Affiliate Marketing is a popular method of promoting web businesses in which an affiliate is rewarded for every visitor, subscriber and/or customer provided through his efforts. It is a modern variation of the practice of paying finder's-fees for the introduction of new clients to a business. Compensation may be made based on a certain value for each visit (pay-per-click), registrant (pay-per-lead), call (pay-per-call) or a commission for each customer or sale (pay-per-sale).

The most attractive aspect of affiliate marketing, from the merchant's viewpoint, is that no payment is due to an affiliate until results are realized. Affiliates also don't have to worry about financing inventory or fulfilling orders. Some affiliates also use Drop Shippers for their sites.

Some e-commerce sites, such as Amazon.com run their own affiliate programs while other e-commerce vendors use third party services provided by intermediaries like CommissionJunction.com and LinkShare to track traffic or sales that are referred from affiliates. Many businesses, such as credit card and web hosting companies, owe much of their growth and success to affiliate marketing.

Merchants who are considering adding an affiliate strategy to their online sales channel should research the different technological solutions available to them. Some types of affiliate management solutions include: standalone software, hosted services, shopping carts with affiliate features, and third party affiliate networks.