Illustration of the concept of affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing is a web-based marketing practice in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliate's marketing efforts. For the more general networking concept, see computer network, computer networking, and internetworking. ... An affiliate is a commercial entity with a relationship with a peer or a larger entity. ...

Affiliate marketing is also the name of the industry where a number of different types of companies and individuals are performing this form of internet marketing, including affiliate networks, affiliate management companies and in-house affiliate managers, specialized 3rd party vendors, and various types of affiliates/publishers who promote the products and services of their partners. Wikibooks [[wikibooks:|]] has more about this subject: Marketing Internet marketing, also referred to as online marketing or Emarketing, is the marketing of products or services over the Internet. ... This article or section is in need of attention from an expert on the subject. ... Affiliate managers manage affiliate programs and assist affiliates of their program in generating more sales. ... A vendor, or a supplier, is a supply chain management term that means anyone who provides goods or services to a company. ...

Affiliate marketing overlaps with other internet marketing methods to some degree, because affiliates often use regular advertising methods. Those methods include organic search engine optimization, paid search engine marketing, email marketing and in some sense display advertising. On the other hand, affiliates sometimes use less orthodox techniques like publishing reviews of products or services offered by a partner. Wikibooks [[wikibooks:|]] has more about this subject: Marketing Internet marketing, also referred to as online marketing or Emarketing, is the marketing of products or services over the Internet. ... A typical search results page Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via natural (organic or algorithmic) search results. ... Search Engine Marketing, or SEM, is a form of Internet Marketing that seeks to promote websites by increasing their visibility in the Search Engine results pages (SERPs) and has a proven ROI (Return on Investment). ... E-mail marketing is a form of direct marketing which uses electronic mail as a means of communicating commercial or fundraising messages to an audience. ... Display advertising is a type of advertising that may, and most frequently does, contain graphic information beyond text such as logos, photographs or other pictures, location maps, and similar items. ...

Affiliate marketing — using one site to drive traffic to another — is a form of online marketing, which is frequently overlooked by advertisers. While search engines, e-mail and RSS capture much of the attention of online retailers, affiliate marketing carries a much lower profile. Still, affiliates continue to play a significant role in e-retailers' marketing strategies.^[1] A website (alternatively, Web site or web site) is a collection of Web pages, images, videos or other digital assets that is hosted on one or several Web server(s), usually accessible via the Internet, cell phone or a LAN. A Web page is a document, typically written in HTML... Example graph of web traffic at Wikipedia in December 2004 Internet traffic is the flow of data around the Internet. ... It has been suggested that Internet marketing be merged into this article or section. ... A search engine is an information retrieval system designed to help find information stored on a computer system. ... Wikipedia does not yet have an article with this exact name. ... For other meanings of RSS, see RSS (disambiguation). ... An e-tailer is a retailer that primarily uses the Internet as a medium for customers to shop for the goods or services provided. ... A marketing strategy[1] [2] is a process that can allow an organization to concentrate its limited resources on the greatest opportunities to increase sales and achieve a sustainable competitive advantage. ...

History

The beginning

paying commission for referred business, predates that of affiliate marketing and the Internet. The translation of the revenue share principles to mainstream ecommerce happened almost four years after the World Wide Web was born in November 1994, when CDNow launched its BuyWeb program. With its BuyWeb program, CDNow was the first non-adult site to introduce the concept of an affiliate or associate program with its idea of click-through purchasing. Electronic commerce, commonly known as e-commerce or eCommerce, consists of the buying and selling of products or services over electronic systems such as the Internet and other computer networks. ... WWWs historical logo designed by Robert Cailliau The World Wide Web (commonly shortened to the Web) is a system of interlinked, hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. ... 1994 was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar, and was designated the International year of the Family. ...

CDNow.com had the idea that music-oriented web sites could review or list albums on their pages that their visitors might be interested in purchasing and offer a link that would take the visitor directly to CDNow to purchase them. The idea for this remote purchasing originally arose because of conversations with music publisher Geffen Records in the fall of 1994. The management at Geffen wanted to sell its artists’ CDs directly from its site but did not want to do it itself. Geffen Records asked CDNow if it could design a program where CDNow would do the fulfillment. Geffen Records realized that CDNow could link directly from the artist on its Web site to Geffen’s web site, bypassing the CDNow home page and going directly to an artist’s music page.^[2] CDNOW.com was an online retailer, founded in February 1994 by twin brothers Jason Olim and Matthew Olim of Ambler, Pennsylvania. ... Geffen Records is an American record label, owned by Universal Music Group, and operates as one third of UMGs Interscope-Geffen-A&M label group. ... Geffen Records is an American record label, owned by Universal Music Group, and operates as one third of UMGs Interscope-Geffen-A&M label group. ... Cdnow is a division of Amazon. ...

Affiliate marketing was used on the internet by the adult industry before CDNow launched their BuyWeb program. The consensus of marketers and adult industry insiders is that Cybererotica was either the first or among the early innovators in affiliate marketing with a cost-per-click program.^[3] This article does not cite any references or sources. ...

Amazon.com launched its associate program in July 1996. Amazon associates would place banner or text links on their site for individual books or link directly to the Amazon’s home page. Amazon. ... 1996 is a leap year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar, and was designated the International Year for the Eradication of Poverty. ... A web banner or banner ad is a form of advertising on the World Wide Web. ...

When visitors clicked from the associate’s site through to Amazon.com and purchased a book, the associate received a commission. Amazon.com was not the first merchant to offer an affiliate program, but its program was the first to become widely known and served as a model for subsequent programs.^[4][5] A website (alternatively, Web site or web site) is a collection of Web pages, images, videos or other digital assets that is hosted on one or several Web server(s), usually accessible via the Internet, cell phone or a LAN. A Web page is a document, typically written in HTML...

In February 2000, Amazon.com announced that it had been granted a patent (6,029,141) on all the essential components of an affiliate program. The patent application was submitted in June 1997, which was before most affiliate programs but not before PC Flowers & Gifts.com (October 1994), AutoWeb.com (October 1995), Kbkids.com/BrainPlay.com (January 1996), EPage(April 1996), and a handful of others.^[3] For other uses, see Patent (disambiguation). ...

Historic development

Affiliate marketing has grown quickly since its inception. The e-commerce website, viewed as a marketing toy in the early days of the web, became an integrated part of the overall business plan and in some cases grew to a bigger business than the existing offline business. According to one report, total sales generated through affiliate networks in 2006 was £2.16 billion in the UK alone. The estimates were £1.35 billion in sales in 2005.^[6] MarketingSherpa's research team estimated that, in 2006, affiliates worldwide earned $6.5 billion in bounty and commissions from a variety of sources in retail, personal finance, gaming and gambling, travel, telecom, education, publishing and forms of lead generation other than contextual ad networks such as Google AdSense.^[7] Electronic commerce, commonly known as e-commerce or eCommerce, consists of the buying and selling of products or services over electronic systems such as the Internet and other computer networks. ... Contextual advertising is the term applied to advertisements appearing on websites or other media, such as content displayed in mobile phones, where the advertisements are selected and served by automated systems based on the content displayed by the user. ... AdSense is an advertising program run by Google. ...

Currently the most active sectors for affiliate marketing are the adult, gambling and retail sectors.^[8] The three sectors expected to experience the greatest growth are the mobile phone, finance and travel sectors.^[8] Hot on the heels of these are the entertainment (particularly gaming) and internet-related services (particularly broadband) sectors. Also several of the affiliate solution providers expect to see increased interest from B2B marketers and advertisers in using affiliate marketing as part of their mix.^[8] Of course, this is constantly subject to change. This article does not cite any references or sources. ... Gamble redirects here. ... Retail redirects here. ...

Web 2.0

The rise of blogging, interactive online communities and other new technologies, web sites and services based on the concepts that are now called Web 2.0 have impacted the affiliate marketing world as well. The new media allowed merchants to get closer to their affiliates and improved communication between each other.^[9][10] New developments have made it harder for unscrupulous affiliates to make money. Emerging black sheep are detected and made known to the affiliate marketing community with much greater speed and efficiency. To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... A virtual community, e-community or online community is a group of people that primarily interact via communication media such as letters, telephone, email or Usenet rather than face to face. ... On September 30, 2005, Tim OReilly wrote a piece summarizing his view of Web 2. ... Black sheep is a derogatory colloquialism in the English language meaning an outsider or one who is different in a way which others disapprove of. ...

Compensation methods

Main article: Compensation methods

Compensation methods (Remuneration), Pricing models and business models used for the different types of Internet marketing, including Affiliate marketing, Contextual advertising, Search engine marketing (including vertical comparison shopping search engines and local search engines) and Display advertising. ...

Predominant compensation methods

80% of affiliate programs today use revenue sharing or cost per sale (CPS) as compensation method, 19% use cost per action (CPA) and the remaining 1% are other methods, such as cost per click (CPC) or cost per mille (CPM).^[11] Revenue sharing is the splitting of operating profits and losses between the general partner and limited partners in a limited partnership. ... Cost Per Action or CPA (as it is often initialized to) is a phrase often used in online advertising and online marketing circles. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Cost Per Impression . ...

Diminished compensation methods

The use of pay per click (PPC/CPC) and pay per impression (CPM/CPT) in traditional affiliate marketing is far less than 1% today and negligible. CPM and CPC are today still heavily used in display advertising and paid search. Pay per click, or PPC, is an advertising technique used on websites, especially search engines. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Cost Per Impression . ... Display advertising is a type of advertising that may, and most frequently does, contain graphic information beyond text such as logos, photographs or other pictures, location maps, and similar items. ...

Cost per mille (thousand) (CPM/CPT) requires the publisher only to load the advertising on his website and show it to his visitors in order to get paid a commission, while PPC requires one additional step in the conversion process to generate revenue for the publisher. Visitors must not only be made aware of the ad, but also pursue them to click on it and visit the advertiser's website.

Cost per click (CPC/PPC) used to be more common in the early days of affiliate marketing, but diminished over time due to click fraud issues that are very similar to the click fraud issues modern search engines are facing today. Contextual advertising, such as Google AdSense are not considered in this statistic. It is not specified yet, if contextual advertising can be considered affiliate marketing or not. Click fraud is a type of internet crime that occurs in pay per click online advertising when a person, automated script, or computer program imitates a legitimate user of a web browser clicking on an ad, for the purpose of generating a charge per click without having actual interest in... The success of the Google search engine was mainly due to its powerful PageRank algorithm and its simple, easy-to-use interface. ... Contextual advertising is the term applied to advertisements appearing on websites or other media, such as content displayed in mobile phones, where the advertisements are selected and served by automated systems based on the content displayed by the user. ... AdSense is an advertising program run by Google. ...

CPM/CPC versus CPA/CPS (performance marketing)

In the case of CPM or CPC, the publisher does not care if the visitor is the type of audience that the advertiser tries to attract and is able to convert, because the publisher already earned his commission at this point. This leaves the greater, and, in case of CPM, the full risk and loss (if the visitor can not be converted) to the advertiser. It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Cost Per Impression . ... Cost Per Click or CPC (as it is often initialized to) is a phrase often used in online advertising and online marketing circles. ...

CPA and CPS require that referred visitors do more than visiting the advertiser's website in order for the affiliate to get paid commission. The advertiser must convert that visitor first. It is in the best interest for the affiliate to send the best targeted traffic to the advertiser as possible to increase the chance of a conversion. The risk and loss is shared between the affiliate and the advertiser. Cost Per Action or CPA (as it is often initialized to) is a phrase often used in online advertising and online marketing circles. ... Revenue sharing is the splitting of operating profits and losses between the general partner and limited partners in a limited partnership. ... A website (alternatively, Web site or web site) is a collection of Web pages, images, videos or other digital assets that is hosted on one or several Web server(s), usually accessible via the Internet, cell phone or a LAN. A Web page is a document, typically written in HTML... Look up commission in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... In marketing a conversion occurs when a prospective customer takes the marketers intended action. ...

For this reason affiliate marketing is also called "performance marketing", in reference to how employees that work in sales are typically being compensated. Employees in sales are usually getting paid sales commission for every sale they close and sometimes a performance incentives for exceeding targeted baselines.^[12] Affiliates are not employed by the advertiser whose products or services they promote, but the compensation models applied to affiliate marketing are very similar to the ones used for people in the advertisers' internal sales department. Employment is a contract between two parties, one being the employer and the other being the employee. ... Sales are the activities involved in providing products or services in return for money or other compensation. ... Look up commission in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... In economics, an incentive in anything that provides a motive for a particular course of action — that counts as a reason for preferring one choice to the alternatives. ...

The phrase, "Affiliates are an extended sales force for your business", which is often used to explain affiliate marketing, is not 100% accurate. The main difference between the two is that affiliate marketers cannot, or not much influence a possible prospect in the conversion process, once the prospect was sent away to the advertiser's website. The sales team of the advertiser on the other hand does have the control and influence, up to the point where the prospect signs the contract or completes the purchase. Sales, or the activity of selling, forms an integral part of commercial activity. ...

Multi tier programs

Some advertisers offer multi-tier programs that distribute commission into a hierarchical referral network of sign-ups and sub-partners. In practical terms: publisher "A" signs up to the program with an advertiser and gets rewarded for the agreed activity conducted by a referred visitor. If publisher "A" attracts other publishers ("B", "C", etc.) to sign up for the same program using her sign-up code all future activities by the joining publishers "B" and "C" will result in additional, lower commission for publisher "A".

Snowballing, this system rewards a chain of hierarchical publishers who may or may not know of each others' existence, yet generate income for the higher level signup. This sort of structure has been successfully implemented by a company called Quixtar.com, a division of Alticor, the parent company of Amway. Quixtar has implemented a network marketing structure to implement its marketing program for major corporations such as Barnes & Noble, Office Depot, Sony Music and hundreds more. Quixtar is a multi-level marketing company, founded in 1999 by the families of Richard DeVos and Jay Van Andel. ... Alticor is a privately-held corporation, owned by members of the DeVos and Van Andel families. ... Headquarters in Ada, Michigan Amway is a multi-level marketing, or network marketing, company founded in 1959 by Jay Van Andel and Rich DeVos. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged into Multi-level marketing. ... A typical Barnes & Noble bookstore. ... Office Depot (NYSE: ODP) is one of the worlds leading suppliers of office products and services. ... ...

Two-tier programs exist in the minority of affiliate programs; most are simply one-tier. Referral programs beyond 2-tier are multi-level marketing (MLM) or network marketing. Multi-level marketing (MLM, now sometimes called network marketing) is a business model that combines direct marketing with franchising. ...

Even though Quixtar compensation plan is network marketing & wouldn't be considered 'affiliate marketing', the big company partners are considered and call themselves affiliates. Therefore, you may argue that the Quixtar company is the affiliate marketer for its partner corporation.

From the advertiser perspective

Pros and cons

Merchants like affiliate marketing^[13] because in most cases, it uses a "pay for performance" model, meaning that the merchant does not incur a marketing expense unless results are accrued (excluding any initial setup cost). Some businesses owe much of their success to this marketing technique, a notable example being Amazon.com. Unlike display advertising, however, affiliate marketing is not easily scalable.^[14] In accounting, an expense represents an event in which an asset is used up or a liability is incurred. ... Amazon. ... Display advertising is a type of advertising that may, and most frequently does, contain graphic information beyond text such as logos, photographs or other pictures, location maps, and similar items. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Scale (computing). ...

Implementation options

Some merchants run their own affiliate programs (In House) while others use third party services provided by intermediaries to track traffic or sales that are referred from affiliates. (see outsourced program management) Merchants can choose from two different types of affiliate management solutions, standalone software or hosted services typically called affiliate networks. Affiliate managers manage affiliate programs and assist affiliates of their program in generating more sales. ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ... An affiliate is an entity with a relationship with a peer or a larger entity. ...

Affiliate management and program management outsourcing

Main article: Affiliate manager

Successful affiliate programs require a lot of maintenance and work. The number of affiliate programs just a few years back was much smaller than it is today. Having an affiliate program that is successful is not as easy anymore. The days when programs could generate considerable revenue for the merchant even if they were poorly or not at all managed ("auto-drive") are over (with the exception of some verticals). Affiliate managers manage affiliate programs and assist affiliates of their program in generating more sales. ... For the tax agency in Ireland of the same name, see Revenue Commissioners. ...

Those uncontrolled programs did aid (and continue to do so today) rogue affiliates, who use spamming,^[15] trademark infringement, false advertising, "cookie cutting", typosquatting^[16] and other unethical methods that caused affiliate marketing to get a bad reputation. An affiliate is a commercial entity with a relationship with a peer or a larger entity. ... Look up spam, SPAM in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Trademark infringement is a violation of the exclusive rights attaching to a registered trademark without the authorisation of the trademark owner or any licensees (provided that such authorization was within the scope of the license). ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ... An incorrectly entered URL could lead to a website operated by a cybersquatter. ...

The increase of number of internet businesses in combination with the increased number of people that trust the current technology enough to do shopping and business online caused and still causes a further maturing of affiliate marketing. The opportunities to generate considerable amount of profit in combination with a much more crowded marketplace filled with about equal quality and sized competitors made it harder for merchants to get noticed, but at the same time the rewards if you get noticed much larger. The capitalization of song titles in this article may be disputed. ...

Recently, the internet advertising industry has become more advanced. Online media has in some areas been rising to the sophistication of offline media, in which advertising has been largely professional and competitive for many years already. The requirements to be successful are much higher than they were in the past. Those requirements are becoming often too much of a burden for the merchant to do it successfully in-house. More and more merchants are looking for alternative options which they find in relatively new outsourced (affiliate) program management or OPM companies that were often founded by veteran affiliate managers and network program managers.^[17] Wikibooks [[wikibooks:|]] has more about this subject: Marketing Internet marketing, also referred to as online marketing or Emarketing, is the marketing of products or services over the Internet. ... Affiliate managers manage affiliate programs and assist affiliates of their program in generating more sales. ... This article or section is in need of attention from an expert on the subject. ...

The OPM are doing this highly specialized job of affiliate program management for the merchant as a service agency very much like Ad agencies are doing the job to promote a brand or product in the offline world today. An advertising agency or ad agency is a service business dedicated to creating, planning and handling advertising (and sometimes other forms of promotion) for their clients. ...

Types of affiliate websites

Affiliate sites are often categorized by merchants (advertisers) and affiliate networks. There are no industry-wide accepted standards for the categorization. The following list is very generic but commonly understood and used by affiliate marketers.

• Search affiliates that utilize pay per click search engines to promote the advertisers offers (search arbitrage)
• Comparison shopping sites and directories
• Loyalty sites, typically characterized by providing a reward system for purchases via points back, cash back or charitable donations
• Coupon and rebate sites that focus on sales promotions
• Content and niche sites, including product review sites
• Personal websites (these type of sites were the reason for the birth of affiliate marketing, but are today almost reduced to complete irrelevance compared to the other types of affiliate sites)
• Blogs and RSS feeds
• Email list affiliates (owners of large opt-in email list(s))
• Registration path or Co-Registration affiliates who include offers from other companies during a registration process on their own website.
• Shopping directories that list merchants by categories without providing coupons, price comparison and other features based on information that frequently change and require ongoing updates.
• CPA networks are top tier affiliates that expose offers from advertiser they are affiliated with to their own network of affiliates (not to confuse with 2nd tier)

Pay per click, or PPC, is an advertising technique used on websites, especially search engines. ... A search engine is an information retrieval system designed to help find information stored on a computer system. ... In economics and finance, arbitrage is the practice of taking advantage of a price differential between two or more markets: a combination of matching deals are struck that capitalize upon the imbalance, the profit being the difference between the market prices. ... On the internet, a price comparison service (also known as shopping comparison or price engine) allows individuals to see lists of prices for specific products. ... (UTC):This page is about loyalty as faithfulness to a cause. ... Cash back is a way of obtaining money from your bank account when purchasing goods with a debit or credit card. ... A Donation is a gift given, typically to a cause or/and for charitable purposes. ... In marketing a coupon is a ticket or document that can be exchanged for a financial discount or rebate when purchasing a product. ... Note: This article title may be easily confused with rabbet A rebate is a type of sales promotion used by marketers, primarily as incentives or supplements to product sales. ... Wikibooks has more about this subject: Marketing Sales promotion is one of the four aspects of promotional mix. ... A niche market also known as a target market is a focused, targetable portion (subset) of a market sector. ... A website (alternatively, Web site or web site) is a collection of Web pages, images, videos or other digital assets that is hosted on one or several Web server(s), usually accessible via the Internet, cell phone or a LAN. A Web page is a document, typically written in HTML... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... For other meanings of RSS, see RSS (disambiguation). ... E-mail marketing is a form of direct marketing which uses electronic mail as a means of communicating commercial or fundraising messages to an audience. ... A shopping directory is a web directory style website similar to the Open Directory Project or the Yahoo! Directory with focus on sites that sell products or services, usually referred to as ecommerce websites. ... On the internet, a price comparison service (also known as shopping comparison or price engine) allows individuals to see lists of prices for specific products. ...

Publisher recruitment

Affiliate networks that have already a number of advertisers usually also have a large number of publishers. This large pool of publishers could be potentially recruited. There is also an increased chance that publishers in the network apply to the program by themselves, without the need for any recruitment efforts by the advertiser. This article or section is in need of attention from an expert on the subject. ...

Relevant sites that attract the same audiences as the advertiser is trying to attract, but are not competing with the advertiser are potential affiliate partners as well. Even vendors or existing customers could be recruited as affiliate, if it makes sense and does not violate any laws or regulations.

Almost any website could be recruited as affiliate publisher although high traffic websites are more likely interested in (for them) low risk CPM or medium risk CPC deals rather than higher risk CPA or revenue share deals.^[18]

Affiliate program detection

Affiliate programs directories are one way to find affiliate programs, another method is large affiliate networks that provide the platform for dozens or even hundreds of advertisers. The third option is to check the target website itself for a reference to their affiliate program. Websites, which offer an affiliate program often, have a link titled "affiliate program", "affiliates", "referral program" or "webmasters" somewhere on their website, usually in the footer or "About" section of the site. To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... This article or section is in need of attention from an expert on the subject. ...

Even if all those methods seem to indicate that a site does not have an affiliate program, it could still be the case that there exists a non-public affiliate program. The only way to find out for sure, is to contact the site owner directly and ask.

Past and current issues

In the early days of affiliate marketing, there was very little control over what affiliates were doing, which was abused by a large number of affiliates. Affiliates used false advertisements, forced clicks to get tracking cookies set on users' computers, and adware, which displays ads on computers. Many affiliate programs were poorly managed. This article does not cite any references or sources. ... This article is about advertising-supported software. ...

Email spam

In its early days many internet users held negative opinions of affiliate marketing due to the tendency of affiliates to use spam to promote the programs in which they were enrolled.^[19] As affiliate marketing has matured many affiliate merchants have refined their terms and conditions to prohibit affiliates from spamming. This article is about electronic spam. ...

Search engine spam / spamdexing

There used to be much debate around the affiliate practice of spamdexing and many affiliates have converted from sending email spam to creating large volumes of autogenerated webpages, many-a-times, using product data-feeds provided by merchants. Each devoted to different niche keywords as a way of "SEOing" (see search engine optimization) their sites with the search engines. This is sometimes referred to as spamming the search engine results. Spam is the biggest threat to organic search engines whose goal is to provide quality search results for keywords or phrases entered by their users. Google's algorithm update dubbed "BigDaddy" in February 2006 which was the final stage of Google's major update dubbed "Jagger" which started mid-summer 2005 specifically targeted this kind of spam with great success and enabled Google to remove a large amount of mostly computer generated duplicate content from its index.^[20] An affiliate is a commercial entity with a relationship with a peer or a larger entity. ... Spamdexing or search engine spamming is the practice of deliberately creating web pages which will be indexed by search engines in order to increase the chance of a website or page being placed close to the beginning of search engine results, or to influence the category to which the page... A niche market also known as a target market is a focused, targetable portion (subset) of a market sector. ... Keywords are the words that are used to reveal the internal structure of an authors reasoning. ... A typical search results page Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via natural (organic or algorithmic) search results. ... The success of the Google search engine was mainly due to its powerful PageRank algorithm and its simple, easy-to-use interface. ... PageRank is a family of algorithms for assigning numerical weightings to hyperlinked documents (or web pages) indexed by a search engine. ...

Sites made up mostly of affiliate links are usually badly regarded as they do not offer quality content. In 2005 there were active changes made by Google whereby certain websites were labeled as "thin affiliates"^[21] and were either removed from the index, or taken from the first 2 pages of the results and moved deeper within the index. In order to avoid this categorization, webmasters who are affiliate marketers must create real value within their websites that distinguishes their work from the work of spammers or banner farms with nothing but links leading to the merchant sites. // A hyperlink, is a reference or navigation element in a document to another section of the same document or to another document that may be on a (different) website. ... This article is about the corporation. ... For Wikipedias categorization projects, see Wikipedia:Categorization. ... Webmaster or Webmistress is a commonly used term that refers to the person or persons responsible for a specific website. ... This article is about spam, the abuse of electronic communications media to send unsolicited bulk messages. ... A web banner or banner ad is a form of advertising on the World Wide Web. ...

Affiliate links work best in the context of the information contained within the website. For instance, if a website is about "How to publish a website", within the content an affiliate link leading to a merchant's ISP site would be appropriate. If a website is about sports, then an affiliate link leading to a sporting goods site might work well within the content of the articles and information about sports. The idea is to publish quality information within the site, and to link "in context" to related merchant's sites. // A hyperlink, is a reference or navigation element in a document to another section of the same document or to another document that may be on a (different) website. ... A website (alternatively, Web site or web site) is a collection of Web pages, images, videos or other digital assets that is hosted on one or several Web server(s), usually accessible via the Internet, cell phone or a LAN. A Web page is a document, typically written in HTML... // A hyperlink, is a reference or navigation element in a document to another section of the same document or to another document that may be on a (different) website. ... “ISP” redirects here. ...

Adware

Adware is still an issue today, but affiliate marketers have taken steps to fight it. AdWare is not the same as spyware although both often use the same methods and technologies. Merchants usually had no clue what adware was, what it did and how it was damaging their brand. Affiliate marketers became aware of the issue much more quickly, especially because they noticed that adware often overwrites their tracking cookie and results in a decline of commissions. Affiliates who do not use adware became enraged by adware, which they felt was stealing hard earned commission from them. Adware usually has no valuable purpose nor provides any useful content to the often unaware user that has the adware running on his computer. Affiliates discussed the issues in various affiliate forums and started to get organized. It became obvious that the best way to cut off adware was by discouraging merchants from advertising via adware. Merchants that did not care or even supported adware were made public by affiliates, which damaged the merchants' reputations and also hurt the merchants' general affiliate marketing efforts. Many affiliates simply "canned" the merchant or switched to a competitor's affiliate program. Eventually, affiliate networks were also forced by merchants and affiliates to take a stand and ban certain adware publishers from their network. This article is about advertising-supported software. ... This article is about advertising-supported software. ... A large number of toolbars, some added by spyware, overwhelm an Internet Explorer session. ... A typical Internet forum discussion, with common elements such as quotes and spoiler brackets A page from a forum showcasing emoticons and Internet slang An Internet forum is a web application for holding discussions and posting user generated content. ... This article or section is in need of attention from an expert on the subject. ...

Resulting from this were the Code of Conduct by Commission Junction/BeFree and Performics,^[22] LinkShare's Anti-Predatory Advertising Addendum^[23] and ShareASale's complete ban of software applications as medium for affiliates to promote advertiser offers.^[24] Regardless of the progress made, adware is still an issue. This is demonstrated by the class action lawsuit against ValueClick and its daughter company Commission Junction filed on April 20, 2007.^[25] The publisher Code of Conduct released by the affiliate networks Commission Junction/BeFree and Performics on December 10, 2002 was created to guide practices and adherence to ethical standards for online advertising. ... Commission Junction is an online advertising company owned by ValueClick. ... This article or section is in need of attention from an expert on the subject. ... This article or section is in need of attention from an expert on the subject. ... ShareASale is an affiliate marketing network based in Chicago, IL USA. ShareASale services two customer sets in affiliate marketing: the affiliate, and the merchant. ... ValueClick (NASDAQ: VCLK) is a Westlake Village, CA-based online advertising company, which connects those wanting to host advertisements on websites with advertisers who are willing to pay out fees based on a variety of different plans and methods. ... Commission Junction is an online advertising company owned by ValueClick. ...

Trademark bidding / PPC

Affiliates were among the earliest adopters of pay-per-click advertising when the first PPC search engines like Goto.com (which became later Overture.com, acquired by Yahoo! in 2003) emerged during the end of the nineteen-nineties. Later in 2000 Google launched their PPC service AdWords which is responsible for the wide spread use and acceptance of PPC as an advertising channel. More and more merchants engaged in PPC advertising, either directly or via a search marketing agency and realized that this space was already well occupied by their affiliates. Although this fact alone did create channel conflicts and hot debate between advertisers and affiliates, the biggest issue was the bidding on advertisers names, brands and trademarks by some affiliates. A larger number of advertisers started to adjust their affiliate program terms to prohibit their affiliates from bidding on those type of keywords. Some advertisers however did and still do embrace this behavior of their affiliates and allow them, even encourage them, to bid an any term they like, including the advertisers trademarks. A Google promotional graphic, highlighting AdWords, the largest PPC program Pay per click (PPC) is an advertising model used on search engines, advertising networks, and content websites/blogs, where advertisers only pay when a user actually clicks on an ad to visit the advertisers website. ... The success of the Google search engine was mainly due to its powerful PageRank algorithm and its simple, easy-to-use interface. ... Yahoo! Search Marketing (searchmarketing. ... Yahoo! Search Marketing (formerly Overture Services, Inc. ... Yahoo redirects here. ... This article is about the corporation. ... A Google promotional graphic, highlighting AdWords AdWords is Googles flagship advertising product and main source of revenue. ... Pay per click, or PPC, is an advertising technique used on websites, especially search engines. ... This article is about brands in marketing. ... The Bass Red Triangle, was the first trademark registered in Britain in 1876. ...

Lack of self regulation

Affiliate marketing is driven by entrepreneurs who are working at the forefront of internet marketing. Affiliates are the first to take advantage of new emerging trends and technologies where established advertisers do not dare to be active. Affiliates take risks and "trial and error" is probably the best way to describe how affiliate marketers are operating. This is also one of the reasons why most affiliates fail and give up before they "make it" and become "super affiliates" who generate $10,000 and more in commission (not sales) per month. This "frontier" life and the attitude that can be found in such type of communities is probably the main reason, why the affiliate marketing industry is not able to this day to self-regulate itself beyond individual contracts between advertiser and affiliate. The 10+ years history since the beginning of affiliate marketing is full of failed attempts^[26] to create an industry organization or association of some kind that could be the initiator of regulations, standards and guidelines for the industry. Some of the failed examples are the Affiliate Union and iAfma. Entrepreneurs created by Thomas Clarke in 2001. ... Look up commission in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Community is a set of people (or agents in a more abstract sense) with some shared element. ...

The only places where the different people from the industry, affiliates/publishers, merchants/advertisers, networks and 3rd party vendors and service providers like outsources program managers come together at one location are either online forums and industry trade shows. The forums are free and even small affiliates can have a big voice at places like that, which is supported by the anonymity that is provided by those platforms. Trade shows are not anonymous, but a large number, in fact the greater number (quantitative) of affiliates are not able to attend those events for financial reasons. Only performing affiliates can afford the often hefty price tags for the event passes or get it sponsored by an advertiser they promote. An affiliate is a commercial entity with a relationship with a peer or a larger entity. ... Generally speaking, advertising is the paid promotion of goods, services, companies and ideas by an identified sponsor. ... This article or section is in need of attention from an expert on the subject. ... A vendor is one who sells something. ... Affiliate managers are those people in a position of managing an affiliate program, and assisting the affiliates of their program in generating more sales. ... A typical Internet forum discussion, with common elements such as quotes and spoiler brackets A page from a forum showcasing emoticons and Internet slang An Internet forum is a web application for holding discussions and posting user generated content. ... Anonymous redirects here. ... A trade fair (or trade show) is an exhibition organised so that companies in a specific industry can showcase and demonstrate their new products and services. ...

Because of the anonymity of forums, the only place where you are to get the majority (quantitative) of people in the industry together, it is almost impossible to create any form of legally binding rule or regulation that must be followed by everybody in the industry. Forums had only very few successes in their role as representant of the majority in the affiliate marketing industry. The last example^[27] of such a success was the halt of the "CJ LMI" ("Commission Junction Link Management Initiative") in June/July 2006, when a single network tried to impose on their publishers/affiliates the use of Javascript tracking code as a replacement for common HTML links. ... A scale for measuring mass A quantitative property is one that exists in a range of magnitudes, and can therefore be measured. ... Commission Junction is an online advertising company owned by ValueClick. ... JavaScript is a scripting language most often used for client-side web development. ... Links is an open source text and graphic web browser with a pull-down menu system. ...

Lack of industry standards

Training and certification

There are no industry standards for training and certification in affiliate marketing. There are training courses and seminars that result in certifications. Some of them are also widely accepted, which is mostly because of the reputation of the person or company who is issuing the certification. Affiliate marketing is also not a subject taught in universities. Only few college teachers work with internet marketers to introduce the concept of affiliate marketing to students majoring in marketing for example.^[28] The word standard has several meanings: Classically, standard referred to a flag or banner; especially, a national or other ensign carried into battle; thus standard bearer indicates the one who bears, or carries, the standard. ... Training refers to the acquisition of knowledge, skills, and competencies as a result of the teaching of vocational or practical skills and knowledge that relates to specific useful skills. ... Certification, the process of certifying, or a certificate may refer to: Professional certification Product certification and certification marks Management System certification Cyber security certification Digital signatures in Public-key cryptography RIAA certification, RIAA Single certification in music, such as Gold or Platinum Film certification, also known as Motion picture rating... A university is an institution of higher education and of research, which grants academic degrees. ... For other uses, see College (disambiguation). ... Alternate uses: Student (disambiguation) Etymologically derived through Middle English from the Latin second-type conjugation verb stŭdērĕ, which means to study, a student is one who studies. ...

Education happens mostly in "real life" by just doing it and learning the details as you go. There are a number of books available, but readers have to watch out, because some of the so-called "how-to" or "silver bullet" books teach how to manipulate holes in the Google algorithm, which can quickly become out of date^[28] or that advertisers no longer permit some of the strategies endorsed in the books.^[29] The metaphor of the silver bullet applies to any straightforward solution perceived to have extreme effectiveness. ... This article is about the corporation. ... In mathematics, computing, linguistics, and related disciplines, an algorithm is a finite list of well-defined instructions for accomplishing some task that, given an initial state, will terminate in a defined end-state. ...

OPM companies usually mix formal with informal training, and do a lot of their training through group collaboration and brainstorming. Companies also try to send each marketing employee to the industry conference of their choice.^[30] Affiliate managers manage affiliate programs and assist affiliates of their program in generating more sales. ... Group collaboration, or group collaboration tools is usually a piece of software or website which facilitates working on a single set of files in a group. ... Look up brainstorming in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...

Other resources used include web forums, blogs, podcasts, video seminars and specialty websites that try to teach individuals to learn affiliate marketing. Gaia Online, the largest English language forum-based community as of April 2005 — powered by a modified version of phpBB. An Internet forum is a web application which provides for discussion, often in conjunction with online communities. ... It has been suggested that Online diary be merged into this article or section. ... Podcasting is a way of publishing sound files to the Internet, allowing users to subscribe to a feed and receive new audio files automatically. ... For other uses, see Video (disambiguation). ... A seminar is a form of academic teaching, normally at a university in small groups where students are requested to actively participate during meetings. ... A website, Web site or WWW site (often shortened to just site) is a collection of webpages, that is, HTML/XHTML documents accessible via HTTP on the Internet; all publicly accessible websites in existence comprise the World Wide Web. ...

Affiliate Summit is the largest conference in the industry, and it is not run by any of the Affiliate networks, many of which run their own annual events. Company logo The Affiliate Summit conference was founded by Affiliate marketing industry veterans Shawn Collins and Missy Ward and serves the affiliate marketing professional community. ... This article or section is in need of attention from an expert on the subject. ...

Code of Conduct

Main article: Code of Conduct (affiliate marketing)

A Code of Conduct was released by the affiliate networks Commission Junction/BeFree and Performics on December 10, 2002. It was created to guide practices and adherence to ethical standards for online advertising. The publisher Code of Conduct released by the affiliate networks Commission Junction/BeFree and Performics on December 10, 2002 was created to guide practices and adherence to ethical standards for online advertising. ... Commission Junction is an online advertising company owned by ValueClick. ... Mockup Logo Mockup is an open source desktop operating system. ... This article or section is in need of attention from an expert on the subject. ... is the 344th day of the year (345th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Also see: 2002 (number). ...

"Threat" to traditional affiliate networks

Affiliate marketers usually avoid this topic as much as possible, but when it is being discussed, then are the debates explosive and heated to say the least.^[31][32][33] The discussion is about CPA networks (CPA = Cost per action) and their impact on "classic" affiliate marketing (traditional affiliate networks). Traditional affiliate marketing is resources intensive and requires a lot of maintenance. Most of this includes the management, monitoring and support of affiliates. Affiliate marketing is supposed to be about long-term and mutual beneficial partnerships between advertisers and affiliates. CPA networks on the other hand eliminate the need for the advertiser to build and maintain relationships to affiliates, because that task is performed by the CPA network for the advertiser. The advertiser simply puts an offer out, which is in almost every case a CPA based offer, and the CPA networks take care of the rest by mobilizing their affiliates to promote that offer. CPS or revenue share offers are rarely to be found at CPA networks, which is the main compensation model of classic affiliate marketing. Cost Per Action or CPA (as it is often initialized to) is a phrase often used in online advertising and online marketing circles. ... This article or section is in need of attention from an expert on the subject. ... Revenue sharing is the splitting of operating profits and losses between the general partner and limited partners in a limited partnership. ...

The term "affiliate marketing"

Increasingly, voices in the industry are recommending that "affiliate marketing" be substituted with an alternative name.^[34] The problem with the term affiliate marketing is that it is often confused with network-marketing or multi-level marketing. "Performance marketing" is a common alternative, but other recommendations have been made as well.^[35] A similar attempt was made to rename search engine optimization, but with little success.^[36][37] A typical search results page Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via natural (organic or algorithmic) search results. ...

References

Frank Fione Frank Fiore is an acknowledged eBusiness expert and accomplished author of six eBusiness books: He lives in Paradise Valley, Arizona with his wife and their Scottish sheepdog. ... Look up authenticity, authentic in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...

Affiliate services

• Affiliate programs directories
• Affiliate networks (see also Category:Advertising and Affiliate Networks)
• Affiliate manager and Outsourced Program Management (OPM or APM) (manages Affiliates)
• Category:Internet marketing trade shows

To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... This article or section is in need of attention from an expert on the subject. ... Affiliate managers manage affiliate programs and assist affiliates of their program in generating more sales. ... An affiliate is a commercial entity with a relationship with a peer or a larger entity. ...

See also

• Broad: Internet marketing or online marketing / online advertising
• Advertising methods: web banner, Ad filtering, ad serving,central ad server, pop-up ad, contextual advertising
• E-Mail advertising: e-mail spam, E-mail marketing, spamming
• Marketing tactics: Guerilla marketing, marketing strategy and guerrilla marketing warfare strategies, Evangelism marketing or Word of mouth marketing
• Search engines: Search engine marketing (SEM), Search engine optimization (SEO), Pay per click Advertising (click fraud), Paid inclusion
• Industry calculations: Click through rate (CTR), cost per action (CPA), effective cost per action (eCPA), cost per click (CPC), cost per impression (CPI), cost per mil (CPM), effective cost per mil (eCPM)
• Compensation/Pricing: Compensation methods, Category:Compensation, Category:Pricing
• Regulation: Code of Conduct (affiliate marketing)
• Terminology: Industry specific abbreviations

Wikibooks [[wikibooks:|]] has more about this subject: Marketing Internet marketing, also referred to as online marketing or Emarketing, is the marketing of products or services over the Internet. ... It has been suggested that Internet marketing be merged into this article or section. ... Online advertising is a form of advertising utilizing the Internet and World Wide Web in order to deliver marketing messages and attract customers. ... A web banner or banner ad is a form of advertising on the World Wide Web. ... Ad filtering or ad blocking is a service which removes or alters advertising content in a webpage. ... Ad serving describes the technology and service that places advertisements on web sites. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged into Ad serving. ... Dozens of pop-up ads covering a desktop. ... Contextual advertising is the term applied to advertisements appearing on websites or other media, such as content displayed in mobile phones, where the advertisements are selected and served by automated systems based on the content displayed by the user. ... E-mail spam, also known as bulk e-mail or junk e-mail is a subset of spam that involves sending nearly identical messages to numerous recipients by e-mail. ... Email marketing is a form of direct marketing which uses electronic mail as a means of communicating commercial or fundraising messages to an audience. ... This article is about electronic spam. ... Guerrilla marketing, as described by J. Levinson in his popular 1984 book Guerrilla Marketing, is an unconventional way of performing marketing activities (primarily promotion) on a very low budget. ... A marketing strategy[1] [2] is a process that can allow an organization to concentrate its limited resources on the greatest opportunities to increase sales and achieve a sustainable competitive advantage. ... In marketing and strategic management, marketing warfare strategies are a type of marketing strategy that uses military metaphor to craft a businesses strategy. ... Evangelism marketing is an advanced form of word of mouth marketing (WOMM) in which companies develop customers who believe so strongly in a particular product or service that they freely try to convince others to buy and use it. ... Word-of-mouth marketing is a term used in the marketing and advertising industry to describe activities that companies undertake to generate personal recommendations as well as referrals for brand names, products and services. ... Search Engine Marketing, or SEM, is a form of Internet Marketing that seeks to promote websites by increasing their visibility in the Search Engine results pages (SERPs) and has a proven ROI (Return on Investment). ... A typical search results page Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via natural (organic or algorithmic) search results. ... Pay per click, or PPC, is an advertising technique used on websites, especially search engines. ... Click fraud is a type of internet crime that occurs in pay per click online advertising when a person, automated script, or computer program imitates a legitimate user of a web browser clicking on an ad, for the purpose of generating a charge per click without having actual interest in... Generally speaking, paid inclusion is a business practice relevant to the operators (usually corporations) of world wide web search engines. ... Click Through Rate or CTR is way of measuring the success of an online advertising campaign. ... Cost Per Action or CPA (as it is often initialized to) is a phrase often used in online advertising and online marketing circles. ... Cost Per Click or CPC (as it is often initialized to) is a phrase often used in online advertising and online marketing circles. ... Cost Per Impression is a phrase often used in online advertising and marketing related to web traffic. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Cost Per Impression . ... Effective Cost Per Mille or eCPM (as it is often initialized to) is a phrase often used in online advertising and online marketing circles. ... Compensation methods (Remuneration), Pricing models and business models used for the different types of Internet marketing, including Affiliate marketing, Contextual advertising, Search engine marketing (including vertical comparison shopping search engines and local search engines) and Display advertising. ... The publisher Code of Conduct released by the affiliate networks Commission Junction/BeFree and Performics on December 10, 2002 was created to guide practices and adherence to ethical standards for online advertising. ...

External links

• Affiliate Programs at the Open Directory Project
• Website Affiliate Programs at the Yahoo! Directory
• Affiliate Programs at the BOTW Directory