About Affiliate Programs |
What Is Affiliate
Marketing?
by: Paul Colligan
Affiliate marketing is a new twist on an old concept
– commission-based sales. At its simplest,
it is a partnership between a merchant and a salesperson
where the merchant rewards the salesperson, or affiliate,
based on some measure of performance – usually
a sale, but in some cases for leads or website traffic.
The first mainstream affiliate marketing system
on the internet was launched by Amazon.com, offering
Amazon "associates" the opportunity to
receive a commission for each book they sold for
the company. Since then, many thousands of companies
have created their own affiliate programs, encouraging
online publishers and salespeople to earn commissions
through their partnerships.
There are many publishing and sales professionals
who are successful affiliate marketers, but they
are certainly not the only people participating
in the industry. There are also many "amateur"
affiliates – people who build a website, or
create an online newsletter, or in some cases simply
email their friends and recommend a product or service.
In many instances, it's no different to recommending
a particular brand or store – except that if
somebody follows the affiliate's advice, they're
rewarded for it.
Affiliate marketing may involve a number of different
strategies and techniques, from building entire
online storefronts offering the affiliate merchant's
products, adding some form of advertisement to an
existing website, to something as simple as making
recommendations in an email and including a special
affiliate link that ensures that the merchant credits
them for the sale.
The growth of affiliate marketing is constantly
increasing, as new merchants discover the value
of increasing the size of their sales force by creating
partnerships with online publishers. This is especially
true of merchants whose products or services may
appeal to a particular niche market. How better
to become established within that niche than by
working with companies and individuals who already
know the market because they're part of it?
About The Author
Paul Colligan, the Affiliate Guy, can be found online
at http://www.theaffiliateguy.com. He affiliate
marketing megasite at http://www.affiliatemarketingworld.com
is a popular destination to many.
paul@theaffiliateguy.com |
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