Affiliate Marketing

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing means many different things to different people. It is a massive industry in its own right, there are the companies that use affiliate marketers to drive traffic to their website and there are the affiliate marketers and publishers who may make their whole income purely from affiliate marketing.

You may not realise it, but many of the websites you visit everyday are affiliate sites or carry affiliate links to affiliate partners.  Specialist websites, cost comparison websites, newspapers and many more all make money from affiliate marketing.  The affiliate marketer drives traffic to a website and takes a commission based upon the amount that web visitor spends.  All these transactions are measured using tracking software.



In short, affiliate marketing can be used to generate more traffic for your website in return for a small commission, typically 5%.

Is Affiliate Marketing right for me?

Affiliate marketing is particularly good for e-commerce websites. It is easy to track the amount a referral customer spends and to pay the commission to the affiliate marketer. It is possible to use the affiliate model for non e-commerce websites, paying for traffic on a per visitor basis.

Think like an Affiliate Marketer

In order to be successful using affiliate marketing, you need to think like the affiliate marketer who is going to drive traffic to your website, they are interested in:

• Why should I send traffic to your website over another?
• How are you going to track the conversions?
• How can I trust you to pay me my commission?
• How well does your site convert traffic?

The bottom line is, the traffic sent to your website must make them more money, than sending that traffic to another website.  The two key aspects here are conversion and tracking.  Converting web visitors into customers and successfully tracking that transaction.

Affiliate Marketing Options

There are two main options for affiliate marketing:

• Using your own affiliate marketing tool that may be built into your website software, or using
• An affiliate network to put you in touch with affiliate marketers and will handle the tracking of the sales.

The first option is low cost, but you must be able to prove your tracking capability and assure your affiliates that you will pay out all commission owing to them.

The second option provides security for both you and the affiliate.

Need Help with your Affiliate Marketing?

The world of affiliate marketing is complex, you need an affiliate marketing expert to guide you through your options.  To find out more about affiliate marketing call us today on 0845 652 2412.