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1) The merchant has a website which offers products and/or services for sell and
2) The affiliate is the owner of the website who drives traffic to the merchant’s website.
Affiliate Marketing is based on what is generally known as Cost Per Action (CPA). What this means is that the affiliate is only paid a commission when the traffic they send to the merchant actual buys something.
4 stage customer journey on the affiliate marketing road
- Prospective customer visits an affiliate's website
- Customer locates desired product and clicks the link to be taken to the merchant's site to hopefully buy
- Customer concludes and pays for sale online.
- Merchant pays commission due to the affiliate for sales generated.
Tracking software is used to record the vital purchasing information such as affiliate to be paid, sale amount, date and time.
What happens if the user does not purchase on the first visit?
Web sites store information in a small text file on your computer called a cookie. It is this cookie that is used to tracks which affiliate gets paid. So a cookie from your site may be valid for between 5 to 60 days depending of the merchants’ terms and conditions.
So to answer the question if a user referred by you does not buy on the first visit but buy within the period stated by the merchant you will still get paid commission for the sale. On the other hand if the user completes the sale at another affiliate site then that affiliate site gets the commission. Yes it seems unfair but that is the nature of the beast.
Affiliate intermediaries
Most companies choose to run their affiliate through third parties called ‘affiliate intermediaries’. The affiliate intermediaries tend to represent a wide range of companies and they will also pay you the commission due to you from sales. Affiliate intermediaries will supply you with all the adverts in code format, all you need to do is copy and paste onto your web page.
The following are the most widely used affiliate intermediary sites; Commission Junction, Trade Doubler and Affiliate Window.
Increase your knowledge base...
Affiliate4u.com
To learn more about affiliate marketing affiliate4u.com comes highly recommended. The affiliate4u.com forum has 'affiliate' and 'merchant' universities which are a great place to start for newbie affiliates, you will learn about many tangible and intangible aspects of affiliate marketing.
Commission Junction University
Commission Junction University (CJU) is probably one of the greatest sources of information for any aspiring affiliate. CJU will provide you with the latest affiliate news, strategy updates, tutorials, resource links and tips on how to get the most out of use Commission Junction. Admittedly CJU is primarily aimed at CJ clients, the information contained makes it worthwhile to sign up.
Of course the real joy of affiliate marketing is seeing the money come in. And with the right targeted content and design you are half way there.
Related article: The beauty of Google Adsense
Understanding affiliate marketing
Affiliate marketing is as old as the sun. In a nutshell Affiliate marketing implies recommending a particular service or product and if the client buys the service or product you get paid a commission.
Affiliate marketing has a different spin to Google Adsense in that you are paid for the generated sales or leads. Affiliate marketing is made up of two entities interacting with each other; the merchant and the affiliate,