E-commerce has revived with vigorous efforts from organizations and online marketers. In the present day it is the Business Intelligence that drives the companies par excellence. The two, which is business intelligence and e-commerce, have a strong affiliation which can be clearly seen in the changing patterns and business trends.

With web applications and Internet tools, trade and commerce have been going places. The integrated marketing solutions are preferred as they are filling the gaps left by traditional marketing methods. New marketing practices like affiliate marketing and e-mail marketing have come up as good alternatives.

In this article we will stress on the new marketing method, affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing has been partly derived from popular direct marketing practice and partly from the delegation of processes by popular media some four decades ago.

In affiliate marketing, the customer is engaged by the content on the publisher’s resource. The space on the web site or portal of the publisher is provided with rich media content that consists of text, animations and audio. The message is embedded in the content and provisions for feedback are provided in the form of web site links that takes the customer to the web site of the advertiser or merchant. At times the merchant provides the online registration or query form on the site of the publisher.

Affiliate marketing helps to direct the traffic from affiliate’s site to the site of the merchant. The process may be said as being complete with a number of intermediate stages and steps involved. For some the process is complete as long as the customer watches the content. Yet others ensure that the customer must show his willingness by clicking on the link or submitting a query form.

There are several models that have put in use in affiliate marketing. One of the most popular, and used for sponsoring the content or search on other sites, is the PPC model or the Pay Per Click. As per this model, the publisher is paid for the clicks generated on any specified page element placed on the web site.

When the business is oriented towards sales, affiliates marketing can provide an additional channel to sell the products. In some cases sales via affiliate channels have exceeded all other methods. Such is the impact of affiliate marketing.