Types of Affiliate Marketing

Hi Everybody,
Affiliate marketing refers to the practice of business sharing between online businesses and online sales people. The percentage of the profits shared, depends on the amount of sales and the number of website hits. Some of the common ways of making money through affiliate marketing are pay-per-click advertising, pay-per-sale advertising, loyalty websites, email lists, comparison-shopping, weblogs and pay-per-lead advertising. Let us take a closer look at some of the important forms of affiliate marketing.

Pay-Per-Click: It refers to an Internet advertising model wherein an advertiser pays if a user clicks on an advertisement. In this advertising technique, advertisements relevant to the web page content are displayed along with the content. This increases the chances of web users clicking on the advertisements. Depending on the number of clicks an advertisement receives, websites charge the advertisers.

Comparison Shopping: There are several online shopping websites and shopping portals on the Internet. Many of them display price comparison lists of the products they offer for sale. Many shopping portals support price comparison services, whereby users can compare the cost-effectiveness of competitive products and services before the actual purchase.

Pay-Per-Lead: In this form of affiliate marketing, whenever a client registers at a merchant's website as a result of an advertisement on the affiliate's website, a stipulated amount of money is given to the affiliate.

Pay-Per-Sale: In this method of affiliate marketing, for every sale resulting from the advertisements featured on an affiliate's website, a share of the profit is given to the affiliate.

Business Promotion through Websites: Many websites offer reward-based purchase offers. They offer discounts and rebates to the customers who choose to buy online. Some of them offer free delivery services to the customers. Others feature product reviews and articles about products and services, thereby encouraging the readers to buy them. Some businesses prefer to use personal websites to communicate with their potential customers. Personal websites, have in fact, been a major contributing factor to the emergence of affiliate marketing.

Emails, Blogs, Forums: Small businesses often use email marketing techniques to achieve business promotion. They use emails for developing customer relationships and obtaining customer feedback. Emails are often used to carry advertisements and promotional messages. Businesses can explain their business role and talk about their products and services through blogs. Forums serve as online platforms for interaction with customers.