Affiliate marketing can be classified as a form of Internet marketing which generally depends on the cooperative efforts between a merchant and an affiliate's site. The merchant is the person who intends to see his products or services through his site, and an affiliate is the individual who uses his website to promote the products and services of the merchant. Affiliate marketing uses one website to drive traffic to another website, and affiliates or ad publishers receive a commission on every customer for every sale that they make. This can be referred to as cost-per-sale or cost-per-lead.

For increasing their sales, affiliates use regular Internet advertising methods like SEO and e-mail marketing and even less orthodox ways like publishing reviews of products of their partners. If you are wondering how the traffic to an affiliate's website gets traced, self-affiliate programs and third-party softwares are available for the same purpose.

Benefits of Affiliate Marketing

For companies:

• Cost-effectiveness: You can increase your brand’s visibility with the help of affiliates who can secure high search engine listings and advertise your company on their websites. This way you also have a better chance of being found than your competitors.
• Free Brand Exposure: You can increase your brand’s visibility with the help of affiliates who can secure high search engine listings and advertise your company on their websites. This way you also have a better chance of being found than your competitors.
• Transparency in deals: You can easily track the origin of your sales and hence keep a tab on the sales; time and location. So there is excellent transparency of returns on investments.

For affiliates:

• All the work is already done for you: The best thing about affiliate marketing is that you don't need to start your business right from scratch. You don't have to conduct research, determine your target consumer section or even create a product or service. The cake has already been baked and is ready to be eaten, or in your case, to be sold.
• Work from home: If you don’t want to work in a proper office environment and are determined to working from home, then this is the way for you. Also, if you are unsure of working from home, you can join with an affiliate marketing company and work for a while to find out if the job is meant for you.
• Work according to your capacity: One of the most appealing features of this marketing is that you get to choose how hard you’re going to work. You can even decide between selling real products, or just bringing in potential customers to your company, and they can deal with the rest.
• Guaranteed paychecks: You are guaranteed to be paid when you deliver the desired results. Depending on the program that you work with, you can choose the period after which you get paid and also the method of payment like by cheque, Paypal etc.