Affiliate programmes

Affiliate marketing connects merchants and affiliates: the partner places tracked links or ads and, depending on the model, earns commission for clicks, leads or sales – performance marketing, as with Amazon, for example.

In online marketing, referral partnerships between two webmasters or shop owners are generally known as affiliate programmes (affiliate marketing). In such a partner programme, the merchant wants to sell its products and services through, among other channels, the websites of an affiliate (sales partner). In principle, such a programme is based on commission for products and services. Depending on the agreement, clicks, leads (customer contacts) or sales can serve as the basis for the referral commission. Put simply: when customers reach a website by clicking an affiliate link and buy a product there, the partner who provided the link receives a commission. This makes affiliate marketing part of performance marketing. A well-known example is the Amazon affiliate programme.

How does affiliate marketing work?

In an affiliate programme, the merchant and the sales partner agree on the scope of the advertising materials, their placement and the remuneration (usually a commission). The merchant provides all the advertising materials needed for the products, including a tracking code, so the affiliate only has to insert this snippet into the source code of their website at the agreed position. The code should be set up so that the merchant receives information about visitors – including which affiliate they came from. Affiliate programmes are therefore a form of referral between merchant and customer for which the partner is paid.

Remuneration models in an affiliate programme

Because the sales partner only has limited advertising space on their website, they will give it to partners offering a particularly attractive remuneration model. Affiliate marketing offers many different options – including pay per click, but also pay per lead and pay per sale. Partner programmes may also offer pay per link (commission for embedding the link), pay per view (commission for every impression of the ad), pay per sign-up (commission for a visitor's registration) and pay per print-out (commission for every print).

Finding the right partner: how do you start an affiliate programme?

In Germany and other countries, agencies and platforms (networks) have specialised in brokering affiliate programmes in recent years. The advantage of an agency is usually that it handles the entire administration and management. Agencies also bring the know-how needed to run the programmes. Working with an affiliate network requires at least some expertise, but above all time to set up and manage the affiliate programmes. In most cases, registration with such a partner network is checked manually, so you can't start right away. This calls for a realistic timeframe when planning affiliate marketing – allow around two weeks for approval. Once registered, you can choose a merchant based on how attractive the remuneration model is and how relevant the topic is, and embed the corresponding code on your own website.