10 online marketing techniques

Want to sell online? What the hell should you pay attention to increase your sales? The following are 10 online marketing techniques you should consider:

1. Return to your prospective customer, that you are so enthusiastic about the product and your business. If you are enthusiastic they will be enthusiastic. One proof of seriousness is to make the web with their own domain, not ride on a free site providers, such as this blog is still free domain ..mm!!
2. Apply via E-mail marketing is personal. But do not do spam. In the E-mails must be clear what you are selling, a bonus that is given, price discounts, and ordering deadlines and other important matters. Advertising also can be done through the forum.
3. Online business relies on trust. Give your customers a sense of security. Give the refund guarantee, or give discounts, bonuses, solutions to problems that might occur and where they should complain.
4. Create such a way that satisfied customers for your business. That way they will tell this to the other peer to peer business that will increase your sales. If necessary, give them something interesting gift, or the like if you invite colleagues to buy the product.
5. Extra confidence that they will order from you again. Use a good reference for those persons who have become your customers, so they could see anyone who has become your customer.
6. Create an option on your web so that visitors can register to receive E-books, software, or something free that can exchange with their E-mail address. Psychologically, though they could afford it, consumers would rather get something for free.
7. Do not forget the principle 80-20 rule, meaning that 80% of the content of your site must contain information or anything like that in general for the visitors, and the remaining 20% or less contains your company profile and product or service that you marketed.
8. Strive customers who buy something leave testimonials. Testimonials can be a tool to sell to another buyer.
9. Write an article that is the information (not to be ad) on the web.
10. Show on your prospective customers that its field experts, because it can increase their confidence towards you.

Good try 10 online marketing techniques!

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Online Business

Start Online Business is a step perplexing for some people who just want to taste the sweetness online business. Naturally because the current scattered websites "Rich Quick" a fool beginners. Early stage start online business should not rush first analysis should not focus on one website and offering my advice bealajarlah of blog online business are widely available on the internet. In this article I begin with a general phase starting online business maybe in the next article I try to be more specific.

Let us start, what early stage start online business? perhaps many are asking, just like that first. The first one you should know online business divided into two Online business external market and Online business local market. You must select one of the first when starting online business do not jump to both, learn to focus on one goal first. Why do I split out and the local market? because of the way most business and governance much different approach, for example when you select a market outside the amazon affliate, plimus different from the local market selling ebook in the way of promotion and business techniques.

So I emphasize once again select the outside market or local market, and the second more specifically what you want to do business online? affliate, owner or similar advertising adsense . Choose one you think would fit with your interests and talents. When he was choosing a business, try to learn from the blogs that discuss business topics of your choice, or buy ebook related (do not get rich quick ebook ha ha).

The next stage create blogs and websites to accommodate your business ideas to learn. Memblog it also will add a friend in the online world who are also interested in similar interests. Creating a blog is very important for businesses Oline because it can build personal branding. Make a website to try to apply what you learn.

In these stages will still have to continue to learn to add science as the topic you choose. When you have been successful in one topic, please try other Online business.

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Affiliate Marketing-in the present and the future of marketing?

The so called “New Media” is very young. It got started when www was invented in the 1990s. It is just a couple of decades of existence. It has been here and for sure it will stay for good. The evidences are abound. Social networking was born. Facebook is one of its most successful offshoots. Twitter is another. Computers have dramatically decreased in size and most importantly in price. Laptops are almost ubiquitous. Like TV, they will be at every home in the near future. Internet access is becoming more and more available to many. Its cost plummets quickly. The “New Media” will dominate the other media of advertising sooner.

Internet Marketers are the future of marketing. The good news is they won’t be at their offices, they will be at home with their families getting the most out of their hard work if it is really tough. But that is not the case. You can earn while you stay at home, sipping tea or coffee.
Whether you promote or sell tangible or intangible products online or offline, you need internet marketing. Now is the time to transform more marketing people into internet marketers. However, every blue ocean turns red. When it became saturated, we’ll find another blue ocean to swim into

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A succes plan

Working for a business’ vision might require a thousand years. As matter of fact, vision will remain visionary. If you have realized it one day, it’s also the day when you’ll call it a day because you’ll no longer be existing for a reason. It’s why visions can be realized in a very long period of time. Even organizations which have existed for half a millennium or so are still working on their visions.

If you are the founder of the institution, you have a vision when you look beyond horizon. When you have written a vision statement and was able to communicate that to your people, you have embarked on a long journey of the organization. It has a destination and a purpose. You should live hundreds of years or millenniums  to see the full realization of that vision, if you’ll live that long to see it. Since death befalls everyone, it’s a must to have a succession plan.

A succession plan is a tool to immortalize an organization. You’ll never be forever around, alive and kicking. You should pass on your competency to your successor. Have you think of that? Who will assume your throne so to speak? What have you done so far to prepare your successor? These are important questions to consider for your succession plan.

Look for the maverick that will eventually replace you. A protege that copies your knowledge, integrity, wisdom, and love. If you have found the right person, do everything you can to keep that person who will carry out your vision and be able to pass on that vision to his successor’s successor.

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Paid inclusion

Paid inclusion is a search engine marketing product where the search engine company charges fees related to inclusion of websites in their search index. (Also known as sponsored listings) Paid inclusion products are provided by most search engine companies, the most notable being Google.

The fee structure is both a filter against superfluous submissions and a revenue generator. Typically, the fee covers an annual subscription for one webpage, which will automatically be catalogued on a regular basis. However, some companies are experimenting with non-subscription based fee structures where purchased listings are displayed permanently.A per-click fee may also apply. Each search engine is

different. Some sites allow only paid inclusion, although these have had little success. More frequently, many search engines, like Yahoo!, mix paid inclusion (per-page and per-click fee) with results from web crawling. Others, like Google (and as of 2006, Ask.com), do not let webmasters pay to be in their search engine listing (advertisements are shown separately and labeled as such).

Some detractors of paid inclusion allege that it causes searches to return results based more on the economic standing of the interests of a web site, and less on the relevancy of that site to end-users.

Often the line between pay per click advertising and paid inclusion is debatable. Some have lobbied for any paid listings to be labeled as an advertisement, while defenders insist they are not actually ads since the webmasters do not control the content of the listing, its ranking, or even whether it is shown to any users. Another advantage of paid inclusion is that it allows site owners to specify particular schedules for crawling pages. In the general case, one has no control as to when their page will be crawled or added to a search engine index. Paid inclusion proves to be particularly useful for cases where pages are dynamically generated and frequently modified.

Paid inclusion is a search engine marketing method in itself, but also a tool of search engine optimization, since experts and firms can test out different approaches to improving ranking, and see the results often within a couple of days, instead of waiting weeks or months. Knowledge gained this way can be used to optimize other web pages, without paying the search engine company.

References
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paid_inclusion 
^ "FAQ #1: What are PermAds?". PermAds.com. http://www.permads.com/page.php?2#1. Retrieved 2010-09-12.   
^ Zawodny, Jeremy (2004-03-01). "Defending Paid Inclusions". http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/archives/001671.html.   
^ Ulbrich, Chris (2004-07-06). "Paid Inclusion Losing Charm?". Wired News. http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,64092,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_1.   
^ "FAQ #18: How do I register my site/URL with Ask so that it will be indexed?". Ask.com. http://about.ask.com/en/docs/about/webmasters.shtml#18. Retrieved 2008-12-19.

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Cost Per Action (CPA)

Cost Per Action or CPA (sometimes known as Pay Per Action or PPA) is an online advertising pricing model, where the advertiser pays for each specified action (a purchase, a form submission, and so on) linked to the advertisement.

Direct response advertisers consider CPA the optimal way to buy online advertising, as an advertiser only pays for the ad when the desired action has occurred. An action can be a product being purchased, a form being filled, etc. The desired action to be performed is determined by the advertiser.

The CPA can be determined by different factors, depending where the online advertising inventory is being purchased

CPA as "Cost Per Acquisition"

CPA is sometimes referred to as "Cost Per Acquisition", which has to do with the fact that most CPA offers by advertisers are about acquiring something (typically new customers by making sales). Using the term "Cost Per Acquisition" instead of "Cost Per Action" is not incorrect in such cases, but not all "Cost Per Action" offers can be referred to as "Cost Per Acquisition".

Differences between CPA and CPL advertising

In CPL campaigns, advertisers pay for an interested lead (hence, Cost Per Lead) — i.e. the contact information of a person interested in the advertiser's product or service. CPL campaigns are suitable for brand marketers and direct response marketers looking to engage consumers at multiple touchpoints — by building a newsletter list, community site, reward program or member acquisition program.

In CPA campaigns, the advertiser typically pays for a completed sale involving a credit card transaction.

There are other important differentiators:

1. CPL campaigns are advertiser-centric. The advertiser remains in control of their brand, selecting trusted and contextually relevant publishers to run their offers. On the other hand, CPA and affiliate marketing campaigns are publisher-centric. Advertisers cede control over where their brand will appear, as publishers browse offers and pick which to run on their websites. Advertisers generally do not know where their offer is running.
2. CPL campaigns are usually high volume and light-weight.In CPL campaigns, consumers submit only basic contact information. The transaction can be as simple as an email address. On the other hand, CPA campaigns are usually low volume and complex. Typically, consumer has to submit credit card and other detailed information. 

Effective cost per action

A related term, eCPA or Effective Cost Per Action, is used to measure the effectiveness of advertising inventory purchased (by the advertiser) via a CPC, CPI, or CPM basis.

In other words, the eCPA tells the advertiser what they would have paid if they had purchased the advertising inventory on a Cost Per Action basis (instead of a Cost Per Click, Cost Per Impression, or Cost Per Mille/Thousand basis).
Companies

• Dozens of smaller companies have addressed the majority of the cost-per-action advertising network market, including companies like Commission Junction, Performics, and others including new entrants such as W4, Advertise.com and Perfect Storm Media.
• Google started testing CPA on 2006. On June 2007 Google expanded its beta trial, opening it to users of AdWordsAs of October, 2008, Google has discontinued their pay-per-action beta in favor of an offering by Google-owned DoubleClick.
• Mobpartner started the mobile CPA business in 2005 and is now the world leader in mobile affiliation with over 110.000 offdeck publishers (on 130 countries), over 50 CPA ongoing campaigns and 600 millions impressions per month. Our purpose is simple - connecting advertisers with their audience and helping publishers maximise their earning potential. Based on CPA model, mobpartner minimizes the risk for advertisers, and allows publishers to fill their unsold traffic easily. They give users the flexibility and control they need to achieve these goals.
• eBay has moved into CPA advertising with its AdContext system on 2006.
• Snap.com, CPA pioneer and later merged with other to form NBC Internet (NBCi), has long touted the advantages of the CPA model, such as the elimination of click fraud.
• Jellyfish.com was the Internet's first comparison shopping search engine to operate exclusively on a Cost Per Action (CPA) ad model, has a patent pending on an improvement over CPA where part of the ad revenue goes to the customer, and has been bought by Microsoft for integration into Live Search.

See also

• Affiliate marketing
• CTR - Click-through rate
• CPC - Cost Per Click
• Cost per conversion
• CPI - Cost Per Impression
• CPM - Cost Per Thousand
• CPT - Cost Per Time
• eCPA - Effective Cost Per Action
• eCPM - Effective Cost Per Thousand
• CPD - Cost per Day
• Internet marketing
• PPC - Pay Per Click (Search engines term for CPC)
• PPS - Pay Per Sale/Cost Per Sale
• Revenue Share - Cost derived from advertiser income
• VPA - Cost Per Action variation that transparently balances incentives between vendors and consumers
• Compensation methods 

 References

The Online Lead Generation Glossary

Tutorial on the CPA / CPM / CPC / dCPM advertising models

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_per_action  
^ "Advertise.com Extends into CPA", retrieved December 30, 2009  
^ Information Week: Google Confirms Testing New Ad-Pricing Model, retrieved March 18, 2008  
^ What happened to the pay-per-action beta?  
^ [1]  
^ ^{a b} Startup Primed To Challenge Google CPC Ad Model, retrieved March 18, 2008  
^ Jellyfish.com Partners With Channel Intelligence, retrieved March 18, 2008

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Pay per click

Pay per click

Pay per click (PPC) is an Internet advertising model used on websites, in which advertisers pay their host only when their ad is clicked. With search engines, advertisers typically bid on keyword phrases relevant to their target market. Content sites commonly charge a fixed price per click rather than use a bidding system.

Cost per click (CPC) is the amount of money an advertiser pays search engines and other Internet publishers for a single click on its advertisement that brings one visitor to its website.

In contrast to the generalized portal, which seeks to drive a high volume of traffic to one site, PPC implements the so-called affiliate model, that provides purchase opportunities wherever people may be surfing. It does this by offering financial incentives (in the form of a percentage of revenue) to affiliated partner sites. The affiliates provide purchase-point click-through to the merchant. It is a pay-for-performance model: If an affiliate does not generate sales, it represents no cost to the merchant. Variations include banner exchange, pay-per-click, and revenue sharing programs.

Websites that utilize PPC ads will display an advertisement when a keyword query matches an advertiser's keyword list, or when a content site displays relevant content. Such advertisements are called sponsored links or sponsored ads, and appear adjacent to or above organic results on search engine results pages, or anywhere a web developer chooses on a content site.

Among PPC providers, Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing, and Microsoft adCenter are the three largest network operators, and all three operate under a bid-based model. Cost per click (CPC) varies depending on the search engine and the level of competition for a particular keyword.

The PPC advertising model is open to abuse through click fraud, although Google and others have implemented automated systems to guard against abusive clicks by competitors or corrupt web developers.

Determining cost per click

There are two primary models for determining cost per click: flat-rate and bid-based. In both cases the advertiser must consider the potential value of a click from a given source. This value is based on the type of individual the advertiser is expecting to receive as a visitor to his or her website, and what the advertiser can gain from that visit, usually revenue, both in the short term as well as in the long term. As with other forms of advertising targeting is key, and factors that often play into PPC campaigns include the target's interest (often defined by a search term they have entered into a search engine, or the content of a page that they are browsing), intent (e.g., to purchase or not), location (for geo targeting), and the day and time that they are browsing.

Flat-rate PPC

In the flat-rate model, the advertiser and publisher agree upon a fixed amount that will be paid for each click. In many cases the publisher has a rate card that lists the CPC within different areas of their website or network. These various amounts are often related to the content on pages, with content that generally attracts more valuable visitors having a higher CPC than content that attracts less valuable visitors. However, in many cases advertisers can negotiate lower rates, especially when committing to a long-term or high-value contract.

The flat-rate model is particularly common to comparison shopping engines, which typically publish rate cards. However, these rates are sometimes minimal, and advertisers can pay more for greater visibility. These sites are usually neatly compartmentalized into product or service categories, allowing a high degree of targeting by advertisers. In many cases, the entire core content of these sites is paid ads

Bid-based PPC

In the bid-based model, the advertiser does not sign a contract that allows them to compete against other advertisers in a private auction hosted by a publisher or, more commonly, an advertising network. Each advertiser informs the host of the maximum amount that he or she is willing to pay for a given ad spot (often based on a keyword), usually using online tools to do so. The auction plays out in an automated fashion every time a visitor triggers the ad spot.

When the ad spot is part of a search engine results page (SERP), the automated auction takes place whenever a search for the keyword that is being bid upon occurs. All bids for the keyword that target the searcher's geo-location, the day and time of the search, etc. are then compared and the winner determined. In situations where there are multiple ad spots, a common occurrence on SERPs, there can be multiple winners whose positions on the page are influenced by the amount each has bid. The ad with the highest bid generally shows up first, though additional factors such as ad quality and relevance can sometimes come into play (see Quality Score).

In addition to ad spots on SERPs, the major advertising networks allow for contextual ads to be placed on the properties of 3rd-parties with whom they have partnered. These publishers sign up to host ads on behalf of the network. In return, they receive a portion of the ad revenue that the network generates, which can be anywhere from 50% to over 80% of the gross revenue paid by advertisers. These properties are often referred to as a content network and the ads on them as contextual ads because the ad spots are associated with keywords based on the context of the page on which they are found. In general, ads on content networks have a much lower click-through rate (CTR) and conversion rate (CR) than ads found on SERPs and consequently are less highly valued. Content network properties can include websites, newsletters, and e-mails.

Advertisers pay for each click they receive, with the actual amount paid based on the amount bid. It is common practice amongst auction hosts to charge a winning bidder just slightly more (e.g. one penny) than the next highest bidder or the actual amount bid, whichever is lower. This avoids situations where bidders are constantly adjusting their bids by very small amounts to see if they can still win the auction while paying just a little bit less per click.

To maximize success and achieve scale, automated bid management systems can be deployed. These systems can be used directly by the advertiser, though they are more commonly used by advertising agencies that offer PPC bid management as a service. These tools generally allow for bid management at scale, with thousands or even millions of PPC bids controlled by a highly automated system. The system generally sets each bid based on the goal that has been set for it, such as maximize profit, maximize traffic at breakeven, and so forth. The system is usually tied into the advertiser's website and fed the results of each click, which then allows it to set bids. The effectiveness of these systems is directly related to the quality and quantity of the performance data that they have to work with - low-traffic ads can lead to a scarcity of data problem that renders many bid management tools useless at worst, or inefficient at best.

History

In February 1998 Jeffrey Brewer of Goto.com, a 25-employee startup company (later Overture, now part of Yahoo!), presented a pay per click search engine proof-of-concept to the TED conference in California. This presentation and the events that followed created the PPC advertising system. Credit for the concept of the PPC model is generally given to Idealab and Goto.com founder, Bill Gross.

Google started search engine advertising in December 1999. It was not until October 2000 that the AdWords system was introduced, allowing advertisers to create text ads for placement on the Google search engine. However, PPC was only introduced in 2002; until then, advertisements were charged at cost-per-thousand impressions

Although GoTo.com started PPC in 1998, Yahoo! did not start syndicating GoTo.com (later Overture) advertisers until November 2001.Prior to this, Yahoo's primary source of SERPS advertising included contextual IAB advertising units (mainly 468x60 display ads). When the syndication contract with Yahoo! was up for renewal in July 2003, Yahoo! announced intent to acquire Overture for $1.63 billion.

See also

• Ad serving
• Click farm
• Click-through rate
• Contextual advertising
• Conversion (marketing)
• Cost per action
• Cost per click
• Cost per engagement
• Cost per thousand
• In-text advertising
• Pay for placement
• PPC Copywriting
• Search advertising
• Search engine marketing
• Search Engine Watch
• SEO Copywriting    

saurce: Wikipedia

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Affiliate management and program management outsourcing

Successful affiliate programs require significant work and maintenance. Having a successful affiliate program is more difficult than when such programs were just emerging. With the exception of some vertical markets, it is rare for an affiliate program to generate considerable revenue with poor management or no management (i.e., "auto-drive").

Uncontrolled affiliate programs did—and continue to do so today—aid rogue affiliates, who use spamming, trademark infringement, false advertising, "cookie cutting"^{[citation needed]}, typosquatting,and other unethical methods that have given affiliate marketing a negative reputation.

The increased number of Internet businesses and the increased number of people that trust the current technology enough to shop and do business online allows further maturation of affiliate marketing. The opportunity to generate a considerable amount of profit combined with a crowded marketplace filled with competitors of equal quality and size makes it more difficult for merchants to be noticed. In this environment, however, being noticed can yield greater rewards.

Recently, the Internet marketing industry has become more advanced. In some areas online media has been rising to the sophistication of offline media, in which advertising has been largely professional and competitive. There are significantly more requirements that merchants must meet to be successful, and those requirements are becoming too burdensome for the merchant to manage successfully in-house. An increasing number of merchants are seeking alternative options found in relatively new outsourced (affiliate) program management (OPM) companies, which are often founded by veteran affiliate managers and network program managers.OPM companies perform affiliate program management for the merchants as a service, similar to advertising agencies promoting a brand or product as done in offline marketing.

Types of affiliate websites

Affiliate websites are often categorized by merchants (i.e., advertisers) and affiliate networks. There are currently no industry-wide accepted standards for the categorization. The following types of websites are generic, yet are commonly understood and used by affiliate marketers.

• Search affiliates that utilize pay per click search engines to promote the advertisers' offers (i.e., search arbitrage)
• Comparison shopping websites and directories
• Loyalty websites, typically characterized by providing a reward system for purchases via points back, cash back
• CRM sites that offer charitable donations
• Coupon and rebate websites that focus on sales promotions
• Content and niche market websites, including product review sites
• Personal websites
• Weblogs and website syndication feeds
• E-mail list affiliates (i.e., owners of large opt-in -mail lists that typically employ e-mail drip marketing) and newsletter list affiliates, which are typically more content-heavy
• Registration path or co-registration affiliates who include offers from other merchants during the registration process on their own website
• Shopping directories that list merchants by categories without providing coupons, price comparisons, or other features based on information that changes frequently, thus requiring continual updates
• Cost per action networks (i.e., top-tier affiliates) that expose offers from the advertiser with which they are affiliated to their own network of affiliates
• Websites using adbars (e.g. Adsense) to display context-sensitive, highly relevant ads for products on the site
• Virtual Currency: a new type of publisher that utilizes the social media space to couple an advertiser's offer with a handout of "virtual currency" in a game or virtual platform.
• Video Blog: Video content which allows viewers to click on and purchase products related to the video's subject.
• File-Sharing: Web sites that host directories of music, movies, games and other software. Users upload content (usually in violation of copyright) to file-hosting sites, and then post descriptions of the material and their download links on directory sites. Uploaders are paid by the file-hosting sites based on the number of times their files are downloaded. The file-hosting sites sell premium download access to the files to the general public. The web sites that host the directory services sell advertising and do not host the files themselves.

Publisher recruitment

Affiliate networks that already have several advertisers typically also have a large pool of publishers. These publishers could be potentially recruited, and there is also an increased chance that publishers in the network apply to the program on their own, without the need for recruitment efforts by the advertiser.

Relevant websites that attract the same target audiences as the advertiser but without competing with it are potential affiliate partners as well. Vendors or existing customers can also become recruits if doing so makes sense and does not violate any laws or regulations.

Almost any website could be recruited as an affiliate publisher, although high-traffic websites are more likely interested in (for their own sake) low-risk cost per mille or medium-risk cost per click deals rather than higher-risk cost per action or revenue share deals.

Locating affiliate programs

There are three primary ways to locate affiliate programs for a target website:

1. Affiliate program directories,
2. Large affiliate networks that provide the platform for dozens or even hundreds of advertisers, and
3. The target website itself. (Websites that offer an affiliate program often have a link titled "affiliate program", "affiliates", "referral program", or "webmasters"—usually in the footer or "About" section of the website.)

If the above locations do not yield information pertaining to affiliates, it may be the case that there exists a non-public affiliate program. The most definitive method for finding this information is to contact the website owner directly.

 Past and current issues

Since the emergence of affiliate marketing, there has been little control over affiliate activity. Unscrupulous affiliates have used spam, false advertising, forced clicks (to get tracking cookies set on users' computers), adware, and other methods to drive traffic to their sponsors. Although many affiliate programs have terms of service that contain rules against spam, this marketing method has historically proven to attract abuse from spammers.

E-mail spam

In the infancy of affiliate marketing, many Internet users held negative opinions due to the tendency of affiliates to use spam to promote the programs in which they were enrolled. As affiliate marketing matured, many affiliate merchants have refined their terms and conditions to prohibit affiliates from spamming.

 Search engine spam

As search engines have become more prominent, some affiliate marketers have shifted from sending e-mail spam to creating automatically generated webpages that often contain product data feeds provided by merchants. The goal of such webpages is to manipulate the relevancy or prominence of resources indexed by a search engine, also known as spamdexing. Each page can be targeted to a different niche market through the use of specific keywords, with the result being a skewed form of search engine optimization.

Spam is the biggest threat to organic search engines, whose goal is to provide quality search results for keywords or phrases entered by their users. Google's PageRank algorithm update ("BigDaddy") in February 2006—the final stage of Google's major update ("Jagger") that began in mid-summer 2005—specifically targeted spamdexing with great success. This update thus enabled Google to remove a large amount of mostly computer-generated duplicate content from its index.

Websites consisting mostly of affiliate links have previously held a negative reputation for underdelivering quality content. In 2005 there were active changes made by Google, where certain websites were labeled as "thin affiliates". Such websites were either removed from Google's index or were relocated within the results page (i.e., moved from the top-most results to a lower position). To avoid this categorization, affiliate marketer webmasters must create quality content on their websites that distinguishes their work from the work of spammers or banner farms, which only contain links leading to merchant sites.

Some commentators originally suggested that Affiliate links work best in the context of the information contained within the website itself. For instance, if a website contains information pertaining to publishing a website, an affiliate link leading to a merchant's Internet service provider (ISP) within that website's content would be appropriate. If a website contains information pertaining to sports, an affiliate link leading to a sporting goods website may work well within the context of the articles and information about sports. The goal in this case is to publish quality information within the website and provide context-oriented links to related merchant's websites.

However, more recent examples exist of "thin" Affiliate sites which are using the Affiliate Marketing model to create value for Consumers by offering them a service. These thin content service Affiliate fall into three categories:

• Price comparison
• Cause related marketing
• Time saving

 Consumer Countermeasures

The implementation of affiliate marketing on the internet relies heavily on various techniques built into the design of many web-pages and web-sites, and the use of calls to external domains to track user actions (click tracking, Ad Sense) and to serve up content (advertising) to the user. Most of this activity adds time and is generally a nuisance to the casual web-surfer and is seen as visual clutter. Various countermeasures have evolved over time to prevent or eliminate the appearance of advertising when a web-page is rendered. Third party programs (Ad Aware, SpyBot, pop-up blockers, etc.) and particularly, the use of a comprehensive HOSTS file (on systems running MS Windows) can effectively eliminate the visual clutter and the extra time and bandwidth needed to render many web pages.

 Adware

Although it differs from spyware, adware often uses the same methods and technologies. Merchants initially were uninformed about adware, what impact it had, and how it could damage their brands. Affiliate marketers became aware of the issue much more quickly, especially because they noticed that adware often overwrites tracking cookies, thus resulting in a decline of commissions. Affiliates not employing adware felt that it was stealing commission from them. Adware often has no valuable purpose and rarely provides any useful content to the user, who is typically unaware that such software is installed on his/her computer.

Affiliates discussed the issues in Internet forums and began to organize their efforts. They believed that the best way to address the problem was to discourage merchants from advertising via adware. Merchants that were either indifferent to or supportive of adware were exposed by affiliates, thus damaging those merchants' reputations and tarnishing their affiliate marketing efforts. Many affiliates either terminated the use of such merchants or switched to a competitor's affiliate program. Eventually, affiliate networks were also forced by merchants and affiliates to take a stand and ban certain adware publishers from their network. The result was Code of Conduct by Commission Junction/beFree and Performics, LinkShare's Anti-Predatory Advertising Addendum, and ShareASale's complete ban of software applications as a medium for affiliates to promote advertiser offers. Regardless of the progress made, adware continues to be an issue, as demonstrated by the class action lawsuit against ValueClick and its daughter company Commission Junction filed on April 20, 2007

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Affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing is a marketing practice in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliate's marketing efforts. Examples include rewards sites, where users are rewarded with cash or gifts, for the completion of an offer, and the referral of others to the site. The industry has four core players: the merchant (also known as 'retailer' or 'brand'), the network, the publisher (also known as 'the affiliate'), and the customer. The market has grown in complexity to warrant a secondary tier of players, including affiliate management agencies, super-affiliates and specialized third parties vendors.

Affiliate marketing overlaps with other Internet marketing methods to some degree, because affiliates often use regular advertising methods. Those methods include organic search engine optimization, paid search engine marketing, e-mail marketing, and in some sense display advertising. On the other hand, affiliates sometimes use less orthodox techniques, such as publishing reviews of products or services offered by a partner.

Affiliate marketing—using one website to drive traffic to another—is a form of online marketing, which is frequently overlooked by advertisers. While search engines, e-mail, and website syndication capture much of the attention of online retailers, affiliate marketing carries a much lower profile. Still, affiliates continue to play a significant role in e-retailers' marketing strategies.

Origin

The concept of revenue sharing—paying commission for referred business—predates affiliate marketing and the Internet. The translation of the revenue share principles to mainstream e-commerce happened almost four years after the origination of the World Wide Web in November 1994.^{[citation needed]}

The consensus of marketers and adult industry insiders is that Cybererotica was either the first or among the early innovators in affiliate marketing with a cost per click program.

During November 1994, CDNOW launched its BuyWeb program. With this program CDNOW was the first non-adult website to introduce the concept of an affiliate or associate program with its idea of click-through purchasing. CDNOW had the idea that music-oriented websites could review or list albums on their pages that their visitors may be interested in purchasing. These websites could also offer a link that would take the visitor directly to CDNOW to purchase the albums. The idea for remote purchasing originally arose because of conversations with music label Geffen Records in the fall of 1994. The management at Geffen wanted to sell its artists' CDs directly from its website, but did not want to implement this capability itself. Geffen asked CDNOW if it could design a program where CDNOW would handle the order fulfillment. Geffen realized that CDNOW could link directly from the artist on its website to Geffen's website, bypassing the CDNOW home page and going directly to an artist's music page.

Amazon.com (Amazon) launched its associate program in July 1996: Amazon associates could place banner or text links on their site for individual books, or link directly to the Amazon home page.^{[citation needed]}

When visitors clicked from the associate's website through to Amazon and purchased a book, the associate received a commission. Amazon was not the first merchant to offer an affiliate program, but its program was the first to become widely known and serve as a model for subsequent programs.

In February 2000, Amazon announced that it had been granted a patent on all the essential components of an affiliate program. The patent application was submitted in June 1997, which predates most affiliate programs, but not PC Flowers & Gifts.com (October 1994), AutoWeb.com (October 1995), Kbkids.com/BrainPlay.com (January 1996), EPage (April 1996), and several others.

 Historic development

Affiliate marketing has grown quickly since its inception. The e-commerce website, viewed as a marketing toy in the early days of the Internet, became an integrated part of the overall business plan and in some cases grew to a bigger business than the existing offline business. According to one report, the total sales amount generated through affiliate networks in 2006 was £2.16 billion in the United Kingdom alone. The estimates were £1.35 billion in sales in 2005. MarketingSherpa's research team estimated that, in 2006, affiliates worldwide earned US$6.5 billion in bounty and commissions from a variety of sources in retail, personal finance, gaming and gambling, travel, telecom, education, publishing, and forms of lead generation other than contextual advertising programs.

Currently the most active sectors for affiliate marketing are the adult, gambling, retail industries and file-sharing services. The three sectors expected to experience the greatest growth are the mobile phone, finance, and travel sectors. Soon after these sectors came the entertainment (particularly gaming) and Internet-related services (particularly broadband) sectors. Also several of the affiliate solution providers expect to see increased interest from business-to-business marketers and advertisers in using affiliate marketing as part of their mix.

Web 2.0

Websites and services based on Web 2.0 concepts—blogging and interactive online communities, for example—have impacted the affiliate marketing world as well. The new media allowed merchants to become closer to their affiliates and improved the communication between them.

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