Affiliate marketing is a web-based marketing strategy where the owner gives a small amount of money to a website it’s affiliated with for each unique visitor they attract to the business as a result of the affiliate marketing.
While many online retailers continue to shy away from this practice as a viable marketing practice, affiliates are more often than not part of a merchant’s online marketing program. The fact is, many e-tailers have embraced affiliate marketing due to the fact that they only pay marketers if they themselves get paid. Also, affiliate marketing often compliments the other more tested online marketing methods such as SEO, bookmarking and search engine marketing.
Arguably, affiliate marketing works best been used in conjunction parallel to these other popular online advertising methods: organic search engine optimization, Google Adwords and social networking. Websites using Web 2.0 practices, including blogging, user communities and RSS feeds have found success with integrating affiliate marketing practices in these areas as well.
Affiliate marketing networks tend to vary in structure. Most are hierarchical and pay out within a certain pecking order. Two-tier programs also exist but are in the great minority. Unlike multi-level-marketing (MLM) or network marketing programs, there are also very few requirements to become an affiliate.
As far as affiliate compensation, most merchant websites now use a cost per sale (CPS) revenue sharing process. In a nutshell: if a merchant receives a sale as a direct result of a customer clicking on a link at an affiliate’s site, the affiliate marketer is paid. Previously used methods like cost per mile currently account for less than one percent of the affiliate marketing compensation methods being used today
Currently a self-regulated marketplace, affiliate marketing is often considered to be run by those on the fringes of online marketing. The most successful affiliate marketers adopt a “pioneer” attitude early on which might explain why there still is no overall standard operating procedure for affiliate marketers.
As a conclusion, almost anyone can be an affiliate marketer at the comfor of their home. There are many successful affiliate marketers out there so I’m sure you can also succeed.
Affiliate Marketers often use resources associated with Article Marketing because Unique Articles can drive massive amounts of visitors to the affiliates review websites.
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Posted under More than a newbie. Learning together.
This post was written by Robjohn on June 22, 2009



