Basics of Affiliates – What Are Affiliates?

Affiliates can vary from individuals, often with a full time job, who run a website about a hobby they are interested in, all the way through to larger affiliates who operate as a business in their own right.

Affiliates can be divided up according to the way they attract visitors to their site:
* Content Affiliates – attract visitors with their site content, such as news, reviews, advice etc. Relevant adverts are placed alongside this content to drive traffic to merchant sites. Momsweblog is an example of a content affiliate: www.momsweblog.com

* Voucher Code Affiliates – attract traffic with details of online voucher codes and offers. These type of sites have increased in popularity as savvy customers look to save money off everyday purchases. Example of a voucher code affiliate: www.vouchercodes.co.uk

* Cashback / Points Affiliates – attract traffic to their sites by offering a percentage of their affiliate earnings back to their users – either as points or cash. Greasy Palm is an example of a cashback affiliate: www.greasypalm.co.uk

* PPC Affiliates – run search advertising campaigns which drive traffic directly to merchant sites. Instead of paying Google for the click, the merchant pays the Affiliate for the sale.

* Email Affiliates – send emails to lists of email addresses in order to generate income. These email lists tend to be large lists of third party opted in data. Often they are the big data list owners – eg Experian, Axicom etc.

* Product Feed Affiliates – merge the product feeds provided by several merchants to create their own website. Traffic comes to them to see a wider range in one place, before clicking into the selected merchant to purchase. Home decorating site My Deco is an example of a product feed affiliate: www.mydeco.com

Depending on your brand and online objectives, you will need to adjust your mix of affiliate types in order to best fulfil your needs.