Affiliate marketing is a shared marketing and sales program that exists between companies that want to sell products (merchants) and companies that are willing to promote these products (affiliates) to their customers. In terms of white paper affiliate marketing, the affiliate merchant (the white paper owner) compensates affiliate partners (web site owners) for their role in communicating and promoting the white papers to customers (visitors). In addition to generating revenue for promoting white papers, the listing of white papers and summary information on a web site may attract more visitors and provide additional value (relationship building).

Affiliate Partners (Publishers) - An affiliate partner, which is also called a publisher, is an entity that sells products or services for other companies in return for receiving revenue or other forms of value.

Affiliate Promotion - Affiliate partners may promote white papers to their customers in various ways, including inserting links within white papers, listing white paper summary pages on their web sites, or sending promotional messages (such as email broadcasting).

Affiliate partners may place links to white papers on their product pages or related pages on their web site. They may create and add new white paper summary pages to their web site. Affiliate partners may also perform other types of promotion such as email broadcasts or pay per click marketing campaigns.

Affiliate Networks - Affiliate networks are companies or systems that link merchants that are looking to promote their products or services with companies that are willing to promote such products or services on their web sites.

Affiliate Content - Affiliate content is the media materials that are used to promote affiliate products or services. The affiliate merchant may provide some sample materials, such as white paper descriptions, keywords and images, which affiliate partners may use on their web sites and in their promotional messages.

When providing materials for affiliate partners to use, it is recommended to use updated content, rather than the materials that are used on the affiliate merchant’s site, as duplicate content may dilute the web content value as seen by search engines.

Affiliate Guidelines - Affiliate guidelines are rules and processes that are used to define how marketing partners may use materials and promote products or services. Affiliate guidelines may include restrictions on how promotional content and white paper materials may be used, how information may be presented (representation), and which types of marketing may be performed (such as email marketing and advertising programs).

Affiliate Compensation - Affiliate compensation typically consists of incentives that are provided when an account is setup, desired activity is achieved (such as white paper download registrations), or other accomplishments (such as bonuses for reaching a number of download registrations).

This figure shows how a white paper can be promoted using affiliate partners. The first step of the affiliate program is the discovery of potential affiliate partners which can be found by searching the web for specific types of companies, qualifying them as partners, and inviting them to include white papers on their web site. Affiliate partners may participate by including links on their web pages, adding white paper summary pages to their web sites, or performing promotional campaigns (such as email broadcasting). Affiliate guidelines may be provided to affiliate partners that define how promotional content and white paper materials may be used along with the ways they can be represented. Affiliate compensation systems are created to reward affiliate partners for their promotional efforts, and may contain incentives for the setup of promotional web pages, commissions for desired activities, and rewards (bonuses) for achieving levels of success.