Adam Wolf - Affiliate Marketing: Develop an Online Business Empire from Selling Other Peoples Products

Affiliate marketing is basically talent-based marketing where one gets rewarded for every customer brought in by the affiliates own marketing efforts. Affiliate marketing is usually considered to be an industry with four major players: The merchant, the network, the publisher and the customer. The merchant is also known as the retailer or the brand; the network is where the affiliate chooses the offer from and it also deals with the payments. The publisher is also known as the affiliate and the customer is the one who finally buys the product. This affiliate marketing has grown complex over the years and it has resulted in a secondary level of players derived from the affiliate marketing field such as super-affiliates, affiliate management firms, and third party vendors.

Internet marketing methods get overlapped by affiliate marketing to some degree because regular advertising methods are used by the affiliate which includes SEO which is also known as search engine optimization, e-mail marketing, paid search engine marketing, content marketing and also displaying advertisements in hoardings which is very common these days. Whereas affiliates also use some other less orthodox techniques, such as review publication of the final product or services offered by a partner.

Difference Between Referral and Affiliate

Referral marketing is commonly confused with affiliate marketing as both the industries use third parties to drive sales to the retailer. However, both are very distinct, different forms of marketing and the main difference is that trust and personal relationship is paramount to drive sales in referral marketing whereas affiliate marketing purely relies on financial motivation to drive sales. Advertisers usually overlook affiliate marketing. While search engines, website syndication and electronic mail is used to attract and capture attention of the online vendors, affiliate marketing has a lower profile compared. Still, a significant role is played by the affiliates in e-retailers marketing strategies.

Inception of Affiliate Marketing

The concept of affiliate marketing was brought to the Internet by William J. Tobin who put this into practice. Affiliate marketing has grown very quickly since its inception. The e-commerce website which in the early days was thought of as a marketing toy later started to become a more integral part of the overall business plan than the offline business which was already in existence. The sectors like adult gambling, retail industries and file sharing services became the most active sectors of affiliate marketing. Several affiliate solution providers anticipate a hike in interest from the b2b marketers and also a rise in the advertisers in using affiliate marketing as part of their mix.

The later developments in the Internet such as blogging and other interactive online communities have helped to improve communication between affiliates and merchants. Web 2.0 also started many new online business platforms to improve and enhance the quality of communication between the merchants and the affiliates. Affiliate marketing is also very popularly known as performance marketing, in reference to how sales employees are typically being compensated. Advertisers dont employ the affiliates. Affiliates are usually known as the extended sales for the business that is very often used to describe affiliate marketing. Network program managers and affiliate managers are used to run outsourced program management companies that are being used by the merchants. The role of an advertising agency server and the affiliate program management performed by the OPM companies are similar.