Affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing is a sort of performance-based marketing in which a company compensates one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought by the affiliate's own marketing efforts. In this style of marketing, the affiliate is credited with having brought in the visitor or customer.

Affiliate marketing and other forms of Internet marketing, such as organic search engine optimization (SEO), paid search engine marketing (PPC – Pay Per Click), e-mail marketing, content marketing, and display advertising, may have some degree of overlap with one another.

Advertisers typically fail to see the potential of affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing has a far lower profile than other forms of internet marketing, such as search engines, e-mail, and website syndication. However, affiliate marketing is becoming more important. Despite this, affiliates continue to play a key part in the marketing methods used by online merchants.