In the modern day scenario, there is a strong possibility that everything that exists today might not be needed tomorrow. This is primarily because of innovation and technology. A business, being no exception, also needs to take care of this universal fact and must stress on continuing research and development tools and techniques for its survival and prosperity. This is the reason why modern day businesses use the medium of Internet to promote their products and services.

The promotion of products and services on the Internet has many benefits such as mass appeal, fast transmission and reasonable price to name a few. Many companies develop or make use of result-oriented advertising tools such as online affiliates for this very purpose.

There are many websites on the Internet today which help other business houses by providing their specialised services to them. These marketing websites such as Wikipedia and various others help a business to redefine its approach to the business. A new name to come in this direction is the about-to-come Knoll, Google's content project response to Wikipedia.

Affiliate programs and networks are free for participation by the affiliates. An individual who desires of being a part of these programs just needs to visit the website and complete the signup forms. After the forms have been completed, the owner of the will approve or disapprove, as the case may be. Some of the modern day affiliates have an approval process while others just grant membership without any prior approval.

Let us understand the meaning and functionality of marketing before discussing online affiliates. marketing can be referred to the relationship between the merchants (advertisers)

and the webmasters (affiliates, publishers) in which the merchant offers a commission fee structure to the affiliates for the purpose of linking into the merchant's site with a predefined aim to offer their good and services for sale.

The greatest benefit of this kind of marketing is the display of the respective products and services with an aim to create sales for the advertisers to the prospective customers on a virtual shelf space across the World Wide Web.

Now let us understand online affiliates. These affiliates are the website owners or publishers who offer the space to the advertisers on the Internet so that these advertisers can create and sustain demand and awareness for their products and services. They offer their services for a definite fee and the fee is dependent up on the number of times an Internet user use this “allotted space” to enter into the website of the advertiser.