Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate Marketing involves the use of publishers or affiliates to promote your goods or services on a pay for performance basis. It is especially popular with retailers and gaming sites. As a merchant or advertiser, your links are placed in content and adverts that are featured on affiliate websites. When a Web user clicks on a link, they are connected to the retailer, and if they purchase something the affiliate receives a small agent or referral fee, often determined as a percentage of the money the customer spends. Affiliate marketing can be mutually beneficial to both parties, offering a relatively low cost way of generating extra traffic and conversions for the merchant, while giving the affiliate an additional source of revenue. Affiliate links are most commonly used in shopping directories and price comparison websites. Affiliate programs can be run directly or through networks. Affiliate networks offer an alternative to direct affiliate partnerships. In networks, the merchants pay the overall commission to the network. The network then distributes the money to each affiliate who made a sale. While the merchant gets potential access to a wide network of affiliates, the affiliate does not necessarily need to make a certain sale amount for one particular merchant, but rather for the entire range of merchants before getting paid. However, affiliate sites can suffer if they overdo the number of links. Visitors can be wary of sites made up of links to other sites, and it can be more effective to integrate affiliate links within quality editorial content. Affiliate programs can offer a cost-effective way to generate extra revenue. Most of the providers listed are affiliate networks, but there are also companies who offer programme management of direct programmes or those run through a network.