It might not have been pioneered by Amazon, but Amazon.com is probably one of the most successful and well-known examples of affiliate marketing.

Basically, the concept is that an Affiliate Advertiser pays and Affiliate Marketer a predefined amount of money or commission for the sales or leads generated by that Affiliate Marketer’s website. Google, has probably the second most well-known and successful Affiliate Marketing program, called AdSense.

The way it works is that an independent website will place advertising links or banners on their website, which directs traffic to the Affiliate Advertiser’s website. Through a cookie and website analytics, data is gathered, statistics generated, and evidence of the Affiliate Marketer’s performance is reported.

Based on this information, the Affiliate Advertiser pays the Affiliate Marketer their performance-based compensation. Often, these cookies and analytics will be collected, performed, analyzed and reported by independent, third-party affiliate marketing aggregators.

More on Affiliate Marketing >>>