What is affiliate marketing?

Affiliate marketing is a type of performance-based marketing whereby an affiliate earns a commission for marketing another person’s or company’s product. The affiliate finds a product they like, promotes it to others and earns a percentage of the profit from each sale they make. Sales are tracked via affiliate links from one website to another.
Affiliate marketing is a great way to sell things and earn money online. This process has proven to be extremely beneficial for both brands and affiliate marketers with the new push towards more unconventional marketing methods paying off in a big way.

How does Affiliate marketing work ?

Because affiliate marketing spreads the responsibilities of product marketing and creation across parties, it uses the skills of many people as part of a more effective marketing strategy while offering stakeholders a portion of the money. In order to make it work, there are three parties involved:
Seller and product creators.
The affiliate or advertiser.
The consumer.
Let’s look closely at the unique relationship these three parties share to make affiliate marketing a success:

What is the process of affiliate marketing?

Four key partners are involved in the affiliate marketing partnership, each with a distinct role in the marketing process.
The affiliate (often referred to as the “publisher”): The person or organization that promotes the offering from the merchant.
The merchant: The person or organization selling the product or service promoted by the affiliate.
The affiliate network: An intermediary between an affiliate and a merchant’s affiliate program. An affiliate network helps affiliates and merchants connect, but is not essential. However, it is their most common channel.
The customer: The person that purchases a product through the affiliate. Merchants and affiliates work together to create a funnel with the affiliate’s audience, to convert them into customers.
Generally an affiliate and merchant connect through an affiliate network, which suggests other merchants that might be of interest for the affiliate.
For example, if a network indicates a variety of tech products to an affiliate that reviews cell phones, these offerings could easily serve as product promotion for an affiliate.
Once in a while the affiliate and merchant will simply connect by reaching out directly. For instance, a merchant that makes cake pans might contact an affiliate that blogs about baking to get their product in front of the affiliate’s audience.

Affiliate marketing Examples

You may have seen affiliate marketing example before, or even unknowingly experienced examples of affiliate marketing.
Why? Because the best affiliates tend to associate their affiliate marketing with good content that readers enjoy and find helpful. While it may be tempting for affiliates to push products to generate sales and traffic for their merchants, the affiliates who build trust with their audience on promoting quality products they endorse are going to convert more readers into customers. In other words: quality sells.
Common examples of affiliate marketing include:
Websites that cover weed topics and use affiliate links in their blog or article posts, for instance, vCommission.
YouTube videos that include affiliate links in their description, such as the video also attached to GeekyRanjit’s “Lenova Yoga 7i” review video.
Official Review sites that review products that target a specific audience, like BGR India and also MouthShut.com.