What is Affiliate Marketing ?

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What is Affiliate Marketing ?

Affiliate marketing is one of the oldest forms of marketing wherein you refer someone to any online product and when that person buys the product based on your recommendation, you receive a commission. This commission varies from $1 to $10000, depending on what product you are promoting.

The most common question I hear is related to how companies track the record of who is sending the traffic and making the sales. The simple answer involves a tracking URL, which is a unique link given to you by the affiliate company or product company.  This URL is used to keep track of all the traffic and sales you are making via your website or other promotional techniques. Many old-fashioned affiliate programs allow a buyer to add the email or referral details in an effort to account for affiliate sales, but this is certainly not the best way to track progress.

Many online companies who sell products such as shoes, webhosting space or any service, offer an affiliate program. You can simply sign up for the program and get your unique tracking link. Now, whenever you are writing about the product, you can simply use this special tracking affiliate link to recommend the company’s site, and if your readers buy anything, you will get a commission.

Every affiliate program has a set TOS.  For example, many of them offer a 60-day cookie period, which  means that if a visitor uses your special affiliate link to land on the sales page of the site and instead of buying today, he buys at some point within the next 60 days, you will be entitled to the sales commission.

For companies offering an affiliate program, this is one of the best ways to receive free promotion, thus saving substantially on advertising. For example, whenever you see coupons or discount links, most of the time these are affiliate links, and when you make a purchase, webmasters make money.