Affiliate Marketing is the
relationship between website owners and merchants whereby the
merchant offers the website owner (affiliate) commission for
linking to his/her merchant site. Affiliates send traffic
to the merchant site through these affiliate links and the
affiliate is rewarded each time a visitor converts to a sale
(CPA) or lead (CPL). In some cases the affiliate is also
paid for each click (CPC).Some merchants prefer to join affiliate networks such as
Commission Junction while many
others prefer to start their own in-house affiliate marketing
program using an affiliate
software solution such as Affiliate Wiz. The benefits
of an in-house program are the enormous cost savings.
Joining a network such as Commission Junction can be very
costly. The only drawback of an in-house affiliate program
is you must manage the program yourself and you don't have an
immediate pool of affiliates that are typically available in
affiliate networks. The cost savings often overshadow the
drawbacks.
Internet affiliate marketing has become a vital part of all
merchants' internet marketing efforts. The main sources of
web traffic for web sites in today's market are Paid Search
Engine advertising, Affiliate Marketing, and high rankings in
the organic listings of popular search engines such as
Google and Yahoo.
