But What Is Affiliate Marketing?
If you’ve spent any amount of time with me, then you’ve heard me talk about affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing is one of the cornerstones of the Empower Network and internet marketing in general. I’ve given you an idea of what affiliate marketing is but there’s a possibility you might have more questions. There’s a lot of information about affiliate marketing out there, some true, some not. Let’s take a closer look at what exactly affiliate marketing is and how essential it is for you as an online marketer, shall we?
What IS affiliate marketing exactly? Affiliate marketing is a type of marketing wherein a business awards affiliates for each visitor brought to the business’s site by the affiliate’s marketing efforts. Fairly simple concept, right? But let’s go a bit further. Basically, the affiliate promotes your website and you reward them. Most commonly this reward is in the form of commissions from the sales they’ve generated or per click-thru to your site. How do your affiliates market your site? Well, this can vary but the most common ways are by placing a banner or ad on their site promoting you but can be as involved as having a page on their site that details your site and/or product.
This method of marketing is known as performance based marketing and involves four players. There’s the merchant, which is you; the network which contains offers for the affiliates to choose from and takes care of payment; the affiliates themselves and the customer or those drawn to your site by the affiliates’ marketing. Affiliate marketing tends to overlap with other forms of marketing and as such, is often overlooked though it still plays an essential role in online marketing strategy. Some of the methods affiliate marketing intertwines with include: search engine optimization (SEO), Pay Per Click (PPC), email marketing and display advertising.
This forms the basic understanding of affiliate marketing and next time we’ll take a closer look at the inner workings such as tracking affiliates and the mindset of the online marketer starting out in affiliate marketing. As always, please feel free to leave any and all questions and comments below! Till next time!