Many people are surprised at the number of sophisticated ways advertisers try to reach them. Most Internet surfers could identify a banner or text ad, but the majority could not tell you about performance marketing also known as affiliate marketing and pay-for-performance marketing. Affiliate Marketing is one channel of marketing products and services online. It traditionally includes a retailer and a publisher, sometimes known as an affiliate. For this article, we define a publisher, as an independent party that promotes the products or services of an advertiser in exchange for a commission on leads or sales. An affiliate displays ads, text links, or product links on its Web site, in email campaigns, or in search listings and is paid a commission by the advertiser when a visitor takes a specific action, such as filling out a form, making a purchase or.
A merchant, also known as an advertiser or retailer, is a Web site or company that sells a product or service online, accepts payments and completes orders. If you place an ad or link to the merchant’s products and/or services on your Web site and the merchant pays you a commission for leads or sales that result from your site. Those publishers suited best for affiliate marketing have some consistent characteristics: They must have a Web site designed for a specific niche of consumers or audience. You should have basic HTML skills to be able to insert and track advertisements such as banners, buttons and links. A set amount of time per day to dedicate to the program depending on number of Web sites. Just like in any industry, affiliate marketing has its own language.
Search Engine Marketing (SEM ) – The act of marketing a Web site via search engines. This can be done by “natural” or “organic” search which refers to all unpaid search results based on relevance in the content site or “paid” search which refers to all pay-per-click advertising (such as on MSN, Yahoo! or Google). Search Engine Optimization (SEO)- The process of increasing the amount of visitors to a Web site by ranking high in the search results of a search engine. The author used to be a dentist, and now he’s trying his hand at online business dealing with baby clothes and cosmetics.