What Is Affiliate Marketing?
If you are a webmaster, affiliates are not far off. Affiliates will most common promote a web based business on their websites in return for a share of the profits that a sale has netted. In an interesting twist on the affiliate business, there has been the occasional online business owner who turned webmaster, and in turn took on affiliates’ duties for another website. The goal of becoming an affiliate is to send visitors who will hopefully turn into buyers to another business’ website. From the other side of the aisle, an affiliate is an inexpensive marketer who will work from her or his position on the web to send affiliate traffic to the merchant’s web site.

How To Become An Affiliate
Becoming an affiliate is easy. There are top affiliate programs on the ‘Net which time and again extend offers to new affiliate marketers to join them. Amazon and Barnes & Noble come to mind. As a webmaster you can also look for a free affiliate program sign up opportunity at any number of ecommerce affiliate program websites, such as Commission Junction.

The Affiliate Builder Web Site
While the main modes of becoming an affiliate are usually reserved for the commercial websites themselves or the clearing houses, there is also the affiliate traffic web site. Generally speaking, this is the kind of site where you can expect to see the 2 tier affiliate program, a sale of affiliate program software, and also an offer to start up affiliate stores. Very often these sites are run by affiliate marketers who are getting a commission on signing up new members. While this in and of itself is not illegal, it sometimes does appear to be a bit underhanded, especially if the new affiliate does not realize that she or he is actually earning commission for someone else. At other times the companies that will sign up with the affiliate traffic sites (other than the major sites that most of the well known businesses frequent) are new start-ups which may or may not have the funds to actually pay for their marketing efforts. While Commission Junction and others require that an account be funded before an affiliate program may be launched, some of the other sides do not require this. In addition to the foregoing, there have been reports of SPAM sent by those companies to their own affiliates as well as visitors they brought to the sites.