A Boon To Online Advertisers
Affiliate marketing is a marketing practice in which an advertiser or a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliate’s marketing efforts. It is basically earning a commission by promoting a company’s product or service. The commission is earned only when a sale is made. One of the most versatile methods of online advertising is affiliate marketing.
Advertisers or companies start their affiliate program by populating their links through an interface and making them available for placement by publishers on their websites. A commission is assigned to each link which can be a pre set amount per hit or a sale percentage on the website of the advertiser. The sale is tracked by the advertiser once it is made using the link by the publisher. When a visitor clicks on a publisher’s or affiliate’s link, a cookie is set on the visitor’s browser that identifies the advertiser, the publisher, and the specific link and payment rates. The transaction is tracked and also recorded when the visitor fills out a form or makes an online purchase.
Affiliate marketing is beneficial for both the advertiser and the publisher. Advertisers get increased sales of their product when more publishers or affiliates promote their product. They also pay a commission only when a sale is made. The affiliates or publishers generate profits by promoting the product. Affiliate marketing is used by a lot of businesses to earn more revenue through increased sales.
The most challenging part of affiliate marketing is hiring quality affiliates. Finding the right partners and working out the final details is time consuming and may take a year as well. A lot of advertisers use affiliate marketing networks that provides the listings of interested affiliates. The next crucial step is to install a robust method to track traffic, sales and payments. This can be done in-house by installing the software or outsourced to a third party that takes care of the technology and support needed to assist the transaction. Affiliate marketing is not fraud proof. The brand name of the advertiser or company is affected if the affiliate website turns out to be a spam website. An advertiser is required be very careful of various other scams as well
Affiliate marketing is one of the most effective marketing tools that can be used to reach out to the consumers and in turn enhance sales and revenue.
