Some of today’s best affiliate marketers are bloggers and other social-media personalities who have a large following. In the typical affiliate-marketing arrangement, an entrepreneur enters into an agreement with an influential Internet personality or someone else willing to represent a product.
The affiliate marketer promotes this product through links, banners, testimonials or other content.
Instead of forking out cash in advance for website links that promote a business, “the marketer provides a commission to affiliates for every transaction that results from these links,” Shawn Collins and Frank Fiore wrote in Successful Affiliate Marketing for Merchants. The arrangement is a win for both sides since “it helps marketers acquire new customers and increase revenues, while affiliates can generate revenues.”
Affiliate marketing is “an agreement where one firm (the marketer) compensates another firm (the affiliate) for generating transactions from its users,” Simon Goldschmidt, Sven Junghagen and Uri Harris explained in Strategic Affiliate Marketing.
Affiliate-marketing programs can provide a substantial upside to an entrepreneur through their ability to involve a cadre of influencers, someone who has an above-average impact on a specific field and can sawy their social-media following.
