In these times when people – sellers and buyers alike – find great opportunities online, affiliate marketing has become a byword. And why not? New web technologies, or aptly called Web 2.0 concepts like blogging and social networking sites, has made it easier to connect people all over the world. You can get what you need with just a click of a mouse.

Actually, the logic behind this very effective internet-based marketing technique is simple. You use one or more websites or blogs to drive visitor traffic to another. It is actually a form of internet marketing and is widely popular among merchants or businesses who sell their products or provide their services online. This marketing technique provides a “win-win” situation for sellers and affiliates, and even the online customers. Here’s what happens: the affiliate (or publisher) will write brief product info and publish it in his or her blog or website (in most cases, they simply post an already made ad copy from the merchant). Usually, it has a link to the site of the company selling the product. As visitors click on the link, they will be redirected to the merchant’s main site where they can know more about the product or buy them directly. Now depending on the affiliate program, affiliates are paid through visitor clicks or rewarded with commissions whenever the online visitor they redirected to the merchant’s site actually bought a product or acquired services.

Affiliate marketing can be done in so many ways. Publishing product or service reviews is one of its traditional forms. But with the advent of blogging and social networking sites, affiliate programs now utilizes search engine optimizations, e-mail marketing, paid search engine marketing and, one of the most common methods, display advertising. Some publishers even take advantage of online forums and other interactive online communities to market these products. Web 2.0 concepts have significantly improved the communication among merchants and publishers, as well as the online visitors. Further web developments have also zeroed in on unscrupulous affiliates, making it hard for them to earn easy money. These black sheep affiliates often use spamming, false advertising, adware, forced clicks, among other methods just to attract visitors for their sponsors.

One might ask: how companies or merchants determine which visitors enter their site through a specific affiliate? Sales or traffic are tracked using specially designed softwares which are either stand-alone (or in-house) or from third party services (hosted). One of the main reasons why sellers choose this type of marketing over the other methods is that it is relatively low-risk. Its “pay-for-performance” principle enables merchants to incur marketing expenses only after achieving favorable results.

This online marketing technique has become an industry on its own, what with some experienced affiliates earn as much as $10,000 or more monthly just from commissions. Of course, it takes a lot of hard work before one becomes a “super affiliate”. It needs a lot of continuous maintenance and monitoring. It also requires publishers to be resource-intensive, so that they can market their sponsor’s products more effectively and through a variety of online channels.



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