Affiliate marketing or sometimes referred to just as ‘affiliates’ is quite simply the creation and development of a partnership network online.

The partnership network created within an affiliate programme obviously has a dual purpose – the affiliate partners or publishers send the advertiser website traffic but what do they get in return?

Affiliate partners are remunerated on a performance basis – this simply means that advertisers pay only when a sale is made – this is typically yon a classic % of sale amount or a fixed cost per sale (CPS). This is the key factor that sets the affiliate marketing channel form the rest of the available options for an online advertiser there is no requirement for a ‘marketing budget’ where the level of sales acquired as a result of the activity is unknown.

Affiliate marketing has grown tremendously in the past 7 years within the UK, USA and globally meaning that practically every business sector from Organic foods to cosmetic surgery use the channel as a key marketing and acquisition tool online.

The origins of affiliate marketing are shrouded in debate, but the most common story of where it originated from are form the Amazon associates programme

As legend has it - Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon.com, was talking with a lady at a cocktail party about how she wanted to sell books about divorce on her website. After that conversation, Bezos considered the idea and thought about having the lady link her site to Amazon.com and receive a bounty on the book sales made.

After some teething issues over the past 7 years based largely around unscrupulous affiliates affiliate marketing has now developed in to a highly credible and crucial channel for online acquisition for the largest brands in the world from American Express to the online giant eBay, and of course Amazon – the originators of the channel still with the largest affiliate programme in the world.

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