Affiliate Marketing is the promotion of an affiliate program in exchange for a commission per sale.
Click on the following link for more information on how affiliate advertising works.
To explain how affiliate program marketing works I’m assuming that a merchant is outsourcing the management of their affiliate program to an independent affiliate directory.
Merchants can use in house affiliate management software, however, if you’re new to affiliate program marketing and somewhat skeptical of how it works then discussing affiliate program marketing in terms of an independent affiliate directory will hopefully negate any negative ideas about affiliate program marketing knowing that an independent company are tracking and paying the affiliate.
Merchants sign up to an affiliate directory and communicate how much they are willing to pay per sale as well as various other terms and conditions and they pay the affiliate directory for this service.
Affiliates join the affiliate directory and then have access to all the companieslisted in the directory. Often the directory will show which the best performing affiliate programs are. The affiliate management software will assign a unique tracking code to an affiliate link which the webmaster will copy and paste onto their website
Traffic to your website that clicks on the affiliate link will be tracked by the affiliate management software. Most affiliate management software has the ability to record that a visitor was sent from your affiliate link and reward you for a sale even if the visitor only buys something a month later.
So the affiliate management software tracks visitors and sales and usually when the affiliate has made a certain amount of money the affiliate directory will send a cheque or direct deposit usually every 30 days.
I hope that explains how affiliate program marketing works.
October 21, 2008
Miscellaneous