Affiliate Marketing - Perspective of Content Providers

Affiliate marketing as a performance-oriented form of online advertising has been known on the Internet for several years. Most of the papers describing this concept focused on merchants that implemented affiliate marketing into their marketing mix and very little attention was paid to content providers (aka publishers or affiliates) that use affiliate marketing at their websites. This work depicts how content providers perceive advantages and disadvantages of affiliate marketing, what are their motives to prefer this type of online advertising to another and how they choose their affiliate programmes. The paper concludes in a model of a typical affiliate marketing usage. Recommendations for companies, that are planning to start a new affiliate program, are also added.