Affiliate marketing is when you promote another company’s products.
When someone purchases through your referral, you’re compensated with a commission. For the affiliate company to attribute sales to the right person, the merchant usually uses a unique link called an affiliate link.
When a visitor clicks a link from your blog, website, or elsewhere, a cookie is stored on their device. An affiliate cookie does two things: It helps the merchant attribute the sale to the right person.
Also, cookies usually hold an expiration date, meaning people don’t need to purchase the product immediately after clicking your link. Let’s run through an example so everything is crystal clear. Suppose a visitor comes to your post about gardening hoses and clicks on some of your affiliate links. This leads them to a product on Amazon. But wait.
They have to pick up their kids from soccer practice, so they do that, have dinner, and then return to Amazon.com in their web browser.
They find the product again and purchase it with a game console controller.
A cookie was stored on their device because they clicked on your affiliate link. And because Amazon has a 24-hour cookie duration, you would still get compensated a percentage for both the garden hose and the console controller, even though you weren’t promoting it. So, those are the basics of affiliate marketing and how it works.