Affiliation marketing

Search-engine ads

Google's AdSense is an example of a form of affiliate marketing where your ad (you're the advertiser) can appear on someone else's website (they're the publisher) and you pay them, via Google, when someone clicks on your ad to get to your site.

Advertising

Affiliate marketing though goes much broader than this but it all amounts to advertising your site or your products on someone else's site to get the user to click through to your site.

Publishing

There are a range of types of sites you ad can appear on and a range of ways in which you can pay for the service.  Of course, your site can also act as the host for others' ads and can generate income for you.

Ways to pay

Some of the ways in which you pay for your affiliate marketing are:

• click-based (pay per click (ppc) or cost per click (cpc))

• lead-based

• sale-based

Where to advertise

These include:

• shopping comparison sites
• specialist directories; market-based and/or regionally-based
• other websites with complementary products, services or content

It's big business

Affiliate marketing has proved to be very popular and has grown enormously – for example, the total sales generated through affiliate networks in 2006 was £2.16 billion in the UK alone!

There are a myriad of affiliate programmes, some more reputable and valuable than others.  Affiliate marketing can take a bit of effort to set up but if it's done well the returns make it very worthwhile.

Going it alone

You don't necessarily have to go through affiliate programmes to advertise your site though.  If you know your market well you can negotiate directly with the publisher for the placement of your ad on their site and then you don't have to pay commission to the affiliate programme.

Let us help

Obviously, to negotiate the best rate and other terms and conditions would benefit from some experience in the field – that's where Jazar can help.