Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing (or pay-for-performance marketing) is where an
advertiser pays for results rather than paying to reach a particular
audience. A publisher advertises products or services offered by
advertisers in exchange for commissions on leads or sales generated. The
publisher displays ads, text links or products on his web site, in email
campaigns, or in search listings, and is paid a commission by the
advertiser when a visitor takes a specific actio n, such as filling out a form
or making a purchase on the advertiser's site. Merchants do not pay for
advertising with their Affiliates until a sale occurs. They only pay a small
commission to referring Affiliates for resulting sales.
Affiliate Marketing allows you to buy targeted traffic to your site. You
simply pay by results. The concept is simple. You offer website owners an
incentive to link to your site by rewarding them once they send a visitor
that performs a particular 'action'. This 'action' could be the purchase of
your goods or services, earning your Affiliate a percentage of the sale or
a fixed bounty. Affiliate Marketing can also be applied to increase your
site's user base by rewarding Affiliates for sending you registered users or
for simply sending unique visitors to your site. It's all performance based,
you simply pay upon results after securing a profitable transaction.
Improving customer involvement and return visits
Once customers are attracted to e-commerce and e-business sites, marketers try to keep them involved long enough to accomplish communications and sales objectives. One strategy to boost customer interactions-or to increase site stickiness-is to incorporate search capabilities into the site so that customers can easily find the information they are seeking. Using alternative spellings of products and brands can facilitate customer navigation of the site. In an increasing number of cases, multi-lingual sites are also needed. Another strategy is to provide a site map that illustrates where key blocks of information are stored.
…Whether or not visitors return to e-commerce sites is largely a function of the perceived value they receive when they do visit. There is little time to return to poorly designed sites, sites lacking sufficient information, or those that ultimately do not deliver a good value for the time and money spent by the consumer…
