1. Affiliate marketing:
is it a good way to increase profits?
Università degli Studi di Bari Aldo Moro
Facoltà di Economia
Corso di Laurea in Economia e Commercio
Anno Accademico 2011-2012
2. Introduction
• Nowadays almost 30% of the world’s
population has Internet access: around 2
billion people
• 32 billion hours spent online every month!
(Source: Go-Gulf)
3. Italian Internet users are estimated to be close
to 26 million, with a great growth since 2001
(source: Mclink)
4. Millions of Italian Internet users
30
25
20
15
Millions of users
10
5
0
2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011
5. • What happens during those billions of hours
spent online every month?
• Who earns money?
6. General info
Definition: affiliate marketing is a type of performance-based
marketing in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for
each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliate’s own
marketing efforts.
The players of affiliate marketing are:
• the merchant, also called “retailer” or “brand”
• the publisher, also known as the affiliate
• the customer.
8. • One of the best ways to earn money online (Robert
Kiyosaki)
• Many hard-working affiliates made a fortune
9. How does affiliate marketing work?
• A company sets-up an affiliate marketing program
• The webmaster signs up to the program as an
affiliate
• The webmaster publishes banners or links
10. • A random visitor clicks on a banner/link
• The company’s web server is programmed so that
the visitor will be sent to the webpage for the
product/service promoted.
11. Short history
Referral William
Amazon
marketing Tobin
• Affiliate marketing nowadays
13. In-house vs outsourced affiliate
programs
Affiliate programs are the means through which
affiliate marketing works
14. What should a company do before
launching an affiliate program?
• Competitor analysis
• Commercials
• Creatives
• Communication
• Campaign analysis
15. Affiliate programs
In-house Outsourced
Direct Use of a
control network
Money saved
on Fast growth
commissions
16. In-house Outsourced
Connections may be limited and finding new affiliates Experienced managers have already estabilished an
might prove to be a challenge extensive network of affiliates
Experienced managers know what works and what
It is risky to hire an unexperienced affiliate manager
does not
This is not a one person job. It requires networking
Estabilished managers will have a team of experts to
and people skills, technical expertise, graphic design
handle all facets of affiliate program management
and newsletter management
Often, program management is a secondary task for The managers focus in on managing an affiliate
in-house managers as other responsibilities take program with few distractions
priority
Many in-house managers have an employee Managers are business owners. Their income is
mentality, requiring direction and permission on even based on performance, giving them incentive to do
the smallest decisions good work
Often the manager acts as one point of contact for
Affiliates need to deal with several affiliate managers
multiple merchants, making it easier for the affiliate
for several different companies
to promote several programs at once
18. Benefits:
• easy and free to join
• all tracking and payments are done by one network
• easy way to get deals with big companies
• wide offer of banners that can be perfectly added to
every website
• chance to check every affiliate program’s record
before applying
19. The main affiliate networks
• Main ones:
Tradedoubler, Zanox, Sprintrade, Netaffiliation
, AffiliateWindow, Webgains, Buy.
• How they earn their transaction fees
20. Tradedoubler: 1,900 advertisers and 138,000
publishers. Yearly gross revenue: 73 million €
Zanox: 4,000 merchants; more than 1 million
publishers. Yearly gross revenue: 77 million €
23. How can a publisher drive traffic to his
website?
• SEM – Search Engine Marketing
• DEM – Direct Email Marketing
• Social media marketing
Statistics Google Analytics
24. Case studies
Case study #1
Client: Hyundai
Affiliate network: Tradedoubler
Reward plan: CPL
Goal: generate 1,000 sign-ups for a newsletter with a
chance to win a €20 fuel voucher
Duration: 5 weeks
Results: 1,156 unique visitors, 1,000 sign-ups
25. Case study #2
Client: Bimbomarket
Affiliate network: Zanox
Reward plan: CPS
Goal: increase sales
Duration: 2009-ongoing
Results: sales increased by 25% during the first weeks;
new customers all around Europe
26. Case study #3
Publisher: Paolo Moro
Affiliate network: Tradedoubler
Duration: 2002-2008
Revenues: €125,369.48
27. Case study #4
Publisher: John Chow
Affiliate networks/programs: several
Duration: 1 year
Revenues: more than $500,000! Currently he earns up
to $40,000 each month with affiliate marketing.
