Affiliate promoting may be a variety of performance-based promoting during which a business rewards one or additional affiliates for every visitor or client led to by the affiliate's own promoting efforts. The trade has four core players: the merchant (also called 'retailer' or 'brand'), the network (that contains offers for the affiliate to decide on from and conjointly takes care of the payments), the publisher (also called 'the affiliate'), and also the client. The market has grown in complexity to warrant a secondary tier of players, as well as affiliate management agencies, super-affiliates and specialised third party vendors.
Affiliate promoting overlaps with different web promoting ways to some extent, as a result of affiliates typically use regular advertising ways. Those ways embrace organic search engine optimization (SEO), paid search engine promoting (PPC - Pay Per Click), e-mail promoting, and in some sense show advertising. On the opposite hand, affiliates typically use less orthodox techniques, like publishing reviews of merchandise or services offered by a partner.