affiliate

affiliate  marketing typically refers to this Electronic commerce version of the traditional agent/referral fee sales channel concept. An e-commerce affiliate  is a website which links back to an e-commerce site such as Amazon.com. When a reader of the website clicks on a link, they are connected to the e-tailer and if they purchase something the affiliate  receives a small payment, usually a percentage of the money the customer spends. affiliate s can also be referred as advertisers. E-commerce affiliate  is a multi billion dollar industry and is expected to rival traditional affiliate s in the near future.

Some advertisers offer so called multi-tier affiliate  programs that distribute commission into a hierarchical referral network of sign-up's and sub-affliates.

In practical terms: publisher "A" signs up the affiliate  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 affiliate  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 don't know of each others existance, yet generate income for the higher level signup.

affiliate  networks

An affiliate  network is composed of a group of merchants and a group of affiliate s. Merchants join the network and affiliate s join the network in order to advertise the merchant products in exchange of a commission from the merchant. affiliate  networks present some great advantages for the merchant and the affiliate . The merchant gets potential access to a wide networks of affiliate s. The affiliate  does not necessarily need to make a certain sale amount for one particular merchant but rather for the entire range of merchants before getting paid.

The affiliate  also puts more trust in a network rather than a merchants independent affiliate  program. The merchants pay the overall commission to the network. The network then distributes the money to each affiliate  who made the sale.