What is an Affiliate Program?

Affiliate Programme or Affiliate marketing is a marketing practice in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliate’s own marketing efforts. Examples include rewards sites, where users are rewarded with cash or gifts, for the completion of an offer, and the referral of others to the site. The industry has four core players: the merchant (also known as ‘retailer’ or ‘brand’), the network, the publisher (also known as ‘the affiliate’), and the customer. The market has grown in complexity to warrant a secondary tier of players, including affiliate management agencies, super-affiliates and specialized third party vendors.

Currently the most active sectors for affiliate marketing are the adult, gambling, retail industries and file-sharing services. The three sectors expected to experience the greatest growth are the mobile phone, finance, and travel sectors. Soon after these sectors came the entertainment and Internet-related services sectors.

Later in 1996 Amazon.com also came forward with the concept of affiliate marketing. In this concept if a client comes in to Amazon by clicking a link given in the home pages of its associates and brought a book then the associate received a commission. Even though there were several merchants who offered the affiliate program it was Amazon which became famous and served as a role model for the p0layers who came later into this sector.

In the year of 2000 Amazon claimed that it has patented the components of affiliate program though there were many others who applied for a patent before Amazon PC Flowers & Gifts.com, AutoWeb.com, and Kbkids.com/BrainPlay.com.

Currently the most active sectors for affiliate marketing are the adult, gambling, retail industries and file-sharing services. The three sectors expected to experience the greatest growth are the mobile phone, finance, and travel sectors. Soon after these sectors came the entertainment and Internet-related services sectors. Also several of the affiliate solution providers expect to see increased interest from business-to-business marketers and advertisers in using affiliate marketing as part of their mix.

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