Affiliate Marketing Principle Theory

In the very early days of the World Wide Web, web sites were plain, primitive, and labors of love. People shared content – advice, articles, tips, stories, reviews, and favorite bookmarks – for free. Many people feel that this ‘tradition’ of free content on the Internet should dominate. And for the most part it still does – thanks, in large measure, to affiliate programs. This is because affiliate programs of all kinds – whether commission-based, pay-per-action, pay-per-click, or pay-per-impression – allow webmasters to recover the costs of developing and sharing free content. Monetization is simply the process of making a content site pay. Here some important term about affiliate marketing.

• affiliate – the publisher/salesperson in an affiliate marketing relationship.
• affiliate directory – a categorized listing of affiliate programs.
• affiliate forum – an online community where visitors may read and post topics related to affiliate marketing.
• affiliate fraud – bogus activity generated by an affiliate in an attempt to generate illegitimate, unearned revenue.
• affiliate marketing – revenue sharing between online advertisers/merchants and online publishers/salespeople, whereby compensation is based on performance measures, typically in the form of sales, clicks, registrations, or a hybrid model.
• affiliate merchant – the advertiser in an affiliate marketing relationship.
• affiliate network – a value-added intermediary providing services, including aggregation, for affiliate merchants and affiliates.
• affiliate software – software that, at a minimum, provides tracking and reporting of commission-triggering actions (sales, registrations, or clicks) from affiliate links.
• exclusivity – contract term in which one party grants another party sole rights with regard to a particular business function.
• payment threshold – the minimum accumulated commission an affiliate must earn to trigger payment from an affiliate program.
• return days – the number of days an affiliate can earn commission on a conversion (sale or lead) by a referred visitor.
• super affiliate – an affiliate capable of generating a significant percentage of an affiliate program’s activity.
• two-tier affiliate program – affiliate program structure whereby affiliates earn commissions on their conversions as well as conversions of webmasters they refer to the program.