Affiliate Marketing for Entrepreneurs: The Mechanics of Driving Traffic to Enhance Business Performance

Abstract

Selling and marketing of both the products and services have undergone sea changes, in the last decade or so, with greater focus on internet marketing Expanding coverage of internet allows spreading of products without involving huge additional investments in distribution system. The internet technology has existed for more than 40 years now, yet it was the introduction of the World Wide Web (WWW) that caused its fast market penetration (Chaffey, 2003). In only four years, the internet reached an audience of 50 million users in the USA. It took the television over 13 years and the telephone over 75 years to reach this number (Angeli & Kundler, 2008). Considering that, the internet can said to be the fastest spreading information media in today's world. The strength of the WWW was the power to provide easy access to information using a network of web sites (Chaffey, 2003). Of course, many people realized the huge possibilities of this media. Companies saw big marketing opportunities as internet user numbers increased (Zeff, 1999). The chapter will try to seek the performance and effectiveness of current techniques of internet marketing and at the same time to identify the potential of new and emerging techniques for further strengthening the internet marketing with special emphasis on Affiliate Marketing.