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Affiliate marketing has been described in various ways but basically they all have the same meaning. On the Internet today affiliate marketing has solidified its place in the world of ecommerce business. Essentially, affiliate marketing is a cooperative effort between a merchant and the affiliate's website. From a merchant's perspective, for many years now, affiliate marketing has proven to be very cost effective. By teaming up with various website owners merchants can now essentially have a World Wide Web sales staff operating strictly on commission with no other overhead. This is a very attractive scenario for the merchant or advertiser and with today's explosive growth of online buying it has become a win-win business model for both the merchant and the website owner. Each and every day more and more people come across and become more interested in affiliate marketing and how they can make money from participating. And just like any new startup business the failure rate in affiliate marketing is quite high. Most people new to affiliate marketing don't understand the intricacies of affiliate marketing and what it takes to be successful with an affiliate website. When I work with people just getting started in affiliate marketing probably the biggest misconception that people who are just getting started have his understanding the difference between advertising and marketing. I would say that the vast number of affiliate marketing sites that I work with and come across would be more accurately define as affiliate advertising. These sites generally will not last very long in the competitive arena of affiliate marketing. Conversely, I also work with people who go to the other extreme and believe that they have to be the "seller" of whatever product or service they feature on their website. The truly successful sites and the ones that make a good living for the website owner understand what it means to market not only their website but their affiliate product as well. Certainly, selling and advertising are components of marketing but they have to be combine in an overall consistent approach that ultimately makes their websites sell. In the affiliate marketing business model the affiliate is compensated for every visitor that they send to a merchant site and then purchases from the merchant a product or service being offered. Affiliate compensation can vary greatly between affiliate programs and the products that they offer. Many of the affiliate marketing programs out there today are being managed by affiliate networks. These affiliate networks are composed of various merchants and affiliates. Each having their own function when it comes to affiliate marketing. An affiliate network acts as a third-party between the merchant and the associated affiliates of the merchant. Essentially the network provides the