Terms > Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is quite a general term referring to a specific type of online marketing involving an agreement between two parties on the internet: an affiliate and a business. An affiliate is basically an individual or company that can provide traffic and the business is the one that needs that traffic. The business could be an e-commerce website, for example, in need of increasing its customer base. The affiliate is usually involved heavily in online marketing and can guide the visitors to their website(s) to the website of the business and aid in online development and the business provides financial reward for extra sales that the affiliate generates.

Although in many ways this is similar to a pay-per-click (PPC) advertising campaign such as those offered by search engines as part of their search engine marketing packages, the affiliate marketing model is usually based on the concept of cost-per-action (CPA), where the business actually only pays the affiliate if the referral generates a sale or other profitable action, like a commission. This obviously means there is some risk to the affiliate here of being short-changed, but in general it all works out for the best and is mutually beneficial for both the affiliate and the business.

Another type of affiliate marketing involves using an affiliate network. The big networks such as Commission Junction (www.cj.com) and Affiliate Window (www.affiliatewindow.com) offer a range of tools for both affiliates and businesses and provide a single location to take care of all of your affiliate needs. Affiliate Window refer to the business as a “merchant” and sticks with the name “affiliate”, and Commission Junction refers to the affiliate as an “advertiser” and the business as the “publisher”. Don’t let these terms confuse you though as they are still talking about the same thing.

Affiliate marketing can be a great way to increase the traffic to your website, and can be undertaken alongside a search engine marketing campaign for even greater exposure. Whereas with search engine marketing such as pay-per-click advertising your adverts will be shown alongside content that is relevant only to the keywords you choose, with affiliate marketing your website will be advertised in places the search engine wouldn’t put it and can therefore will find visitors among those looking for other similar services or products, or even those not looking at all who become interested.

Don’t ignore the opportunities for online development offered by this form of online marketing. You should incorporate some form of affiliate marketing into your advertising campaign for greater long-term success. It can be a very cost effective way to increase the number of visitors to your website, boost sales for greater profits and improve your company’s online profile.