The Affiliate marketing has lately reached the top by becoming a focal block of any viral marketing strategy, aiming to be effective online.

Affiliate marketing is also an easy way to make an extra profit through online websites; affiliates’ advertising is a contractual agreement joining an advocate and an owner of a website. In this type of deals, the website owner (marketing affiliate), gives an access to the promotion of products posted by the advocate, and allows this sponsorship to be linked from the affiliate marketing website towards the publisher’s page.

In return of the access granted to link from the marketing affiliate page into the advocates’s, this latter mentionned party honors a debt, kown as a commission fee. This expense is totally acquired by the affiliate, which makes his profit.

The system has an additional advantage for the affiliate marketing side; an extra commission is earned when online users click upon the link that redirects them from the affiliate marketing space towards the promoter’s designated page. This system, often referred at by the name PPC marketing (pay per click), allows the affiliate to get an extra commission from reserving a space to the promotion. On the other hand, a merchant will only compensate the affiliate when online users click onto the merchandise link and craft a buy.

In a brief comparison, affiliate marketing is equal to employing a mass number of sales and marketing advertising experts whose goal is to advertise; in exchange, an affiliate marketing website will do this task and charge a commission based on the Pay per Click or Pay per View marketing strategies, depending on the agreement.

Affiliate marketing, the CONCEPT:

An Affiliate (marketing partner) consents to post and display an advocate’s promotion or a text link upon his or her website. Traffic and online visitors within the affiliate’s site will find this banner or ad displayed with the ability to click and get redirected into the promoter’s website. If the redirected internet user places a purchase order or buys a product, the sale will be tracked by the affiliate’s website through software especially engineered to track sales and issue a bill based on the number of sales; all the purchases are verified and commissions are calculated and paid in favor of the Affiliate. This concept of marketing is known by: Affiliate Marketing strategy.

What are the types of Affiliate Marketing?

PPP marketing (Pay per Performance): PPP affiliate marketing ranks on top of all affiliate marketing strategies and marketing plans for it charges the merchant whenever his transfers are converted into actions (when a user buys a product or becomes a lead).

PPC (Pay per Click): PPC is the affiliate’s favorite manner in earning money; in this type of affiliate marketing strategies, the advocate (promoter) issues a payment in favor of his marketing affiliate when the user is redirected into his site (internet visitor clicks on the promotion or link).

Theories of PPP (pay per performance marketing):

1- The Pay Per Sale marketing strategy PPS:

A pay-per-sale marketing plan is inducted into the category of affiliate marketing strategies where the promoters pay a pre-fixed fee when a user is redirected into the advocate’s home page and buys a product or service; payment is done in favor of the affiliate marketing.

2- The Pay per Lead marketing strategy PPL:
A PPL marketing plan is often applied by finance and insurancecompanies as well as companies who are dependent relatively upon leads for an increase in their brand growth. In a PPL marketing stratefy, the marketing affiliate earns an extra commission whenever a user is redirected to the promoter’s website and loads a submission form (registration forms, sign up…) that is directly associated to the specialization of the company.

Types of Affiliate Marketing:

Single-Tier is an affiliate marketing plan where affiliates are compensated based on direct sales and traffic referred by the affiliate site to the merchant. The marketing strategies PPL, PPS, and PPC are all listed as a single-tier marketing plan.

Multi-Tier is an affiliate marketing plan where affiliates are not paid just for direct traffic and orientations but also based on sales achieved due to the references from the affiliate’s site to the promoter’s online pages; commissions are also acquired by the affiliate in return for every traffic and sales coming from diverse new marketing affiliates attached to the main associate program (website of the affiliate).

What are the Benefits of Affiliate Marketing?

• Giving the promoter a brand awareness and extra market expansion by advertising the products or services.
• Increase the traffic and augmenting sales.
• Advocates pay only for confirmed sales operations.
• Market segmentation and targeting by bringing quality traffic to the promoter’s website
• Cost effective marketing
Tracking the exact amount of clicks and clicks transformed into sales. The advocate can monitor and try to improve weak points.
• Brand awareness and marketing expansion through the increase of traffic