The Effect of Affiliate Marketing on the Internet

Affiliate marketing predates the internet and works on the principle of a symbiotic relationship. We are going to discuss a bit about what affiliate marketing is, what techniques it employs and how the ever-growing affiliate marketing industry is affecting the face of the internet.

What Is It?

Affiliate marketing is, as the name suggests, marketing through affiliates. Instead of hiring an advertising agency or employing a full marketing team, affiliate marketing is done by businesses directly reaching out to each other, though now there are companies dealing almost exclusively with affiliate marketing. The businesses in question form a partnership that is supposed to be mutually beneficial. The revenue generated by the advertiser is usually based on performance and results, rather than being a fixed amount.

How It Works

Affiliate marketing employs many techniques of other areas of internet marketing, like e-mail marketing and Pay Per Click. In content marketing, the company that wishes to be promoted sponsors the creation of content. Organic SEO is generally about increasing traffic and the visibility of sites and pages with keywords such as “CasinoLuck Bonus“.

You may have noticed that we are emphasizing the word ‘organic’ in this context. In this case, it means natural. In other words, you can’t simply make a web page spouting nonsense, having no concrete content or services, and just slap on a few links to the desired pages. That is more than wrong on several levels.

The Effect on the Content

Now that we’ve established some basics on the concept, let’s talk about what affiliate marketing has done to the internet. Generally speaking, we can find information on almost anything online. As traffic increases, so does the persistence of companies trying to advertise. Think about how many times you had to skip ads on YouTube videos, especially when there is some disruption of consistency. For example, you find some relaxing music for your Yoga at home or putting the little ones to sleep, only to be shaken up by the ad about a popular soft drink or political candidate.

This, along with cookies being customized according to our browser history, which can lead to some awkward conversations, made people develop tools and plugins to silence the ads. This has led to two things: ads that are put there by the content creators themselves, like YouTubers promoting VPN and food delivery services, and sites that will not allow you to see their content if you are using software like the AdBlock.

The Effect on Search Results

Let’s go back for a second where we talked about organic SEO. There are too many articles, pages, and sites that act as if they have what you’re looking for in order to generate traffic, but are shallow and lack real content.

You may have noticed these before. Let’s say you are trying to find a way to replace an electric plug and need step-by-step instructions. It is very easy to come across an article that has a lot of filler text, telling you how electricity is dangerous and that you should probably leave it to the professionals, and very little actual content in the form of: turn the power off, replace plug, turn the power on, and there you go.

In order to prevent content like this from appearing in the search results, search engines, like Google, are constantly updating their SEO guidelines, in order to make sure you have access to some real content and sites. The problem that stems from this is that some organic websites sometimes get caught in the deletion process.