Ever since the online advertising and promotions showed up, there has been a lot changing the Internet marketing industry. Previously, radio, television, news dailies and magazine were the cynosure. Everything, from a small publicity stunt to extensive advertising campaigns, was carried over such channels. The web changed a lot many traditional notions and practices.

Affiliate marketing refers to a special method of marketing, wherein a third party participates and engages in the marketing exercises. All this has been possible because of the plethora of websites and other resources like web content and electronic mails. By taking use of such resources a website publisher does marketing for an advertiser or merchant and eventually generates revenue for itself.

Affiliate marketing is not the latest of the online businesses as the practice dates back to 1990s. In early 90s, the immense resources or content on the web was still being organised and stored for easy retrieval. The pioneers of affiliate marketing started with uneven business models and most of them couldn’t go for more than few years. At that time the industry did not receive any significant support. But years later, and with online services and product promotions hitting hard, marketing has once again revved up.

Today, there are millions of business enterprises who are engaged in the production of goods and services or engaged. Yet there are others who are into trade and commerce. To beat the competitors these people need to convince the audience about their goods and services. Such a mobilisation is only possible with the use of mass media. Therefore,

apart from goods and services, people have to sell the information about them, have to sell their performance, their place in the market and more. Media just provides the channel over which effective messages are reflected towards the people. In marketing the means used for such a distribution are the web resources.

Affiliates marketing has been quite successful with industry domains like retails, finance, education, travel and gaming. The masses have started to trust the web for delivering such experiences like shopping, financial help, infotainment, etc. This very belief has further strengthened the stand for marketing industry.