Affiliate Marketing

What is Affiliate Marketing Type of performance-based marketing that rewards affiliates for generating leads or sales. The most common forms of affiliate marketing are through search engine, social media, and advertising. The main form of marketing employed online.

Online Marketing Affiliate marketing gives companies the ability to target customers better than ever before. In the early days of the Internet, people were bombarded with popups and spam that did not relate to the user or the content being browsed. Affiliate marketing has allowed networks like Facebook and Google to use user demographic information, interests, etc. to better personalize advertising.

Search Engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo) are the primary utilizers of affiliate marketing. They have very high traffic volume and the power to influence which websites users visit based on search ranking. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is how companies try to improve their ranking results.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Paid SEO, like Google AdWords, are advertisements displayed and highlighted at the top and side bars of search results. AdWords uses a cost per click (CPC) referral revenue model. Depending on how competitive the keyword(s), Adwords advertisements can range from $.55 to over $55 per click. (AdWords advertisements equates for 97% of Google’s annual revenue, $33 billion in 2010). Organic SEO, however, is when companies do not pay search engines but instead write keyword articles and generate backlinks to their website.

Making Money From Blogging Blogs with high traffic volume often place links within their text and advertisements on their pages that relate to the content of the blog. Google AdSense allows bloggers to sell advertising space to people using AdWords because they recognize the correlation between the two. AdSense allows the blogger to really push the product they are writing about and make a commission when the user clicks on the link or advertisement.

Affiliate Models There are many different types of affiliate marketing models, which can be simple or complicated. A simple example would be an affiliate directory as there are only the directory and the affiliate. An example of a complex affiliate model is an affiliate network, which is typically comprised of 2-3 parties, all sharing a commission for every sale.

Affiliate Network Within an affiliate network there is a network administrator, affiliate coordinator, and affiliate. An example is how DecoNetwork (network administrator) provides Brilliant Promoting (affiliate coordinator) with an affiliate network to give away free ecommerce websites to affiliate clients like DECA chapters and students. Affiliate marketing programs are great for young business professionals who want to test the waters of entrepreneurship as there is typically little to no risk.