Which Affiliate Marketing Business Model Should You Choose?

By Anna Johnson

Broadly speaking, there are four kinds of affiliate marketing model to choose from:

1. Content Provider

2. Trusted Friend

3. Store Keeper

4. Arbitrageur

Now these are my terms - you won't necessarily see affiliate marketing models referred to in quite the same way elsewhere! But, as you'll see, such terms will help you distinguish between the main kinds of affiliate marketing models you can base your business on. So let me explain each one...

Content Provider

Content Providers include media sites, bloggers and article sites. On the surface, their aim is to provide great content - news, opinion, entertainment, games and the like. However, they make money by displaying other people's ads, advertorials, links, etc which - whether through impressions, clicks, leads or purchases - yields them income.

Trusted Friend

Trusted Friends aim to build up a relationship with a community or list of subscribers with whom they communicate on a regular basis. Periodically, they refer their list to a product or service. In return, they receive payment for any impressions, clicks, leads or purchases generated (depending on the payment model). Trusted friends will often market their own products too, and - rather than regularly promote a lot of low-priced products - will often seek to recommend high-ticket items that promise large commissions (in the $100s or more). As such, Trusted Friends often participate in major new product launches.

Store Keeper

Store Keepers run store-like websites, where they explicitly seek to sell products and services via various affiliate links. Done correctly, the Store Keeper builds up their own brand - and becomes something of a Trusted Friend - to ensure people keep coming back to the Store Keeper for products and services, rather than go to a merchant directly. Unfortunately, many affiliates DON'T use the Store Keeper model correctly. They end up running websites that offer no real value other than a link to an affiliate product... and therefore fail to capture return visitors.

Arbitrageur

Arbitrageurs aim to profit from the difference between the price they pay for web traffic, and the income they receive from referring it elsewhere. They are pure brokers! They may run a website (often a rather rudimentary one full of ads!) or simply run advertisements on search engine pages or other websites. Those in the "domaining" game often use this model to earn income from the domains they buy.

Which of these affiliate marketing models is right for you? Well, it depends on what you're interested in doing and your particular skill set.

Also, certain products and services may lend themselves to one or some, rather than all models. For example, if you wish to participate in high-ticket product launches, you'll probably need to be a Trusted Friend.

Having said that, there are no rules! You can try any and all of these models for whatever program you wish to promote (providing you abide by the merchant's terms and conditions of course!) and see for yourself which works best.

Finally, while I've discussed four main affiliate marketing business models, I don't mean to suggest that these are the only ones. Or that this is the only way of distinguishing between the various models.

There are sure to be hybrids and offshoots of these. However, these are the most common ones and, providing there are targeted prospects and appealing products and services, the ones that are proven to make money.