Affiliate marketing is a type of performance-based marketing
in which a business plunder one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer
brought about by the affiliate's own marketing efforts. The industry has four
core players: the merchant (also known as 'retailer' or 'brand'), the network (that
contains offers for the affiliate to choose from and also takes care of the
payments), 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
party 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 (SEO), paid
search engine marketing (PPC - Pay Per Click), e-mail marketing, and in some
sense display advertising. On the other hand, affiliates sometimes use less
orthodox techniques, such as publishing fake reviews of products or services
offered by a partner.
Affiliate marketing is commonly confused with referral
marketing, as both forms of marketing use third parties to drive sales to the
retailer. However, both are distinct forms of marketing and the main difference
between them is that affiliate marketing relies purely on financial motivations
to drive sales while referral marketing relies on trust and personal
relationships to drive sales.
