Affiliate Marketing, or affinity marketing as it’s also known as, involves selling or promoting something from another website and receiving a sales commission or percentage in return. In short, it’s a business partnership; it rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliates’ marketing efforts. It is also another form of online marketing, although it retains a much lower profile than other digital marketing solutions and services. Although you may be “selling” the product on your website there are no actual physical products for you to store or ship, they’re all digital products. Customers may purchase products via your site (for which you will earn a commission) but ultimately it is the partnership company (merchant) who will provide the product, store it and ship it out to the customer.
Types of Affinity websites:
- Comparison websites and directories – insurance, shopping, mortgages etc
- Loyalty websites – usually provide a reward system for purchases. E.g. Pigsback.com
- Customer Relationship Management sites that offer users the chance to make charitable donations
- Coupon websites that focus on sales promotions
- Product review sites
- Most blogs/video blogs
- RSS feeds
- Shopping directories that don’t provide price comparisons or coupons/promotions
