1. What is affiliate marketing?
Affiliate marketing is a practice within online marketing that consists of the achievement of results after the recommendation of products and services of a third party. In other words, a business collaboration between two companies that use the recommendation of products and services to promote themselves, either the recommendation of one or both of them.
The desired results are, normally, the purchase of the promoted company, which also involves the collection of a commission by the company that carries out the recommendation on its website. While for years there have been websites that perform affiliate marketing to obtain commissions with the promotion, there are more and more companies that join together and form a product or service with the goal of reaching the same target audience and getting the same customers.
To understand how this branch of online marketing works you must take into account the following key factors in its operation:
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Advertiser
Also called advertiseror merchandiser, is the company that wishes to promote its product or service through the placement of a link or advertisement to it on the website of a third party.
This is not to be confused with the usual paid online advertising. If normally in paid advertisements you pay to occupy an advertiser’s space on the network, the advertiser or advertiser in affiliate marketing will not pay for obtaining space on the internet, but will pay a commission to the other company once the action agreed between both parties has been achieved (which is usually the moment when visitors make a purchase at the advertising company).
Affiliate
The affiliate, sometimes also called publisher, is the company or partner that is responsible for advertising another company or advertiser (advertiser)by offering to place an advertisement or link on its own website. In other words, the affiliate allows other companies to promote themselves on your website. The affiliate will not accept links from any company, but only those links that have relationship with the content of your website, and that especially are of interest to your visitors.
The affiliate does not receive payment for the placement of these links on its website, but receives the commission once the action agreed with the advertiser has been fulfilled, which is usually the purchase of the product or service on the advertiser’s website. It can be inferred that basically the relationship between the advertiser and the affiliate is a business collaboration.
Affiliate link
This is the element agreed between the advertiser and the affiliate to place on the affiliate’s website. This link is usually directed towards the product or service of interest of the advertiserlocated on its own website. This link must be prepared with a code that allows the tracking of the action performed by visitors to the affiliate’s website. Only with the tracking of this link will it be possible to ensure that the action is carried out correctly, as well as the successful payment to the affiliate after the achievement of the results.
Thus, affiliate marketing seeks that customer of the affiliate can also become customer of the advertiser. This becomes important when the affiliation involves the creation of a common product or service. Both companies, then, would take on the role of advertiser and affiliate, and between them would seek to get visitors to access the links on their websites and make the purchase.
2. Advantages and disadvantages of affiliate marketing
This business collaboration seems, at first, an interesting way to agree on an online marketing method. This brings a number of advantages that benefit all parties, and obviously, they depend on your interest in acting as the advertiser, as an affiliate or opting for real
