Many people wonder what an “affiliate link” is and whether it is dangerous to click on it. The answer is: no! Affiliate is not dangerous! But what exactly is affiliate?

Many Internet users may have noticed it before: you surf the Internet, deal with an interesting topic and perhaps even specifically search for specific products that could be useful to you.

The Internet user uses Google or another search engine to find the blog of a person who also deals with this topic privately. A person like you and me who likes to blog about his hobbies... he will definitely find an excellent review of a great, let's say shampoo there and be happy because at the end of the blog article there is a direct link to it a website where you can purchase the shampoo immediately.

However, now many such links are marked with an asterisk or directly indicated:

This is an affiliate link.

And many are now asking themselves at this point: What the heck is “affiliate”? Is this something dangerous? Should I not click on it?

We can reassure everyone that this is not a scam or some kind of malware that gets onto your computer with one click, but simply marketing . In other words, a way in which a seller can pass on his products or services to potential buyers in order to earn money.

So what exactly does affiliate mean?

With all the English terms you come across on the internet, it's understandable that many people feel overwhelmed. However, affiliate marketing also has a German term, which is what we know as “ affiliate program ” – or not at all…

So this is a marketing method - an internet-based commission system that runs through partners.

A website operator, like the 0815 blogger in our case, receives a commission - i.e. money - when an Internet user goes to the seller's shop via this affiliate link and completes a transaction.

This means that the seller's partner website also only receives money if a product has actually been purchased via the link provided.

If you follow the link and don't buy anything, the website operator will also come away empty-handed.

An example:

The owner of the blog about shampoos thinks: “I would like to increase my budget a little, what can I do?” Since many Internet users know and value his blog and have already purchased many of the products that he presented on his blog, he enters into a partner program with the company “Weißkopf”.

He then receives a specific source code that, as a link on his blog, leads to the product in an online shop that he has advertised in a blog article.

If 20 website visitors click on this link and go to this webshop, nothing will come out for “shampoo bloggers”. But if 10 of these visitors actually buy the product, “Shampoo Blogger” receives a commission for each completed transaction for providing the “Weißkopf” company with a customer with purchasing power.

Of course, there are also different levels or variants of this method in affiliate marketing. For example, in the area of ​​insurance, it is often enough for users to simply click on the link to make an insurance comparison. Which models still exist is clearly shown on the Affiliate Marketing Tips .

So let's summarize:

Affiliate means “partner program”.

I ensure that a user finds my partner's website and does something specific there and then I receive money in the form of a commission.


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