WHAT'S AFFILIATE MARKETING
But, what is affiliate marketing? As said, it is a system of advertising, but one that depends on a relationship between three parties: the advertiser, the publisher and the consumer. When we talk of the advertiser, it can be any company selling their products. Naturally, the advertiser wants to raise awareness of the product in order to increase sales numbers. That’s where the publisher comes in. He places ads (given by the first party) of the mentioned product on his website, in exchange for a commission. In the end, the consumer will be the one who will decide whether or not to take action on this ad (via clicks or a "contact me" form submisson or an actual web purchase) and that will be the end of the so-called conversion.
How does it work?
So far, you know what affiliate marketing is, but do you really understand how it works? Thanks to the technology called “cookies”, it is possible to track which publisher provided what number of clicks on the specified ad. Cookies are there to record specific information: login, registration, user’s preferences etc. For example, did you ever notice how after searching for “cheap flights” you started seeing airline companies’ ads on other sites you visit? This is due to these cookies, as they will remember specific info about you. Don’t worry though, they’re harmless.
In the world of affiliate marketing, cookies are used to remember the links and ads the visitor clicks on. It records the timestamp, the kind of content you like and many other specifics. Pretty handy, isn’t it? Once the user clicks on the ad, the browser receives information from the cookie regarding the ad itself, the publisher and the agreed commission. All of this is stored into “parameters” which are then used to process information accordingly.
So, in a nutshell, affiliate marketing is a great way for the publisher to earn money online by promoting someone’s business or product. If you’re a blogger, a vlogger, or you have your own successful website you might want to look into this specific term. If there’s a way for you to earn money simply by helping someone else, why not do it? If you experience high traffic, have an established trust with your readers and are advertising a great product you will most definitely achieve success. Of course, it depends on many other factors as well, but these are usually the ones you should be interested in. In fact, the reason you’re here right now is probably because you want to take advantage of the system. And why shouldn’t you?
What's Next?