affiliate

Definition of affiliate

Etymology

Late Latin adfiliare, affiliare (“to adopt as son”); ad + filius (“son”): compare French affilier.

Pronunciation

• Rhymes: -eɪt

Noun:

• (US) IPA: /ʌˈfɪl.i.et/
• Audio (US) ^[?]

Verb

• Audio (US) ^[?]

Noun

affiliate (plural affiliates)

1. Someone or something that is affiliated, or associated; a member of a group of associated things.
   
   The local channel was an affiliate of a national network.

Further reading

Affiliate (commerce)

An affiliate is a commercial entity with a relationship with a peer or a larger entity.

- Corporate structure

A corporation may be referred to as an affiliate of another when it is related to it but not strictly controlled by it, as with a subsidiary relationship, or when it is desired to avoid the appearance of control. This is sometimes seen with companies that need to avoid restrictive laws (or negative public opinion) on foreign ownership.

For the concept as exercised in the North American broadcasting industry see network affiliate.

Affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing typically refers to an electronic commerce version of the traditional agent/referral fee sales channel concept. An e-commerce affiliate is a website which links back to an e-commerce site with the goal of making a commission for referred sales.

However, as e-commerce continues to evolve, e-commerce affiliates are no longer restricted to website owners. Bloggers and members of different online community forums can be affiliates as well. Many emerging affiliate programs are now accepting bloggers and individuals, not necessarily webmasters, to be affiliates.

Affiliates can also be referred to as publishers. Affiliate marketers don't necessarily have to be affiliate marketers specifically. Sometimes such marketers can be the e-commerce web site that actually sells the products and services. The advantage of this method of marketing is that it cuts out the middleman but it does require the affiliates to have a high degree of trust in the software and people behind the e-commerce web site in question.

In electronic commerce, affiliates earn money in three ways:

• per click
• per sale, and
• per lead.

Affiliate network

An affiliate network acts as an intermediary between publishers (affiliates) and merchant affiliate programs. It allows website publishers to more easily find and participate in affiliate programs which are suitable for their website (and thus generate income from those programs), and allows websites offering affiliate programs (typically online merchants) to reach a larger audience by promoting their affiliate programs to all of the publishers participating in the affiliate network.

Traditional affiliate networks enable merchants to offer publishers a share of any revenue that is generated by the merchant from visitors to the publisher's site, or a fee for each visitor on the publisher's site that completes a specific action (making a purchase, registering for a newsletter, etc.). The majority of merchant programs have a revenue share model, as opposed to a fee-per-action model.

For merchants, affiliate network services and benefits may include tracking technology, reporting tools, payment processing, and access to a large base of publishers. For affiliates, services and benefits can include simplifying the process of registering for one or more merchant affiliate programs, reporting tools, and payment aggregation.

Affiliates are generally able to join affiliate networks for free, whereas there is generally a fee for merchants to participate. Traditional affiliate networks might charge an initial setup fee and/or a recurring membership fee. It is also common for affiliate networks to charge merchants a percentage of the commissions paid to affiliates.

Network affiliate

In the broadcasting industry (especially in North America), a network affiliate (or affiliated station) is a local broadcaster which carries some or all of the television program or radio program line-up of a television or radio network, but is owned by a company other than the owner of the network. This distinguishes such a television station or radio station from an owned-and-operated station (O&O), which is owned by its parent network.

Notwithstanding this distinction, it is common in informal speech (even for networks or O&Os themselves) to refer to any station, O&O or otherwise, that carries a particular network's programming as an affiliate, or to refer to the status of carrying such programming in a given market as "affiliation".