Affiliate marketing is a marketing practice in which a business rewards one or more
affiliates for each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliate's own marketing efforts. Examples include rewards sites, where users are rewarded with cash or gifts, for the completion of an offer, and the referral of others to the site. The industry has four core players: the merchant (also known as 'retailer' or 'brand'), the
network, the publisher (also known as 'the affiliate'), and the customer. The market has grown in complexity to warrant a secondary tier of players, including affiliate management agencies, super-affiliates and specialized third parties
vendors.
Affiliate marketing overlaps with other Internet marketing methods to some degree, because affiliates often use regular
advertising methods. Those methods include organic
search engine optimization, paid
search engine marketing,
e-mail marketing, and in some sense
display advertising. On the other hand, affiliates sometimes use less orthodox techniques, such as publishing reviews of products or services offered by a partner.
Affiliate marketing—using one website to drive
traffic to another—is a form of
online marketing, which is frequently overlooked by advertisers.
[1] While
search engines, e-mail, and
website syndication capture much of the attention of online retailers, affiliate marketing carries a much lower profile. Still, affiliates continue to play a significant role in
e-retailers' marketing strategies.
[2]
Click on this link for more information about affiliate marketing