Affiliate marketing is a type of marketing that takes place online where the owner gives a small amount of money to a website it’s affiliated with for each unique visitor they attract to the business because of the affiliate marketing practice.

While many online retailers continue to shy away from this practice for the revenue generator that it is, affiliates are becoming more prevalent in the online business model.  In fact, a good deal of online retailers have adopted affiliate marketing because it rewards marketers only when they generate revenue.  Furthermore, affiliate marketing often compliments the other more tested marketing practices such as search engine optimization, autoresponders and paid search.

Arguably, affiliate marketing works best been used in conjunction parallel to the following alternative e-marketing practices: organic search engine optimization, PPC Marketing and e-mail marketing.  Websites using Web 2.0 practices, like blogging, user communities and RSS feeds have integrated affiliate marketing methods with great success as well.

The structure of affiliate marketing networks varies.  Most are hierarchical and pay out within a certain pecking order.  Two-tier programs also exist but are in the great minority.  There are also far less requirements of becoming an affiliate, which separates them from the likes of multi-level-marketing (MLM) schemes.

In terms of affiliate revenue, most merchant websites now use a cost per sale (CPS) revenue sharing process.  Here is how the process works: if a customer visits an affiliate marketer’s website, clicks on a link sending them to the merchant’s site and then performs a transaction at the merchant’s site, the affiliate marketer gets a commission of the sale.  Cost per mile are previously used compensation methods that have become virtually extinct in affiliate marketing.

“Survival of the fittest” is the only real or effective regulating concept currently in place in the world of affiliate marketing.  Those affiliate marketers who do well work as homesteaders much like their predecessors in the “Wild Wild West” which could be the main reason why there still is no real standard operating procedure for affiliate marketers.

As a conclusion, affiliate marketing is still a great way for anyone who is interested in making money online. I personally know many successful marketers who are affiliates so there is no reason why you cannot do it.

Affiliate Marketers often use tools associated with Article Marketing because Unique Articles can drive massive amounts of visitors to the affiliates blog websites.