Affiliate Marketing Definitions - What is Affiliate Marketing

[Arun Lakhera]

In affiliate marketing merchants place their advertisement on high traffic web sites. The web site owner or publisher gets commission whenever visitors of his site act in a manner, which may conclude in a sale of the advertised product. A visitor can do anything from merely clicking on the advertisement, leaving contact details for the advertiser to finally buying the product.

[Kian88]

Dear all,

I got a fair bit of information about affiliate marketing from this thread... but just wanna get a clearer picture.

Does it means that affiliate marketing doesn't involve selling a product? It seems to me that the post are mainly referrring to accumulation of downline (almost similar to that of MLM) or simply bringing in traffic (and got paid) to a specific webpage, which sells the product.

Also, if i'm an affiliate to a particular product, can I host the product at my own website? That means I got commission from selling the product but it's under my control. This so that I won't lost my subscriber list and driving traffic to other website but eventually they won't buy until 4-5 visits and I won't get paid for that?

Sorry to jumble this up couple of questions here and hope someone could give me a clearer picture.

Regards,
Kian

[gradyp]

I think perhaps you might be confused. You hear a lot about building lists, but rather than being a "downline" in the MLM sense, this list is made up of people who have opted in to receive periodic information from you, the affiliate marketer. Then, when you find a great product, that list is one source that you use to promote the product. These may be information products that you have created or they could be something someone else has created. Or it could be an actual physical product.

Other ways affiliate marketers generate interest in a product are through web sites, blogs, articles, and advertisements such as a classified ad or a Pay Per Click ad.

As to the other questions, maybe someone else here can answer better than I can. I'm still trying to learn this affiliate marketing stuff, for the most part. I'm finding a lot of great information on this and other forums, though, as well as through the programs I am learning from.

Grady