Affiliate marketing is an offspring of Internet marketing and was adopted from common practices that prevailed in popular media some four decades ago. With the rising demand for popular radio programs, the broadcasting networks faced a real problem to broadcast all of them in limited time slots. Eventually, what they did was delegate the tasks to local radio stations who broadcasted them on their behalf. In marketing industry a similar concept was adopted. The key players or renowned online retailers offered the promotion and publicity tasks to independent website owners.

Other than marketing, it is the affiliate network which is gaining popularity. networks provide intermediary services and exist as links between the affiliates and the merchants. The networks play a very vital role in promoting the industry itself. Today, there are millions of websites which can be used as channels of advertising and promotion. A lot of website owners do not know as how to avail the services of e-retailers, financial institutions and like. It is the network that initiates the process of establishing business relations.

Affiliate networks provide services for a given set of industry verticals and services. Therefore the affiliates who avail their services are required to bear certain given specifications in terms of content and audience profile. All it means is that website with content on say some particular city will be accepted by the network whose client is interested in capturing the audience of that city only. It

is because the visitors on the website will be those belonging to that place only. Therefore if the city is say New York, an network with registered merchants of UK would hardly be interested.

However, such an impediment has been realised and networks are increasing their reach and accessibility. Few of them have reached to a level where they can boast about global reach. With global reach turning up as reality, a website owner located in any corner of the world can get picked for affiliate networkservices. This is a business transformation and an unparalleled one.