What is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate Marketing is “an Internet-based marketing practice in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliate's marketing efforts.” 

The Affiliate Marketing process has 3 players in its cycle:
    The seller (Jim’s accounting books)
    The promoter/publisher (accounting4you.com)
    And the prospect (Sam, an aspiring Accountant)
The phenomenal rise of eCommerce has seen the birth of a complete industry and now companies are being represented online by specialist affiliate agencies. The basic premise of Affiliate Marketing is the use of one website and/or network to drive traffic and prospects to another. The recipient of this traffic rewards the ‘directing’ website on either a ‘fee per visitor’ or a ‘fee per sale’ basis.
As the industry has expanded we have “publishers” using a number of online tools to direct traffic to “sellers” sites that they represent and in turn increasing their commissions. Some of the tools they use include:
    Email marketing
    Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
    Pay Per Click (PPC) marketing
    Banner Advertising
    Reviews and blogs

So Where did Affiliate Marketing Start?

Many online experts believe that Affiliate Marketing began in the Adult industry in the early 90’s with a PPC campaign that was conceptualised to help deliver prospects to various websites. Closely followed were more mainstream companies that focused on delivering sales to “the seller” and taking a percentage of the profit or a “commission” – the most well known of these companies was Amazon. Their Affiliate Program has become the benchmark for many companies around the world wide web.
As the viability of eCommerce has matured, so too has the perception of Affiliate Marketing and some of the figures surrounding its value are vast. The “Econsultancy's Affiliate Marketing Networks Buyer's Guide” estimated that in 2006 the UK affiliate marketing sector to be worth more than ￡2 billion with 60% growth per year.

Why Should we Look Into Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate Marketing offers many advantages to businesses online. Of our players in the Affiliate marketing Cycle:
    The seller (Jim’s accounting books)
    The promoter/publisher (accounting4you.com)
    And the prospect (Sam, an aspiring Accountant)
The seller and the publisher both have a lot to gain from being involved in a positive proactive affiliate program. As the seller, Jim needs customers and as a publisher accountants4you.com need the revenue supplied though the program.

Affiliate Marketing Conclusion

As online continues to boom companies will see Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising as the easy way to drive traffic to their website. Unfortunately this simple case of supply vs. demand will see the cost of advertising on Search Engines continue to soar, so we need to look for new more innovative ways to communicate online – Affiliate Marketing is certainly one of these.
The importance of being part of a well respected program is obvious, with such growth comes business cowboys that look to exploit an inexperienced marketplace. Be sure that you have done the research on the best program to be a part of or pay a professional to manage your campaign for you.