Tuesday 21 August 2012

AFFILIATE MARKETING - A Real World Example



The following section describes an example from real world of Affiliate marketing helping an online
vendor to increase sales through a successful marketing campaign. This vendor can be anyone selling any common or rare products ranging from rare flowers , scented candles or tasty chocolates as well.
The various aspects of a successful campaign are described from the perspectives of all the entities involved. The below schematic depicts the various workflow involved.
















Merchant Perspective:


  • Merchant wants to sell some items say rare flowers through his website at specific price points, making optimum use of his online advertising budget.
  • Merchant approaches an Affiliate marketing intermediary to get connected with an appropriate affiliate network conversely the various competing intermediaries could also approach the Merchant offering their services.
  • Once the appropriate affiliates are identified the remuneration model for the affiliate and the intermediary is negotiated and finalized. Using the Link/Ad creation interface, provided by intermediary, the merchant joins the network and creates the text, banner ad’s which will link to his site.

Affiliate Perspective:


  • Affiliate participates in the offer extended by the merchant and establishes the business relationship using the interface provided by intermediary.
  • Gets access of the Ad links created by the merchant, takes the link code and publish the ad link in their website.

End user/Consumer perspective:


  • End user/consumer views the ad placed in the affiliate website and on clicking it they are redirected to the merchant site (product1.com) via the intermediary server where it gets tracked. 
  • End user view the ad and proceeds with the purchase or provide their details in merchant site where by a sale/lead is generated.
  •  The above action gets tracked by the merchant server and they get to know that a sale/lead has occurred.

Merchant Reporting: 


  • Merchants report the sale to intermediary by means of transaction (reporting) methods which would contain the affiliate code, sale amount, and quantity of products purchased. 
  • Reported transactions (sales) are cross checked by the intermediary with the clicks they tracked.

Commissioning & Payment:


  • Based on transactions reported merchant generates 2 invoices (For Affiliate and Intermediary) in the interface provided by the intermediary and sends the payment to the intermediary. 
  • Intermediary cross check the invoices generated and ensure that appropriate commission is credited to affiliate based on the offer set by merchant.
  • Intermediary also gets the appropriate commission from the merchant as agreed in the merchant membership agreement.

So here comes the big Question ??????????????? what are the "BENEFITS" & Who is the "BENEFICIARIES" ???
Answers will be here only anytime soon and don't be surprised to see you can also be one of the main beneficiaries :) :)
Keep looking this space for the next article about  BENEFITS & BENEFICIARIES IN A NUTSHELL in the beautiful world of AFFILIATE MARKETING..... 
Happy reading & Regards :)

P.S:- If you have doubts wandering in mind about your content read an article which is Changing the way we think about content.