Affiliate marketing is a type of advertising in which a firm pays third-party publishers to create traffic or leads to its products and services. Affiliates could be website owners, bloggers, podcasters, or social media influencers.

Affiliate marketers send visitors to a company’s website and then receive a percentage of any sales generated. By simply inserting monitored affiliate links into the text of their blog or website, they practically make money with minimal effort.

Affiliate marketing harnesses the expertise of a range of persons for a more successful marketing plan while giving contributors a portion of the profit. It works by dividing the responsibility of product promotion and production between parties.

Four separate parties must be involved for this to work namely sellers (advertisers, retailers, brands), the advertiser or affiliate (publishers, creators), the customer, and the affiliate network (technology platform). Affiliate marketing hinges on the use of affiliate links these include:

• Sellers and brands: The seller can be a vendor, merchant, product maker, or retailer who has a product to sell. The seller does not have to actively participate in marketing but acts as the advertiser and offers affiliate marketing opportunities to third parties.

• Customers: Customers are those who buy products and services. They are usually online shoppers who are seeking product evaluations, pricing comparisons, product recommendations, or simply browsing.

• Affiliate marketers: Affiliates often have their own audience that they reach through content, SEO, email, and social media activity. Bloggers, active social media influencers, specialty content sites, personal website owners, product review websites, shopping sites, and podcasters are all some examples.

• Affiliate network: Affiliate networks serve as middlemen in affiliate marketing. These networks generally handle all tracking, reporting, and payment to affiliates/publishers and can offer full-service or self-service program administration. Once the customer sees an advertising banner or link that he/she is interested in click through a unique affiliate tracking link that is linked to the affiliate marketer.

The click on the affiliate link is tracked by the affiliate network and a cookie is placed on the customer’s device to identify them as being referred by an affiliate network. When affiliate marketers join a network and have access to hundreds, if not thousands, of affiliate marketing programs. for more insight check out our article on the top 5 resources for affiliate marketing and referral content.