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The most efficient and cost effective sort of advertising known today is called “Affiliate Marketing” – a form of revenue share and online advertising that works very well. Basically, a webmaster is paid by a company to display adverts on his/her site – either by the amount of clicks that advert receives or the amount of actual sales the advert generates. Generally, the latter is the preferred type of affiliate marketing, presenting little to no risk whatsoever for both the company wishing to sell its services/product, and the affiliate.

Affiliate marketing should not be confused with multi-level-marketing (MLM) or network marketing, although many companies do make use of online network marketing techniques. Affiliate marketing works differently, though, in the sense that the webmaster himself (the affiliate) earns an income, and does not sign up or register anyone into the program himself. Both forms can produce a large revenue for both parties, but multi-level marketing is an entirely different subject.

There are some pros and cons to affiliate marketing, but most of the advantages weigh out the disadvantages. The only real disadvantage of the program is that it is not easily scalable, and many bad management techniques have led to adware, false advertising, spam or “spamdexing” – which is a website that consists only of advertising, and no real content. These kinds of sites often just produce pop-ups and link to further types of useless sites. But because of the rise of blogs and the rising intelligence of search engines, these kinds of issues are decreasing.

One of the most tried, trusted, and beneficial ways of increasing online sales through marketing and advertising is affiliate marketing. This is basically a revenue share sort of system, where an affiliate is given a form of commission from a merchant, based on how many sales the affiliate has generated through advertising on his/her site. Affiliate marketing began just four years after the world-wide web was launched, and many successful e-commerce sites owe much to this simple yet effective method.

There are three types of affiliate marketing methods of payment – either pay-per-click (generated by actual clicks or referrals to the merchant from the affiliate’s site), pay-per-action or pay-per-sale (very similar, in that the affiliate receives payment, either a fixed amount or commission, based on the sales or subscriptions that have come through referrals or adverts on the affiliate’s site.) The last two methods of payment are generally preferred by merchants, due to many fraudsters taking advantage of the click system and setting up sites with forced clicks, pop-ups, adware, spam, false advertising and many other “black hat” techniques.

Affiliate marketing is not limited to only display-adverts on an affiliate site, but also comes in the form of email, blogs, rss feeds, content and niche sites, loyalty sites, comparison sites or shopping directories, and other forms. It is an extremely low cost, but highly effective form of marketing and advertising, presenting little to no risk for both the merchant and the affiliate.