Affiliate Program

Affiliate marketing connects merchants and affiliates: The partner places tracked links/advertising materials and receives commissions based on the model for clicks, leads, or sales – performance marketing like Amazon, for example.

In online marketing, mediation cooperations are established between two participating webmasters or shop operators, generally referred to as affiliate programs (affiliate marketing). In such a partner program, the merchant (provider) wants to distribute their products and services, among other things, through the websites of an affiliate (distribution partner). Basically, such a program is based on the commission principle for product and service. Depending on the agreement, clicks, leads (customer contacts), or sales can be used as a basis for the mediation commission. Simply put, this means: When customers click on an affiliate link to access a website and purchase a product on that site, the partner who provided the link receives a commission. With this system, affiliate marketing falls under the category of performance marketing. A well-known example of this marketing discipline is the Amazon Affiliate Business Partner Program.

How does affiliate marketing work?

In an affiliate program, providers and distribution partners agree on the scope of advertising materials, placement, and compensation (usually a commission). The provider supplies all the necessary advertising materials for the products, including tracking code, so that the affiliate only needs to insert this snippet into their website's source code at the agreed spot. The code should be programmed in such a way that the merchant receives information about visitors, including which affiliate led them to the offer on a page. Affiliate programs are thus types of mediation between merchant and customer, for which the partner is compensated.

Compensation models in an affiliate program

Since the distribution partner only has limited advertising space on their web product offer, they will allocate it to partners who offer a particularly attractive compensation model for the program. In affiliate marketing, there are numerous different options – including the click model Pay per Click, as well as Pay per Lead, Pay per Sale. Additionally, in such a partner program, there is the possibility of Pay per Link (commission for embedding the link), Pay per View (commission for each display of the advertisement), Pay per SignUp (commission for visitor registration), and Pay per Print Out (commission for each printout).

Find the Right Partner: How to Start an Affiliate Program?

In Germany and also in other countries, agencies and platforms (networks) have specialized in the mediation of affiliate programs in recent years. The advantages of an agency for a partner program usually lie in the fact that they generally take care of the entire processing and support. Agencies also bring the necessary know-how to implement the programs. Working with an affiliate network requires at least some expertise, but above all, time must be invested in building and managing affiliate programs. In most cases, registration in such a partner network is manually reviewed, so you cannot start immediately. This requires a good time frame when planning affiliate marketing. You should plan about 2 weeks for the acceptance. Once the registration is successful, you can choose a merchant depending on the attractiveness of the compensation model and topic relevance, and integrate the corresponding code on your own website.