What is an affiliate network?
An affiliate network works like this:
Website Q (the affiliate network) is like a middleman. They provide a place where advertisers (i.e. companies that have products or services to sell, sometimes called “vendors”) are matched up with publishers (i.e. you, the blogger or website owner; also referred to as “affiliates”). Imagine Website Q sitting in the middle of you (the publisher/affiliate) and the company (the advertiser).
Advertisers strike a deal with Website Q and say “Hey, we want to sell more of Product X. We will reward any of your publishers $XX who promote Product X and it results in a sale.”
Website Q agrees and lists that campaign (or offer) on their website.
You, the publisher, join the affiliate network (Website Q) and see Product X listed among the available “Campaigns,” “Offers,” or “Marketplace” (usually you’ll find this tab at the top of the screen in the navbar). You decide Product X is a good product for you to promote and write about, so you opt to take part in that campaign. Sometimes you have to apply to be part of the specific campaign for that product, sometimes you don’t; it depends on the affiliate network and advertiser.
Once you are cleared to promote Product X and you understand the terms for that campaign, you look through the list of available buttons, banners, text links, etc. for that product. You choose the one that you like most and copy the code they provide for you. This code has your unique ID in it. Then you paste this code on your site wherever you’d like it to show up on your site.
Your readers see the banner, button or link, click on it, are taken to the Product X website, they buy it and you get paid by Website Q (who was previously paid by the advertiser of Product X).
Affiliate networks are nice for advertisers because then the advertisers don’t have to run the affiliate program themselves. Affiliate networks are nice for publishers because it’s sort of like one-stop shopping and they don’t have to hunt for individual programs. Of course, affiliate networks are nice for the affiliate networks because they are acting as middlemen and getting a piece of the profit pie.
