AFFILIATE MARKETING

What is Affiliate Marketing?

• A way for retailers/advertisers to sell more products with little up front cost
• A publsher drives traffic to an ecomerce site in return for an agreed commision, paid out for visitors taking a specific action within a timeframe. 

Whos involved?

Affiliate Marketing is split between four participants:

1. The Merchant: AKA the retailer or advertiser. They are looking to increase sales.

2. The Network: Acts as the middle man between the merchant and publishers. A publisher could sign up and gain access to any merchant that the network is working with, and vice versa. (Amazon, Commission Junction / Affiliate Window)

3. The Publisher: These include affiliate links to retailers and their sites and promote the products of said retailers, in the hope the traffic converts into a sale on the retailers site. 

4. The Customer: The online consumer who clicks on the links on the publisher website and is then redirected to the retailer/advertiser site to complete the purchase. 

Affiliate models

Affiliate Marketing has three affiliate model options:

In-House: The advertiser builds and manages the affiliate network themselves to keep costs low and keep knowledge and best practice in-house, this model can take a long time to build depending on resources.

Affiliate networks: In order to scale quickly, the advertiser will use…