For start ups and publishers who had given up the hope of making fairly large profits from their online ventures, affiliate marketing has come as an elixir and delivered them from prolonged anxiety. In this kind of marketing, the web site owners advertise and sell products on their web sites. The products are provided by the advertisers and traders, popularly called as merchants.

Generally, web site owners and publishers start independently and without any affiliation to anyone. The making and development of web sites do not require a large investment. It takes time, but, to optimize and promote the web sites on the search engines and directories and have significant traffic on the web site. Today, paid promotions service is also provided to aid the web site owner by sponsored placements.

Affiliate networks further bolster the marketing process by encouraging publishers and advertisers to enter into the relationship. Affiliate networks also provide services that are needed by the affiliates and merchants. Most of the tasks have been automated, but still there are many administrative tasks that have to be dome manually by the crew of the network.

In affiliate marketing, the profits are shared. Affiliate networks and merchants usually provide programs that make you earn commissions. The commissions are fixed for any kind of action or activity on the merchant’s advertisement. Pay Per Click and Pay Per Sale are some popular ones.

Affiliate marketing cycle starts with the joining of the program. The publisher may either join the merchant’s program or join the program of an affiliate network. With the merchant, the affiliate can access the advertising material and start at that very instant. Some merchant’s first go for reviewing the web site of the publisher. While joining with the affiliate network, the publisher gets the access to an interface that has accounts of different merchants. The publisher may select any given merchant and start promoting his products.

Any web site visitor who visits and purchases or clicks on the advertisement, is tracked by the network. A record is maintained by the network which can be viewed at any time by merchants and advertisers. Based on purchases or clicks the amount for affiliate is derived and sent, provided it is above threshold amount.