Affiliate Marketing is a large business piece on the Internet. The (online) retail customer often does not know that he/she made the recent online purchase through an affiliate link. He/She sees a product of interest on a certain website, clicks on the link and completes the purchase wherever the link takes the customer. Every day people get introduced to affiliate marketing and want to make money from it. In many cases these new affiliates do not fully understand the affiliate world and make costly mistakes.

The following terms are important and every affiliate should know what they mean:

1) The Merchant: The merchant is any web site owner that wants to take advantage of performance based marketing. The merchant maintains and operates the affiliate program. The merchant decides how much he is willing to pay for each sale/lead that results from a visitor sent from an affiliate. Sometimes the merchant uses a 3rd party provider to operate the affiliate program.

2) The Affiliate network: An affiliate network acts as a 3rd party between the merchant and the associated affiliates. The affiliate network provides the technology to deliver the merchant's campaigns and offers. The affiliate network collects commission fees from the merchant and pays the affiliates that are part of the program. Well known affiliate networks are Commission Junction, AzoogleAds and Linkshare.

3) The Affiliate: An affiliate is a web site owner that promotes one or more merchants and their affiliate programs. The affiliate gets paid a commission if he/she can generate a sale/qualified lead for the merchant.

4) In most cases affiliate programs pay a commission per sale. This can be a fixed percentage or it can be a fixed dollar amount. Commission fees based on a certain percentage level per sale can be more rewarding for the affiliate if he/she is dealing with high priced items. Low priced items do not generate high income from affiliate sales. The following technical terms do exist:

Cost per sale(action) - CPA
Cost per click - CPC
Cost per lead - CPL
Cost per 1,000 -CPM

Overall - affiliate marketing can generate a full-time income for the affiliate. This is no easy task to accomplish though. One of the best known affiliate programs is the program operated by Amazon.com.