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A program that allows other companies or individuals to market a company’s products or services for a commission fee per item sold.
eCommerce program under which owners of one website (for instance, a website about mountain biking) send users to another website (such as an on-line bookstore) to purchase related items. The owner of the target site shares its profits from the sales with the owner of the referring site.
if you want to take your site to the next level? If you have a content-driven Web site, how can you make money off your traffic? If you are an online merchant, how can you get people to your site to buy your products? One popular option that serves both of these functions is an affiliate program.
There are at least three parties in an affiliate program transaction:
- The customer
- The affiliate site
- The merchant site
Payment
There are three basic types of affiliate program payment arrangements:
- Pay-per-sale (also called cost-per-sale): Amazon.com’s affiliate program is an example of a pay-per-sale arrangement. In this arrangement, the merchant site pays an affiliate when the affiliate sends them a customer who purchases something. Some merchant Web sites, like Amazon.com, pay the affiliate a percentage of the sale and others pay a fixed amount per sale.
- Pay-per-click (cost-per-click): In these programs, the merchant site pays the affiliate based on the number of visitors who click on the link to come to the merchant’s site. They don’t have to buy anything, and it doesn’t matter to the affiliate what a visitor does once he gets to the merchant’s site.
- Pay-per-lead (cost-per-lead): Companies with these programs pay their affiliates based on the number of visitors they refer who sign up as leads. This simply means the visitor fills out some requested information at the merchant site, which the merchant site may use as a sales lead or sell to another company as a sales lead.
Affiliate marketing is a superb way for any business to market the products and services. There are loads of benefits connected with this sort of marketing on both sides for the affiliate and the merchant.