Do you want to know more about affiliate marketing? This article will help you understand and answer your questions about this industry. First and foremost, affiliate marketing is a performance-based marketing channel.
Publishers use their blog, website or social channels to partner with brands, promote that brands products and earn commissions for any sales made. Now let's talk about who publishers are and the types you'll find in the marketing affiliate network.
A publisher is a blog website, mobile app, shopping platform, social channel or browser add-on that drives consumers to a brand site. They use affiliate links on their site to drive traffic to the advertiser site.
Publishers can fall in many categories but the main ones are coupon and cashback publishers, content publishers, social media influencers, loyalty publishers, shopping.
Next let's talk about advertisers. An advertiser is a merchant or brand with an online presence, that's looking to drive traffic back to their site.
They want to sell products and pay commission to sites that refer traffic and sales. Affiliate marketing starts with a partnership between an advertiser and a publisher through an affiliate network. The publisher hosts links for certain products from a specific brand on their site. Their readers click through that link they are taken to the advertiser site. The consumer purchases the product. The original referring publisher is paid a commission by the affiliate Network. Let me give you an example, so let's say that you're a consumer wanting to buy a camping tent, but you want to shop around for the best deal. Since you already know what you want to buy, you probably head to a few review sites for campers. The site will recommend a tent to you and you decide to buy. You click through the review site to the actual tent on brands site. Affiliate marketing network will track your click in their database when you purchase the tent.
The advertiser will receive your payment for sale, but the review site will also receive a commission for referring you. So now you understand how affiliate marketing works. Let's recap the benefits of this channel for both the advertiser and the publisher. Advertisers use affiliate marketing to find new customers outside their traditional reach, increase traffic and orders on their site, gauge real-time consumer demand and identify new opportunities in their industry. Publishers use affiliate marketing to deliver great offers to their readers, create and build relationships with their favorite brands and earn commission's through their website and social channels. Affiliate marketing is a robust industry offering many great opportunities for your business get your program up and running.
