties 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 optimizations, Facebook campaigns, e-mail marketing, and in some sense display advertising.

Affiliate marketing—using one website or Facebook fan-page to drive traffic to another—is a form of online marketing, which is frequently overlooked by advertisers. While search engine, e-mail, and website syndication capture much of the attention of online retailers, affiliate marketing carries a much lower profile and in many instances a higher traffic count for the retailer or brand. Affiliates continue to play a significant role in e-retailers’ marketing strategies