Affiliate marketing involves businesses cooperating with affiliates, who receive commissions for bringing customers or sales to the business through their own marketing efforts. It has benefits for both merchants and affiliates, including lower costs than other marketing methods since payment is only required for results, increased website traffic and leads from affiliates, flexibility in how affiliates are rewarded, and improved search engine rankings through affiliate links.

1. By Sir Timan
http://www.affiliatemeaning.com

2. Still in relation with marketing field, affiliate marketing
is a form of internet marketing
practice where a business cooperates with one or more
affiliates. When these affiliates bring
visitors or customers on their own marketing efforts,
they will be rewarded by the business.

3. According to Merriam-Webster dictionary, the general
meanings of the word 'affiliate' among others
are "to bring or receive into close connection as a member or
branch", "to associate as a member",
"to trace the origin of", and "to connect or associate oneself".
Meanwhile, taken from Wikipedia,
from the marketing point of view, affiliate meaning is "a
commercial entity with a relationship
with a peer or a larger entity".

4. There are four main components in affiliate marketing:
 - The merchant who is also called the brand or the
retailer;
 - The network;
 - The publisher, also known as the affiliate; and
 - The customer.

5. Affiliate marketing has some beneficial gains towards
both the merchant and the affiliates.
However, a merchant who considers using this internet
marketing method should know its benefits
which include:

6. 1. It does not need huge marketing budget. Compared to
other forms of internet marketing (e.g.
pay-per-click, multimedia, or billboard ads), affiliate
marketing is less expensive. The other
types of marketing consume your budget even when you have
not seen their direct result yet.
Affiliate marketing is more efficient since you will only pay
the marketing cost when the result
is clearly seen.

7. 2. Besides inviting consumers, affiliates who direct
website surfers to your site also boost
traffic to your website. That way, although these visitors
don't buy your product, it is possible
that they will return to your website or subscribe
themselves to your email list.

8. 3. Affiliate marketing is a flexible internet marketing
method. You can choose whether to reward
the affiliates based on the traffic they bring, the sales
they make, or the combination of the
two. It is all your choice to manage in which direction
your business will go.

9. 4. Connected with SEO, having affiliates can improve
your rank in Search Engine Result Page
(SERP). These affiliates are good sources of inbound
links toward your website. The better quality
of your affiliates, the better rank the search engine will
reward you.

10. 5. You can trace and analyze the performance of each of
your affiliate by using affiliate
marketing software. The software helps you in finding
out how many times people click your links
and when. Using the software, you can also track which
inbound links that give you the most
traffic.

11. Affiliate meaning can be different depending on the point
where it stands. Define your own meaning
of affiliate from the given link.
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