Affiliate marketing is a novel method of promoting web businesses (merchants and advertisers), wherein an affiliate (or a publisher) is rewarded for every visitor, subscriber, customer, and/or sale provided through their efforts. This type of marketing is done thru using one site to drive traffic to another, and is the stepchild of online marketing.

While search engines, e-mail and RSS seizes much of the attention of online retailers, affiliate marketing, despite its relation to the early beginnings of online retailing, carries a relatively lower profile. However, affiliates continue to play a fundamental role in e-retailers' marketing strategies

Affiliate Marketing Has Evolved From Its Early Beginnings

Affiliate marketing has grown quickly since its inception. The e-commerce website, viewed as a marketing tool in the early days of the Internet became an integrated part of the overall business plan, and in some aspect grew to a larger business than the existing offline business. According to one report, total sales generated through affiliate networks in 2006 was £2.16 billion for the United Kingdom alone.

At present, the most active sectors for affiliate marketing are the adult, gambling and retail sectors. The three sectors expected to experience the greatest growth are the mobile phone, finance and travel sectors. Closely following those three sectors are the entertainment, particularly gaming and internet-related services (i.e.,broadband) sectors.

How To Be A Super Affiliate

To effectively become a super affiliate, here are a few tips to help aspiring super affiliates make it to the top of the marketing ladder.

- If you wish to be a super affiliate in a short span of time, and you want to recruit some affiliates for one product that you just recently launched, you need to motivate your team properly. A good way would be to create some samples for your affiliates, in order for them to have something to show and offer to prospective customers.

For example, with a video product, get clips from the video, and for audio, do the same thing. For software copies, you may want to create a demo version. By enabling your affiliates to distribute this demo and sample products, this will increase their conversion rates.

- If you contact an individual and ask them to become an affiliate for you, always remember to give them a copy of your product or service. This will not only increase their likelihood of actually becoming your affiliate, it will also make them significantly more efficient as an affiliate, since they will fully understand what the product provides.

- Try to consider setting up a multi-level commission or rewards system as a method of recruiting affiliates. Through this method, you could be making more money online. For example, if an affiliate recruits another one who makes 10 sales,that first affiliate earns a percentage on all of those 10 sales. This would give other business and list owners with a following an incentive to participate, even if they can't directly sell your product.

- Whenever you're planning to coordinate a massive launch with affiliates, always plan to buy professional-looking graphic headers and e-covers too, because if your sales page does not look credible, you will immediately lose a lot of potential affiliates. Like you, they would also want to earn a decent return from their efforts; and they also want to associate with good products, not mediocre ones. Affiliates want to make money online with someone who they can trust without tricking them.