Affiliate Marketing Explained

In simple terms, affiliate marketing is best explained as getting other websites to market your products or services and paying a commission for any leads arising from those website's marketing efforts. Affiliate marketing is a Pay for Performance model, i.e. no marketing cost unless the desired result is achieved. Sound easy, the road to successful affiliate marketing is often paved with bad experiences and spammers.Nevertheless affiliate marketing is an emerging and increasingly legitimate form of online marketing.

Benefits of Affiliate Marketing

• Potential to deliver a lot of relevant traffic, cheaply. No costs are incurred unless a result is achieved.
• Software and affiliate networks make this easy set up and to manage. Software and access is usually free.
• Large and established industry
• Given increasing competition in the online space, affiliate marketing can help new players get noticed faster
• Ease of access and set up for new participants
• The industry is maturing and there is more competition, increasing the quality of affiliates and offers

Common issues and considerations

• The quality of affiliates representing your brand online can vary
• Levels of commissions required to get quality websites interested ranges, impacting on your margins
• Not easily scalable
• Successful programs require effort and ongoing maintenance, or returns generally are poor and spammers will target you. No management or bad management of affiliate programs will deliver no or bad results
• Affiliate marketing is often the target of rogue affiliates or spammers
• As more people and companies go online, the marketplace for affiliates has got more competitive, and getting noticed is harder, requires more effort.
• No industry standards or guidelines
• Mostly or very often driven by entrepreneurs, many of who will flaunt the rules, and who are very often early adopters
• Form of marketing commonly used by spammers:
  • False advertising
  • Forced clicks
  • Malware
  • Adware
• Affiliate websites are notorious for offering sub standard content

Common affiliate options

• Run your own in-house affiliate program using3rd party software to allow access to advertising materials and the easy measurement of results (More control)
• Use an Affiliate network, who manage everything from marketing your program to payments on your behalf (Somewhat less control and lower margin)
• The following are general categorizations for websites in affiliate marketing
  • Search affiliates, using SEO or Paid search to promote the advertisers product or service
  • Large dynamic comparison shopping sites and directories, also known as thin affiliates
  • Shopping directories
  • Coupon and rebate websites, or sites offering free sample
  • Niche, unique content websites, offering in depth content on related matters
  • Websites using feeds or web logs to populate them and offering ads alongside

 Finding affiliate programs

• Affiliate network websites
• Affiliate directories
• Websites offering affiliate programs

Common traps in managing technology issues:

• Affiliates and affiliate programs must be managed. Put effort into your affiliates, providing them with content, ideas and support. Not building relationships and supporting your affiliates will impact on the success of your programs
• Not deciding on which affiliates to manage yourself and which to manage via a network. Manage and support large important affiliates yourself. Put the rats & mice through a network
• Not setting clear objectives and assigning responsibilities within the organization
• Need to set quality guidelines and ongoing quality management programs
• Affiliate websites are notorious for offering sub standard content