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HOW AFFILIATE MARKETING IS HELPING CUSTOMERS EARN £100s
Manchester, UK. (InternetCashback.co.uk) July 2008. Affiliate Marketing is a fairly new form of marketing which has emerged over the past few years as retailers have started to invest and develop their online marketing strategy. Almost four out of five (78%) of people surveyed said that their organisations were spending more on affiliate marketing this year than they were two years ago and the same proportion (78%) said they expected to be spending more on affiliate marketing in the next two ye
The sudden realisation for retailers that focus on their online marketing spend is as important as their offline spend came from figures such as the £46.6bn generated online sales for UK online retailers in 2007, up 54% on 2006 (source: IMRG, Jan 2008) and resulted in affiliate marketing becoming a massive marketing initiative.
As affiliate marketing has rapidly grown, so have internet cashback websites. Cashback websites take advantage of affiliate marketing and return the benefits back to the customer, which in this economic climate is a welcomed concept.
There are numerous affiliate networks such as Buy.at, Trade Doubler and Affiliate Window who work in partnerships with retailers and advertisers offering affiliate programmes. The retailers sign up with the affiliate networks, offering commission based programmes. The affiliate network then provides this information to the advertiser who can upload advertising links onto their website resulting in them earning a commission for the sales they have generated through advertising the company.
Most advertisers use affiliate marketing to earn an income from their website, for example blogs and review sites, however cashback sites return the commission to the customers actually making the purchase. Customers register with an internet cashback site (some cashback sites charge an admin fee but others are free to join such as http://www.InternetCashback.co.uk) and are then given a list of retailers who have an affiliate programme- most cashback sites have in excess of 600 retailers covering insurance companies to fancy dress shops so there is plenty to choose from. When making a purchase, customers must remember to log into the cashback site and to click on one of their unique links which gets tracked by the affiliate network using cookies stored in your computer. Once the purchase has been approved by the retailer (making sure the customer hasn’t cancelled it or returned it), the retailer pays the affiliate network who then pays the cashback site. Cashback deals can be in excess of £50 for insurance deals or £30 for mobile phone contracts resulting in customers earning £100s every year as there is no limit on how much cashback you can earn.
Cashback sites pay the customers in different ways such as BACs, cheques or post office payments and usually after they have earned a minimum amount of cashback, such as £40 however this is easily achieved with the bigger cashback deals. All cashback sites offer different incentives and different deals, http://www.internetcashback.co.uk offers £10 free cashback for joining and a ‘refer a friend’ programme which will earn you 20% of your friends cashback however you will find that all cashback sites have slightly different business models.
Cashback sites offer a win-win situation for the retailer, customer and themselves. The retailers have increased their sales because they are having customers referred to them by the cashback site so are happy to pay the commission, the customers are happy because they are earning money back from the purchases that they would have made anyway and the cashback sites are happy because they keep a small proportion of the commission earned by the customer.