Affiliate Marketing is the online version of the age old practice of paying commission to agents who bring customers for merchants. It is a method of web business promotion and was conceptualized almost a decade back, when Jeff Bezos CEO of amazon.com offered commission to a lady to sell books for Amazon. The concept clicked and has bloomed since then, in-to a multi billion dollar industry. Affiliate Marketing is a performance based model where agents/affiliate get a share in revenue for generating clicks, leads or sales for a merchant/website.

The business model for affiliate marketing is quite simple and transparent. Merchants and affiliates join an Affiliate Network which provides a common platform for traders (merchant) and promoters (affiliates). The network provides growth opportunities by giving access to a wide base of affiliates who would promote business for the merchant. The merchant pays for performance i.e. payment is made for numbers of clicks lead generated or sales made and not for promotional services provided by the affiliate. The network apart from providing a common platform for B2B transaction also provides account management for the affiliate and the merchant, tracks the transactions made, generates requisite reports for merchants and affiliates, and may provide additional benefits like newsletter, compliance etc.

Affiliate networks are free to join. Affiliate fetch business for the merchants by linking the merchant's website on their own websites thereby driving more traffic to merchant's site and making the site more accessible/visible to the customer. In an Affiliate Marketing Network a merchant may associate with multiple affiliates, affiliates in turn may be promoting the merchants' website through several websites. The network apart from providing a wide base of affiliates provides services like a dedicated accounts team for the merchant and affiliate, newsletters for industry news, updates, seminars etc. The network tracks the leads/sales by affiliates, generates reports for merchants and affiliates and is the link for communication/transaction between the merchants and the affiliate.

Affiliate Marketing is a preferred tool of optimising business by merchants as it is a pure, performance-based approach towards marketing products/services. Through advanced tracking technologies, an accurate account of sales generated by an affiliate is provided ensuring complete transparency. Major investments in affiliate marketing come from blue chip companies. This marketing mode is bound to have an all-pervasive web presence and is already popular in retail sector, gambling and Internet services and has, a huge potential in travel, mobile companies, personal finance segment. Emergence of affiliate marketing is reflected by the emergence of organized forums like a4uforum.co.uk.