Affiliate marketing is an Internet-based marketing practice in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliate's marketing efforts. In other words you get paid for providing advertsing on your website if a transaction takes place because of teh ad. Affiliate marketing is also the name of the large, and growing, industry where a number of different types of companies and individuals are performing this form of Internet marketing, including affiliate networks, affiliate management companies, in-house affiliate managers, specialized third party vendors, and various types of affiliates/publishers who promote the products and services of their partners. Involvement in affiliate marketing programs can be very lucrative for many of the participants. It is a great way to make extra money using spare space on your website.
Affiliate marketing overlaps with other Internet marketing methods to some degree, because affiliates often use regular advertising methods in the process. Those methods include organic search engine optimization, paid search engine marketing, e-mail marketing and either text or graphic display advertising. On the other hand, affiliates sometimes use less orthodox techniques, such as publishing reviews of products or services offered by a partner. All of these methods have been shown to work effectively.
Affiliate marketing, which is really just using one website to drive traffic to another, is a form of online marketing, which is frequently overlooked by advertisers. While search engines, e-mail, and website syndication capture much of the attention of online retailers, affiliate marketing carries a much lower profile but may also carry a much lower cost. Affiliates will continue to play a significant role in e-commerce marketing strategy. You may find it worth your effort to look deeper into this.