Affiliate marketing can be a promotional model that connects a business that features a product to sell with a marketer who can sell it. Affiliate marketing is performance based. Thus advertisers only pay when affiliates deliver a specified customer action. within the ecommerce context, this action is usually a web purchase, which makes affiliate marketing very cost effective. it's for this reason that some experts ask affiliate marketing as a model instead of an advertising channel, since an honest affiliate may use many promotional channels to drive sales.
There are arguably four things that constitute affiliate marketing which is: The creator, the affiliate, the buyer, and therefore the network.
The creator is that the owner of the merchandise that's to be advertised through affiliate marketing, the creator is typically a company or e-commerce website, or a mobile app looking to extend their product reach. Affiliate marketing helps to enhance the marketing strategy of the creator or the merchant. The creator is simply liable for creating the merchandise.
The affiliate is that the one liable for promoting the creator’s content or product on their platforms. The affiliate usually features a lot of traffic on its platform to assist increase the reach of the merchandise they're advertising.
The network is that the connection between a creator and an affiliate. The creator usually approaches an affiliate network to advertise its product while an affiliate approaches the affiliate network to advertise a creator’s content or product.
The consumer is that the ones that make affiliate marketing possible, without consumers to shop for products there'll be no need for affiliate marketing. The buyer doesn't gain much from this process as they're liable for paying. The sole gain they get is that the ease to access products once they see them.