1. Affiliate Marketing

2. What is Affiliate Marketing • Type of performance-based marketing that rewards affiliates for generating leads or sales. • The most common forms of affiliate marketing are through search engine, social media, and email advertising. • The main form of marketing employed online.

3. Online Marketing • Affiliate marketing gives companies the ability to target customers better than ever before. • In the early days of the Internet, people were bombarded with popups and spam that did not relate to the user or the content being browsed. • Affiliate marketing has allowed networks like Facebook and Google to use user demographic information, interests, etc. to better personalize advertising.

4. Search Engines • (Google, Bing, Yahoo) are the primary utilizers of affiliate marketing. • They have very high traffic volume and the power to influence which websites users visit based on search ranking. • Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is how companies try to improve their ranking results.

5. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) • Paid SEO, like Google AdWords, are advertisements displayed and highlighted at the top and side bars of search results. AdWords uses a cost per click (CPC) referral revenue model. • Depending on how competitive the keyword(s), Adwords advertisements can range from $.55 to over $55 per click. (AdWords advertisements equates for 97% of Google’s annual revenue, $33 billion in 2010). • Organic SEO, however, is when companies do not pay search engines but instead write keyword articles and generate backlinks to their website.

6. Making Money From Blogging • Blogs with high traffic volume often place links within their text and advertisements on their pages that relate to the content of the blog. • Google AdSense allows bloggers to sell advertising space to people using AdWords because they recognize the correlation between the two. • AdSense allows the blogger to really push the product they are writing about and make a commission when the user clicks on the link or advertisement.

7. Affiliate Models • There are many different types of affiliate marketing models, which can be simple or complicated. • A simple example would be an affiliate directory as there are only the directory and the affiliate. • An example of a complex affiliate model is an affiliate network, which is typically comprised of 2-3 parties, all sharing a commission for every sale.

8. Affiliate Network • Within an affiliate network there is a network administrator, affiliate coordinator, and affiliate. • An example is how DecoNetwork (network administrator) provides Brilliant Promoting (affiliate coordinator) with an affiliate network to give away free ecommerce websites to affiliate clients like DECA chapters and students. • Affiliate marketing programs are great for young business professionals who want to test the waters of entrepreneurship as there is typically little to no risk.