Brief Answer: A publisher in affiliate marketing is a person or website owner responsible for bringing targeted traffic to an advertiser’s or merchant’s website. In most cases, publishers do not control the content of ad promotion. When you become a publisher, you usually agree to promote a particular advertiser’s offers in return for specific compensation.
The publisher is a crucial position in affiliate marketing and is essential to your success.
The publisher is the person who gets paid an affiliate commission on sales that they refer to your site. All publishers are affiliates, but not all affiliates are publishers.
3 Types Of Affiliate Marketing Publishers
There are three different types of affiliate marketing publishers:
1. Individual Publisher
Publishers that work directly with a merchant or brand.
The publishers use their sites to promote the products of the merchant and services and receive commissions for any sales originating from their sites.
This is sometimes called “performance-based” affiliate marketing as the compensation is based on performance. This company is considered an advertiser for ad-fraud prevention policies.
2. Affiliate Network
Publishers that work with affiliate networks.
These companies are responsible for generating traffic and sales leads for the merchants, who pay the network a percentage of each sale made from leads provided by the publisher. This company is considered a lead generator for ad-fraud prevention policies.
3. The Company
An agency or consultant publishes content to drive traffic to their client’s websites (this is sometimes called passive affiliate marketing because no sales are made through these publishers’ sites).
These companies are considered publishers for ad-fraud prevention policies.
8 Affiliate Marketing Publishing Niches
1. Blogging
There are many different affiliate marketing publishers, but the most basic is a blogger who shares affiliate links to products on their site. Bloggers sometimes get paid per click or sale, just like advertisers do.
The best time to start affiliate marketing on a blog is as soon as you can.
In a blog with a built-in audience, an advertiser may pay the publisher based on how many sales they think they’ll make. A blogger with a more considerable following will be worth more than someone with fewer subscribers because the advertiser knows that each person who clicks through is likely to make a purchase.
Some bloggers use affiliate links in their posts to earn money without actively promoting products.
For example, if you have an exciting post about a product you bought yourself, you can include an affiliate link in your bio at the end of the post that points back to where you got it from.
This way, you’ll get a commission when people click through and purchase your link.
2. Video Descriptions, Reviews Or Opinion
The typical affiliate marketing publisher is an online blogger with a following that she can direct to certain products or services he or she likes.
The publisher might write a product review on their site, or she might use her platform on other sites (like YouTube) to direct her followers toward the product’s location.
Another form of affiliate publishing involves creating a video—a tutorial, demonstration, or overview of the product—and then placing links within the video that direct viewers towards the product’s website. Suppose a viewer clicks on one of those links and buys something.
As a result, that affiliate publisher gets paid.
3. Cashback Sites
Cashback sites are one type of publisher. These sites have deals with online stores and give users a percentage of money back for each purchase made by following their links.
The most popular cashback site is Ebates, in which users get 3% back on any purchase through their portal (which is a lot!).
Cashback sites are popular because they’re easy to sign up for (usually just clicking an icon on the website), and they’re visible at the top of search engine rankings when people search for specific items.
4. Loyalty Publishers
A loyalty site can help you build an audience by incentivising people to sign up and participate in community forums.
You can do this by offering prizes, coupons, vouchers, or even simple “points” that will be redeemable later. You get people to identify as community members and draw them into discussions about things they care about.
5. Email Marketing
Email marketer publishers act as a middleman between an advertiser and an affiliate marketer. They are in charge of sending emails, newsletters or e-zines to their subscribers or customers.
To avoid spamming, email marketing publishers do not send bulk emails or emails with irrelevant content but only send relevant ones to their subscribers.
‘To avoid spamming’ is a prepositional phrase, and ‘not to send bulk emails or emails with irrelevant content but only send relevant ones to their subscribers’ is a gerund phrase.
6. Comparison Pages
Comparison sites are affiliate sites that show products in a particular category and allow users to compare prices and features across different vendors of the same product.
These sites come in handy because they can help you find the best deals on things you need to buy.
7. PLP Publisher
Another category is private label product sellers or PLP publishers.
These affiliate sites promote a product made by anyone but the site owner, usually with their private label (hence “private label”). The benefit of this kind of site is that it allows you to make money by selling your products.
Private label product sellers aren’t the only ones who use their brand for their site—affiliate marketplaces do, too. This is when an affiliate program runs multiple smaller affiliate programs under one hub, making it easier for affiliates to manage and promote multiple programs simultaneously.
These companies usually work with various merchants, meaning affiliates can sign up for more than one program and promote them from one website.
8. Social Media Sites
This type of affiliate publisher influences people on social media sites by posting video or image-based content and promoting products that way.
How To Become An Affiliate Publisher?
Affiliate marketing is a business model where affiliates get paid for generating online sales.
This typically involves linking to the advertiser’s website through an affiliate network or affiliate program.
When the visitors click on the link and purchase a product or service, the affiliate earns a percentage of the revenue.
Publishers are affiliates who have signed up with an affiliate network to receive potential referrals from merchants, and they act as “sub-affiliates” to the leading affiliate.
The publisher’s role is to promote and advertise the merchant’s products on their site. Publishers may be compensated based on how many users they send and by clicking through to the merchant site and making purchases.
What’s An Affiliate Publisher’s Average Income?
It is hard to give an average “earnings” figure because it can vary widely. Some bloggers do very well, while others do not. To understand why this is the case, you need to understand the difference between affiliate marketing and what publishers do.
A blog is an online journal that contains articles written by the blogger. Affiliate marketing occurs when a blogger writes about a company (the affiliate) and then earns money from selling products from that company.
The blogger may have worked with the company directly or been contacted by an affiliate marketer who approached them about writing a review on their site.
Either way, the blogger is responsible for creating content for their readers and profiting from what they publish, so they can be considered their publisher.
Before You Leave…
If you think that the only cost of a publisher is a small commission from the promotion of your site, you have to realise that it can be much more significant.
For example, if you send visitors to your affiliate link and you don’t know for sure that the offer is something profitable. Then large numbers of visitors leave their concerns simply because they are not interested in your content, which will lower your reputation in Google Analytics and affect the quality of traffic you receive.
A publisher in affiliate marketing is basically what marketers refer to as an “affiliate” or an “advertising partner”.
Publishers are people or companies that allow you to use their site to display affiliate links, banners and other advertisements. They get a certain percentage of the money you earn if you make a sale while they help you market your products or services.
If you’re ready to become an affiliate marketer and start earning commissions online, sign up for our free Commission Academy training and we’ll walk you through it step by step.
