Affiliate marketing is a kind of marketing technique for any company in which the concerned company sells its products by signing up different individuals (affiliates) who market the company’s products for a commission. The concerned firm pays off a portion of the money (commission) and in return expects from the other party or the affiliates to present the firm’s products in the market and also to refer new businesses for the dealer’s website. It is completely a performance-based method. The affiliate will only get his payment once the firm has gained some market base due to the endeavours of the particular affiliate. In more simple words, the affiliates get their part of the money only when their ideas and methods bear some transactions, to the related firm or organization, or else there will be no commission consented to the affiliates. 

Affiliate marketing precisely is a representation or framework that enables the brands to partner with individuals or companies generally called the affiliates or publishers or partners, to trace and gauge their performances in an efficient, cost-effective and scalable manner. Whatsoever you want the affiliates to do for you be it leads, new customers, drive sales or whatever, you pay them after they have transmitted the desired action. 

What all together makes the model or a framework of the affiliate market 

• Merchants or the Brands refers to the companies which sell a product or service. The industries encompass direct to consumer, retail, travel, subscription services, financial services, B2B, broadband, market places, gaming, e-commerce, telecom and many more.
• Affiliates or the publishers-all are the trade partners to the brands. They can be active social media partners, bloggers, corner content sites, product review websites, personal website owners, coupon and reward websites, mass media sites, an app to app marketing platforms, shopping sites, loyalty and even other brands. 
• Affiliate network- affiliate networks play an important role in the concept of affiliate marketing. They generally handle and undertake all the reporting, payments and tracking of the affiliates. Apart from the affiliate tracking technology some of the affiliate networks also provide full-service management program or self-service management program. It also gives way to the brand to get connected with all the other affiliates who want to join the concerned group or brand. 
• Software as a Service (SaaS) protocol is also one of the most important phrases concerned with the concepts of affiliate marketing. It also provides companies with performance tracking and reporting, however, they do not interfere in the affiliate programs or provide companies to access the affiliate networks. Their major focus is the technological facets of affiliate marketing. 

The point to keep in mind, that the brands or the companies will choose anyone from both the concepts. That means, the brand can either choose affiliate networks or the Software as a Service (SaaS) as their technology partner, not both. 

The market has grown in elaborateness, resulting in the emergence of many other second-tier players apart from the above-mentioned primary players ( Merchants, Affiliates, Affiliate Networks or the Software as a Service). These secondary layers of players include the super affiliates, affiliate management agencies and the specialized third-party vendors, dealers or traders. It is observed that to some extent, affiliate marketing overlaps with other internet marketing strategies. The major reason behind this observation is because of the practice of ordinary and common advertising techniques. Most of the merchants prefer and favour this concept of marketing because in almost every case it uses “ pay for the performance” prototype. Which means that the payment would be made only if the affiliate’s efforts in marketing have given some fruits to the merchant in terms of transactions and income flow.

Affiliate marketing has grown tremendously and quickly since its origin. The e-commerce website viewed as a marketing toy in the early days of the internet became an integrated part of the entire business plan and in some of the cases it came out to be a bigger business than the offline business. It is considered to be the most effective and profitable way to make money online. It is rightfully called the passive income method. It not a new-born baby in the field of marketing, rather it is an established and trusted technique of spreading business online and making most out of the concept. 

With the above discussion, we have come to understand the theory and concept of affiliate marketing. We have learned that it is an effective and efficient way to strengthen the business roots at the online platform. In case you want to get a piece of complete knowledge and idea regarding this form of a digital marketing concept or any other kind of digital marketing you must visit the KOLKATA SCHOOL OF DIGITAL MARKETING  which is the best digital marketing institute in Kolkata. It is an established and trusted industry-recognized course structure. It provides practical and hands-on training with a variety of live projects to practice on. You will also get a life long mentorship from the experts of the field and guaranteed placements are given.