What is affiliate marketing?
We have a wealth of brilliant articles on our website covering the many various aspects of affiliate marketing in depth, however, for those of you who are completely new to the concept, I'm going to go back to basics and explain in detail exactly what affiliate marketing is, what it takes to succeed and how you could become a successful affiliate marketer, too.
The affiliate
The affiliate owns a website. That affiliate could be me, you, or that weird guy next door. Seriously, it's not that complicated to build a website suitable for the job (although marketing that website effectively is another matter, we'll get to that later).
The website an affiliate owns contains details (or reviews) about a product sold on the advertiser's website. It also links to the advertiser's product page via a special link, known as an affiliate link.
The advertiser:
The advertiser could be any business which sells a product or service online. It could be John Lewis, Amazon, a car insurance company, or even your local skateboard shop if it has an online store.
The affiliate network:
the affiliate network drops a tracking cookie into the buyer's browser when they visit an advertisers website as a result of clicking an affiliate link on the affiliate's website. They are effectively the glue which makes affiliate marketing possible, and they're the guys who send your payment to you.
source:moreniche.com