What is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate Marketing is a form of performance-based marketing in which an advertiser rewards an affiliate/publisher through a commission for traffic, lead or sale being brought by the affiliate to the advertiser by the affiliate’s marketing efforts.Affiliate Marketing is one of the oldest forms of online marketing wherein an affiliate refers a visitor to a product or a service and when the visitor evinces interest or buys that product or service online the affiliate receives a commission.

• Affiliates in a way can be deemed as an extended sales force of the advertiser.
• Advertisers prefer affiliate marketing because ideally, the advertisers do not have to incur a cost until and unless a sale is conceived.
• And the terms of Affiliate Program, Affiliate Link, Affiliate Website and Affiliate Sales continue to remain in the trend because of Affiliate Marketing.

Best Case for Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate Marketing works best when the advertiser’s products and services are contextually placed on the websites, and it helps further if the ad is well supported by a write up of experience of using that product or service and the context of using that product or service.

To succeed in affiliate marketing an affiliate/publisher needs to have relevant and timely content on websites, build relationships with other niche publications and strike effective partnerships with these publications.

How can you earn with it?

The quest is for the cookies as the cookies help the advertisers identify the publications/affiliates from where the traffic, lead or sale has been generated.

Even if the visitor does not buy the same product but buys some other product from the advertiser but within a specified time frame typically 24 hours to even 90 days depending on the affiliate program, the credit and the commission for the sale of this other product still goes to the affiliate.

Some advertisers though do not give credits or commission for the purchase of any other product, other than the one in the link. So the affiliate terms and conditions need to be understood before joining the affiliate program.