Affiliate Marketing is a business model. It has become one of the primary income sources and has even made millionaires out of some affiliate marketers.
So what are the pieces that make up the affiliate marketing revenue model?
Affiliate Marketing Revenue Model-4 Pieces Of The Pies
1. Affiliate merchant. When you join an affiliate program you’re representing a merchant who is going to pay you to complete a specific action.
You may be getting paid to get a lead, get a click, or even make a sale. You might be recruiting affiliates, into a 2-tier program, to perform these actions and earn commission on their performance.
2. Affiliate network. There are literally millions of affiliate programs you can join independently, but many people actually choose to join a network where they have access to multiple programs under one ID number.
Popular affiliate networks include ClickBank, Commission Junction, and Amazon. Offer Vault is a website that has many affiliate networks you can join primarily for cost per action programs.
3. Affiliates. In this revenue model nothing happens without affiliates to promote the desired action.
For example, you might see Google Adsense ads on the website where the affiliate is primarily an information publisher. When people click on the ads, the affiliate makes money. Google has paid out billions of dollars in commissions just on this revenue stream alone.
Some affiliates focus on cost per action programs where they’re getting leads for the merchant, or getting somebody to download something such as software. Other affiliates do primarily pay per sale programs such as selling digital information for Clickbank, or physical products for Amazon.
Affiliate Marketing Revenue Model-Conclusion
4. The end user. If you bought something online chances are you’ve done it from an affiliate website.
If you join an email list you’ve probably filled out a form and are now subscribed to somebody doing affiliate marketing. If you Google search something the ads going across the top and down the right-hand side are merchants and many of those are affiliate marketers.
Amazon runs one of the largest affiliate programs in the world and were actually one of the first affiliate networks. Today you can buy everything from small items all the way up to pianos or cars on affiliate sites.
This gives you a basic idea of the four pieces that comprise the affiliate marketing revenue model. As an affiliate marketer your goal is to make money representing the merchant and you probably will find them in an affiliate network.