What is an Affiliate Marketing ?

Do you know what is Affiliate marketing?
I think every developer or a blogger should know about this .An Affiliate marketing is the program through which a publisher  shows the deal of the merchants,If any user click on that deal and make payment then publisher gets approx $2 for each sale.

Its little bit confusing but its really an interesting concept.
To understand this you should know the terms related to affiliate marketing.

1.Merchant : Who actually sales his product .

2. Advertiser: Who advertise the merchant's product.(ex flipkart)

3.Publisher : who supports the advertiser's deal(ex gsmarena.com)

Let me explain the scenario how it works ..

Suppose a merchant wants to sale his product so he goes to flipkart for its advertisement. Flipkart knows if it distribute its advertisement then sale rate will automatically be boosted .So in order to maximise sale flipkart provides Affiliate Marketing facility.

Now following example will make you understand what exactly an Affiliate Program is.

Let suppose you want to purchase a Samsung mobile .Hopefully you will search for its specifications. So you goto gsmarena.com or may be other popular  sites.You might have noticed when you search for Samsung mobile then gsmarena put some cookies into your browser for particular duration. So if you search samsung mobile for the next time then gsmarena will be on the top of the serached list .This is hidden strategy .A general user doesn't know about  what is exactly happening into his browser .

I hope when you visit  gsmarena you will see the advertisement of flipkart in the  header ,footer ,or at sidebar section.
When you click on the advertisement and goto flipkart  and purchase some item from there then in that case gsmarena will get approx $2 (variable depends on t&c of flipkart ).
So finally in this case gsmarena played a role as an advertiser who advertised the flipkart deals.

Do you know what is the purpose of putting cookies into browser?

There are several benefits but the main advantage is that if once you visit gsmarena for the seeing specification then you close your browser and come back after 3days and directly goto flipkart and make payment then in that case also gsmarena gets $2 because its cookies are already in your browser.

So flipkart can easily track who is advertising my deals on his website.

Hope you guys understood this amazing online Marketing  strategy.

Next time when you host your website make  sure to register for the Affiliate program. There are several sites providing there affiliate membership.

For example
You can visit Hostgator.com to register for its  affiliate program.They will provide you a javascript code .Put them into html body section .The hostgator deals and offers will be started on your website.Then you can also earn $2 or more for each sales in that case if user go to hostgator.com via your website.

Thanku @Ashish .