What is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing (also called referral or associate marketing) is an Internet-based marketing concept that helps merchants leverage their sales through independent marketers called affiliates or publishers.

How does affiliate marketing work?

As a online merchant or business owner, you enter into a agreement to pay your affiliates (individuals or other companies) in exchange for sales, leads, or subscribers that the affiliate refers to you.

Affiliates are sometimes called "publishers", and merchant's "advertisers", which is exactly what they are.

It is not the affiliates job to actually make the sale, but rather to pre-sell and refer potential buyers to the merchant or business owner.

When visitors click-through from the affiliate's site to merchants, that referral is recorded. And if a sale results, the merchant pays affiliate according to terms set out in the agreement.

Compensation is typically paid only after a completed sale is made or valid lead is processed, which is one of the many benefits of an affiliate marketing program.

The business referred to the merchant by affiliates is tracked by special software that can be deployed in one of three ways . . .

• Purchase and run the software on the merchant's server (for example, CRE Loaded, or iDevAffiliate).
• Contract with an Application Service Provider (for example, MyAP or 1 Shopping Cart)
• Let an Affiliate Network handle it (for example, Shareasale, Commission Junction or OneNetwork).

Affiliates might promote merchant's products or services through optimized web sites, blogs, mailing lists, social networking methods, loyalty programs, or paid advertising. Professional affiliates are experts in these methods.

Partnering with Alta Publishing

Alta Publishing partners with selected merchants that have an affiliate program in place, as well as experts who have developed high-quality information products.

We use our technology to cast a wide net for your clients, recommend your product on our pages, and direct those clients to your site. This greatly leverages your marketing, and builds a long-term income stream for both your company and ours.

Our network of sites and blogs are carefully designed using a spectrum of proven methods developed over the last 10 years. No search engine tricks or spam. Just solid strategy and good business practices.

Ready to create a magnet for your ideal clients?

Order a Local Search Marketing Package to start attracting ideal local clients within 30 days, or a Marketing Roadmap to guide your entire online initiative. Not sure what action to take? Consider an On-Demand Marketing session.