Affiliate marketing is a form of Internet marketing which involves getting help from affiliates in order to bring visitors in lieu of benefits. The benefits may include cash, gifts or a cut from the sale which was brought by the affiliate. This form of Internet marketing has become popular among the Internet users as this is an easy way of making a good amount of cash and merchants can see their revenues soar without having much to do.

The major players in this form of Internet marketing include:

1. Merchant: A Merchant is the advertiser who employs the services of an affiliate. The merchant provides an ad to the affiliate who posts it on his or her website. Once a visitor brought by an affiliate makes a sale, merchant pays the specified amount to the affiliate.

2. Network: Is the intermediary between a merchant and an affiliate. It provides the following services to both of them:
a. Tracking
b. Reporting
c. Payment processing
d. Helping affiliates and merchants to get in touch with each other.

Generally, networks in this form of Internet marketing consist of the web portals where affiliates and merchants can sign up by paying a certain amount of fee.

3. Publisher: Publishers or affiliates are the website owner who posts the advertisement of merchant on his or her website in exchange for a pre agreed amount of money.

4. Customer: Customer is the end user who navigates to the merchant’s website via a link from the affiliate’s website who makes a purchase from merchant’s website.

5. Payment method: Most merchants use Cost per sale (CPS) method for making payment to the affiliates. The merchant would pay a part of the sale to the affiliate which got generated from his or her website. The terms and conditions of payment are decided solely by the publisher. Publishers providing different types of services may use different payment methods to pay the affiliates.

For example, such merchants who provide services like web hosting may require the customer to stay with them for a certain period before they make payment to the affiliate. Generally, these types of service providers have a waiting period of ninety days before they make payment to the affiliates. Some merchants may not have such conditions and may make payment to their affiliates soon after a sale is generated by them.

Cost per click is another prevalent method of making payment in affiliate marketing. It is used by less than a fifth of the total number of merchants worldwide. This is mainly because of the high possibility of click fraud in this form of Internet marketing. Some internet users might make use of fraudulent methods such as manual clicking, use of automated software tools… etc, to click the advertisements and increase their profits. Though these methods can be easily tracked by the merchants, they have started giving up this method for relatively a safer method of making payment against every sale.

Though this form of Internet marketing is relatively new, it is being taken up by an increasing number of Internet users for the ease of making profits with their products.

Author Bio: Jason Bacot – Affiliate Marketing is just one for of Internet marketing to Make Money Online. Expand your thinking about Search Engine Optimization and check out the most lucrative SEO Service.

Category: Internet
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