Affiliate marketing can refer to any sort of online revenue sharing system that involves selling and advertising. It started in late 1994 with many e-commerce businesses using affiliate marketing to promote and sell their products and services. Some of these businesses became quite successful thanks to the awesome results they got from affiliate marketing. This is probably why affiliate marketing is still a serious and important strategy for e-commerce sites.

Once a webmaster decides to become an affiliate for an e-commerce merchant that offers subscription services, goods or other services, this affiliate can earn income by referring visitors to the merchant’s site using one of the following methods:

1) PPC or Pay-Per-Click systems allow affiliates to display ads or links on their sites and they receive money when visitors click on these ads or links.

2) Blogs, RSS feeds or other types of personal sites can also be used to market and promote products. In fact, they are increasing in popularity and many merchants benefit from this type of promotion.

3) Shopping directories and comparison sites include reviews of particular products or services and also post ads.

4) Loyalty sites have a reward system in place that provides cash back or some kind of points system. Some loyalty sites also allow charitable donations.

5) Coupon sites only market and promote products and services.

6) Email lists are created by subscribers signing up for such emails, normally through the affiliate’s website and are therefore not considered spam.

7) Registration with a specific site, a newsletter, subscription or special offers can allow advertisement or promotion.

8) Affiliate marketing networks can function as multi-tier or Multi-Level Marketing (MLM).