A Brief Synopsis of Affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing refers to an indirect marketing procedure in which a large organization uses the services of certain affiliates to enhance its business opportunities. This method is mainly adopted through the open nature of the Internet and has four major players i.e. merchant, network, publisher and the customer. The merchant is a large e-commerce website like Amazon. The network refers to the list of websites offering affiliate services like Commission Junction. The publisher is the affiliate chosen by the merchant to sell their products. The customer refers to the business sales referred by the affiliate website to the merchant.

The best thing about the affiliate theme is that it works on the pay for performance basis. The merchant has to pay the affiliates only for the business opportunities created by them. Many large websites use their own in-house affiliate programs to generate new business opportunities.

The different types of affiliate websites available these days are:

• Search affiliates- These websites work on the principle of pay per click.
• Loyalty websites- These website follow a reward system based on points back and cash back.
• Service websites- These websites use price comparison techniques to measure the payment.
• Charitable websites- These websites allow major commercial websites to promote their products in lieu of donations.
• Rebate websites – These websites offer coupons and discounts intended to attract sales. Different Niche Skins can be used at different times to make the website attractive to clients.
• Content websites- These websites use attractive promotional content for promoting products. These websites mostly contain product reviews to create interest among the prospective customers.
• Co registration affiliates- These sites contain proposals from major website during the registration process on their website.
• E-mail marketing affiliates- These websites use the e-mail marketing technique to promote products and services. These websites concentrate on high quality promotional content.
• Shopping directories- These affiliate websites offer the list of all the major websites offering products and services, thus serving as a marketing tool. They don’t contain further information like rebates, coupons, price comparisons etc.
• File sharing- These web sites host directories containing information related to entertainment like music, movies, games, shopping avenues etc. These sites are browsed extensively by the general public. So they are an ideal option for advertising products and services for major e-commerce websites.
• Cost per action affiliates- These are elite affiliates which use one merchant website affiliated with them promoting the products and services of other merchant site affiliated with them.
• Adbars Affiliates- These websites utilize adbars for showing content related to promotion of products.

So there is hardly any doubt regarding affiliate marketing being a strong Internet marketing weapon.