The Intricate Workings Of Affiliate Marketing
Posted in Affiliate Marketing by Alan Reeves on 10th of March, 2009
Simply explained, affiliate marketing is when a website agrees to host a promoting advertisement for your services or product. In return the website gets commission from each sale that happens because of the link from their webpage. That explanation is easy enough to understand, but there is much more to this partnership than meets
the eye.
Not so complicated after all
When you become the affiliate marketer for a merchant you will be given a link or URL to put on your webpage. The link may look like this: http://affiliatemerchants.net/affiliates/a.php?aid=1409&p=239. The section aid=1409 is your affiliate ID and it is this identification that is going to earn you, as the host, some extra pennies. This is how it works; a potential customer will click on the link to “affiliatemerchants.net”, this click is sent to a database along with your affiliate ID.
This happens for every single customer that clicks on the link from your webpage. When a customer clicks on the link a cookie is also automatically stored on their computer, part of the cookie will contain your affiliate ID. If the customer decides to purchase something from “affiliatemerchants.net” the website will access that cookie and they will know that you were the affiliate who referred that customer to them.
This is how the database knows that the affiliate with the ID number 1409 has just made a sale. By using this database the merchant keeps track of the affiliates making the most and the least referrals as well as who makes the most sales and what to pay them. The tricky part is to know which affiliates will be good for your business and which of them can bring harm.
Not so complicated after all
When you become the affiliate marketer for a merchant you will be given a link or URL to put on your webpage. The link may look like this: http://affiliatemerchants.net/affiliates/a.php?aid=1409&p=239. The section aid=1409 is your affiliate ID and it is this identification that is going to earn you, as the host, some extra pennies. This is how it works; a potential customer will click on the link to “affiliatemerchants.net”, this click is sent to a database along with your affiliate ID.
This happens for every single customer that clicks on the link from your webpage. When a customer clicks on the link a cookie is also automatically stored on their computer, part of the cookie will contain your affiliate ID. If the customer decides to purchase something from “affiliatemerchants.net” the website will access that cookie and they will know that you were the affiliate who referred that customer to them.
This is how the database knows that the affiliate with the ID number 1409 has just made a sale. By using this database the merchant keeps track of the affiliates making the most and the least referrals as well as who makes the most sales and what to pay them. The tricky part is to know which affiliates will be good for your business and which of them can bring harm.
