Partner vs Affiliate. What’s the difference?

Partner vs Affiliate. What’s the difference? What are the similarities?

In my 10 years of experience in Affiliate Marketing, they are two sides of the same coin. Both exist as a B2B role, and both play an integral role in carving out a large part of business revenue. However, there are some small and subtle differences that someone who is new to affiliate marketing may not notice.

Affiliates are partners that have their finger on the pulse of performance-based marketing and can often turn campaigns into revenue quickly as they have a tried, tested and profitable way to help brands grow their business.

Partners on the other hand tend to be new to affiliate marketing, and there is more work that needs to go into developing the partnership with the brand. Partners represent an emerging wave of new relationship types. And Partners who are new to the world of affiliate marketing are an untapped resource and essential to program growth.

Even now in the affiliate marketing realm, some organizations are rebranding themselves as Partnership Platforms (when they used to be named Affiliate Marketing Platforms).

Is ‘Partner’ the new way of identifying an old trend in B2B and affiliate relations?

What are your thoughts?