Affiliate marketing is an Internet-based marketing practice in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliate's marketing efforts.
Affiliate marketing is also the name of the industry where a number of different types of companies and individuals are performing this form of Internet marketing, including affiliate networks, affiliate management companies, and in-house affiliate managers, specialized third party vendors, and various types of affiliates/publishers who promote the products and services of their partners.
Affiliate marketing overlaps with other Internet marketing methods to some degree, because affiliates often use regular advertising methods. Those methods include organic search engine optimization, paid search engine marketing, e-mail marketing, and in some sense display advertising. On the other hand, affiliates sometimes use less orthodox techniques, such as publishing reviews of products or services offered by a partner
The concept of revenue sharing—paying commission for referred business—predates affiliate marketing and the Internet. The translation of the revenue share principles to mainstream e-commerce happened almost four years after the origination of the World Wide Web in November 1994Affiliate marketing has grown quickly since its inception. The e-commerce website, viewed as a marketing toy in the early days of the Internet, became an integrated part of the overall business plan and in some cases grew to a bigger business than the existing offline business. According to one report, the total sales amount generated through affiliate networks in 2006 was £2.16 billion in the United Kingdom alone. The estimates were £1.35 billion in sales in 2005. MarketingSherpa's research team estimated that, in 2006, affiliates worldwide earned US$6.5 billion in bounty and commissions from a variety of sources in retail, personal finance, gaming and gambling, travel, telecom, education, publishing, and forms of lead generation other than contextual advertising programs such as Google AdSense.
Currently the most active sectors for affiliate marketing are the adult, gambling, and retail industries.The three sectors expected to experience the greatest growth are the mobile phone, finance, and travel sectors. Soon after these sectors came the entertainment (particularly gaming) and Internet-related services (particularly broadband) sectors. Also several of the affiliate solution providers expect to see increased interest from business-to-business marketers and advertisers in using affiliate marketing as part of their
Types of affiliate websites Affiliate websites are often categorized by merchants (i.e., advertisers) and affiliate networks. There are currently no industry-wide accepted standards for the categorization. The following types of websites are generic, yet are commonly understood and used by affiliate marketers.
Search affiliates that utilize pay per click search engines to promote the advertisers' offers (i.e., search arbitrage) Comparison shopping websites and directories
Loyalty websites, typically characterized by providing a reward system for purchases via points back, cash back, or charitable donations Coupon and rebate websites that focus on sales promotions
Content and niche market websites, including product review sites
Personal websites (This type of website was the reason for the birth of affiliate marketing; however, such websites are almost reduced to complete irrelevance compared to the other types of affiliate websites.)
Weblogs and website syndication feeds
E-mail list affiliates (i.e., owners of large opt-in -mail lists that typically employ e-mail drip marketing) and newsletter list affiliates, which are typically more content-heavy
Registration path or co-registration affiliates who include offers from other merchants during the registration process on their own website
Shopping directories that list merchants by categories without providing coupons, price comparisons, or other features based on information that changes frequently, thus requiring continual updates Cost per action networks (i.e., top-tier affiliates) that expose offers from the advertiser with which they are affiliated to their own network of affiliates
Websites using adbars (e.g. Adsense) to display context-sensitive, highly-relevant ads for products on the site Performance marketing
In the case of cost per mille/click, the publisher is not concerned about a visitor being a member of the audience that the advertiser tries to attract and is able to convert, because at this point the publisher has already earned his commission. This leaves the greater, and, in case of cost per mille, the full risk and loss (if the visitor can not be converted) to the advertiser.
Cost per action/sale methods require that referred visitors do more than visit the advertiser's website before the affiliate receives commission. The advertiser must convert that visitor first. It is in the best interest for the affiliate to send the most closely-targeted traffic to the advertiser as possible to increase the chance of a conversion. The risk and loss is shared between the affiliate and the advertiser.
Affiliate marketing is also called "performance marketing", in reference to how sales employees are typically being compensated. Such employees are typically paid a commission for each sale they close, and sometimes are paid performance incentives for exceeding targeted baselines.[12] Affiliates are not employed by the advertiser whose products or services they promote, but the compensation models applied to affiliate marketing are very similar to the ones used for people in the advertisers' internal sales department.
The phrase, "Affiliates are an extended sales force for your business", which is often used to explain affiliate marketing, is not completely accurate. The primary difference between the two is that affiliate marketers provide little if any influence on a possible prospect in the conversion process once that prospect is directed to the advertiser's website. The sales team of the advertiser, however, does have the control and influence up to the point where the prospect signs the contract or completes the purchase Affiliate Marketing Services in Delhi and India
Affiliate Marketing Program is the relationship between website owners and merchants whereby the merchant offers the website owner i.e. affiliate, commission for linking to his/her merchant site. Affiliate Marketing Services Delhi is one of the best ways for Merchants to sell their products online and for Webmasters to enhance an income from their website. The best way to pay Affiliates is pay per sale. This means that you only have to pay your Affiliates when they actually make a sale for you. This will certainly reduces your advertising costs dramatically. Our Affiliate marketing program in Delhi is a very economical way to advertise, however it is also very effective. Through affiliate marketing programme, WebShree will develop a network of web sites and representatives selling your product on a commission-only basis.
Marketing terms of Affiliate Marketing Services :
Cost per Sale (CPA) :
A web visitor referred by the Affiliate purchases goods and services from the Merchant. The affiliate is rewarded for the sale by being paid a percentage of the sale. This mode of payment referred to as - cost-per-sale or cost per acquisition (CPA). Cost per Lead (CPL): A visitor referred by the Affiliate completes a form and submits their information on the Merchants website. This is called a lead. This mode of payment referred to as – cost per lead (CPL). Cost per Click (CPC): A visitor to the Affiliates website clicks on a Merchants link and visits the Merchants website. This mode of payment referred to as - cost per click (CPC).
Welcome to Affiliate Marketing :
Affiliate Marketing (AM) is a unique affiliate network specializing in driving sales to advertisers on a cost per acquisition basis. We have built a fantastic reputation by delivering the highest ROI available online and we look forward to helping you grow your business with a successful affiliate marketing programme.
Important Announcement :
As you may be aware we have managed two affiliate marketing networks, Silvertap and Affiliate Marketing UK Ltd, for some time. Based on internal requirements and ongoing affiliate feedback we have wanted to amalgamate the two to enable us to push on with one platform, one brand and more importantly one message! We are now trading as Silvertap, so please click here and you will be directed to the Silvertap website where you can find out more about us.
Affiliates :
We offer our affiliates some of the most up to date tracking in the industry. Our Merchant and sales reporting area enables and empowers affiliates to actively monitor campaigns on a daily basis giving the ability to optimize existing campaigns to achieve the highest commissions and ROI possible.
The benefit of working with Affiliate Marketing is we know the level of support you as an affiliate need because of our background as affiliates and our years of experience running/ building and managing affiliate campaigns. Our affiliate programmes work for our clients, our affiliates and ourselves!
You will have a dedicated account manager who will work closely with you on a one-to-one basis to make sure that you are benefiting from all of our programmes and getting the best from each one. Our account managers are easily approachable and available 24-7 for any level of query. Each account manager lives and breathes their programme and will be an expert in that area.
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