The Various Entities Involved in Affiliate Marketing

STM focuses on all things related to internet marketing.

Affiliate marketing is not explicitly related to the internet, by definition it just means marketing
someone else’s product or service and receiving commissions for that activity.

Those commissions could be on a per click, per lead, or per sale basis - usually per lead
(a lead is where the product/service owner has acquired customer information, e.g. they have
registered on their site, so can now try to monetise them over time).

Finding these products, getting commissions, and running your marketing campaigns involves
several entities that will be outlined here.

1. A traffic source
This could be a paid traffic source or a ‘free’ source of sorts.

By free I mean a source of visitors that receives traffic organically from search engines,
Facebook posts/pages, content articles, or from regular followers who visit a site/blog/etc.

However, nothing is ever really free. Search engine optimisation (SEO) has become a huge
business and companies spend $x,xxx-$xx,xxx+ per month on this.

Most traffic sources are what we would consider "paid traffic", and this is what this forum
focuses on.

Examples include Facebook, Google Adwords and display advertising.

Generally, you will pay to have banners displayed on these traffic sources, on a per click or per
impression basis, otherwise known as CPC and CPM, respectively.

An impression is a single delivery of your ad, which usually means a view by a user. Sometimes
ads may deliver "below the fold" - the bottom of your browser window, so users will have to
scroll down to see them. In this situation it's possible to get an impression without a user
physically looking at your banner, hence why "above the fold" inventory is typically higher
priced.

When users click on these banners, they will be sent to a URL of your choice - typically that of a
tracking system you use.
2. A tracking system
This isn’t a typical entity or third party business like the other entities described here, but it is an
integral part of your marketing campaigns and something which you control.

We will talk more about tracking systems later.

3. An affiliate network
These are the middlemen that provide you with access to products, services, or offers, that you
otherwise wouldn’t be able to promote.

There are hundreds of affiliate networks, some specialise in different things.

These networks establish relationships with advertisers and allow affiliates to send traffic to their
offers. The network also pays you on behalf of the advertiser and will typically do so at a much
faster rate - so they float payments to you and absorb the risk associated with waiting for the
advertiser to pay them.

At affiliate networks you will be assigned an affiliate manager. They are your go-to person for
queries and it is their job to provide suggestions for what offers to run, and to protect their
advertisers’ interests by making sure you are running traffic in a compliant manner.

Affiliate networks also play an important role in tracking your campaigns - they have specific
systems that allow you to connect the dots between your traffic source, tracking system and the
advertiser. Mastering this is key and will be covered later in tracking section.

4. The Advertiser
When it comes to affiliate marketing campaigns, the advertiser is the person who owns the offer.
This seems counter-intuitive since you are doing the advertising. However, remember, it is the
product owner who is advertising their product or service and they are merely using an affiliate
network as one means to this end.

The advertiser’s interests generally come first-especially to the affiliate network. This is why you
will often be required to send in banners and landing pages for approval. This is to protect the
brand of the advertiser by making sure people aren’t advertising their product or service and an
unacceptable way.

Do not run things that have not been approved if approval is required, as this may lead to
you getting revenue revoked.

Not all offers will require approval, and generally you should try and keep as many details of
your campaign as private as possible - even from your affiliate manager
To summarise, here is a map of how things are related for a typical campaign: