The real step-child of online marketing is affiliate marketing, a tried and trusted method for creating sales and marketing sites or items online. Many e-commerce websites owe a good deal to affiliate marketing techniques– particularly Amazon.com and CDNOW’s WebBuy system. Affiliate marketing is an extremely efficient way to develop brand name awareness and generate leads and service.

In the early days of the web when affiliate marketing started (about late 1994) most merchants made use of a Cost-Per-Click system (understood as CPC or CPM) where an affiliate made cash from every click to the merchant’s website generated from the affiliate’s website. 80% of affiliate marketing is now on a cost-per-sale basis, where the affiliate receives commission for every real SALE produced on the merchant’s site that is due to a referral from the affiliate– and the last 19% of affiliate marketing is on a cost-per-action basis, where the affiliate gets a revenue-share if the individual referred from their site actually signs up or subscribes with the merchant’s site.

Affiliate marketing is done through different kinds of strategies or publisher websites – blog sites and RSS feeds becoming quite a primary approach, as well as shopping and comparison websites, commitment sites and others.

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