Affiliate marketingAffiliate Marketing is a popular method of promoting web businesses in which an affiliate is rewarded for every visitor, subscriber and/or customer provided through his efforts. It is a modern variation of the practice of paying finder's-fees for the introduction of new clients to a business. Compensation may be made based on a certain value for each visit (Pay per click), registrant (Pay per lead), or a commission for each customer or sale (Pay per Sale), or any combination. The most attractive aspect of affiliate marketing, from the merchant's viewpoint, is that with this pay for performance model, no payment is due to an affiliate until results are realized. Some e-commerce sites run their own affiliate programs while other e-commerce vendors use third party services provided by intermediaries to track traffic or sales that are referred from affiliates. Some businesses owe much of their growth and success to this marketing technique, although research has shown in general the increase to be approximately 15-20% of online revenue. Some advertisers offer multi-tier affiliate programs that distribute commission into a hierarchical referral network of sign-ups and sub-affiliates. In practical terms: publisher "A" signs up the affiliate program with an advertiser and gets rewarded for the agreed activity conducted by a referred visitor. If publisher "A" attracts other publishers ("B", "C", etc.) to sign up for the same affiliate program using her sign-up code all future activities by the joining publishers "B" and "C" will result in additional, lower commission for publisher "A". Snowballing, this system rewards a chain of hierarchical publishers who may or may not know of each others' existence, yet generate income for the higher level signup. Most affiliate programs are simply one-tier. Merchants who are considering adding an affiliate strategy to their online sales channel should research the different technological solutions available to them. Some types of affiliate management solutions include: standalone software, hosted services, shopping carts with affiliate features, and third party affiliate networks. The new WebThe rise of blogging, interactive online communities and other new technologies, web sites and services based on the concepts that are now called Web 2.0 have impacted the affiliate marketing world as well. The new media allowed merchants to get closer to their affiliates and improved communication between each other. New portals like Return on Affiliates allow affiliates, merchants, and networks to interconnect easily, on a professional and a personal level.
---------------------- Get targeted traffic and sell
When you have selected the affiliate program you want to market on your web site,
you need a constant flow of targeted visitors buying your advertised services and products, i.e. good web traffic. |