What is Affiliate marketing ?

[Jake]

The process in which one is paid a commission for sending a prospect who made a purchase. Physical goods may typically pay 15% while digital download products that have no manufacture cost can pay affiliates 50% or more. The somewhat outdated browser Cookie is used in the affiliate tracking process, if a user did not clear his cookies, some affiliate programs pay commissions on any further sales for a period of time, 90 days in some cases.
when signing up for an affiliate program you are assigned a unique ID that appears in the affiliate link you provide prospects, such as Dreamsfulfilled.com/offer?aff=film4u leaving such links on others web sites is generally considered spam and will be deleted, doing a few here can get your Answers account deleted. One almost always has to have their own web site or a quality email list to do affiliate marketing. There are cases in which paid advertising can send prospects directly to the store site.

A more advanced form of customer acquisition is Cost Per Action (CPA) in which payment is made for getting a prospect to take a particular action short of purchasing, like filling in a loan application or signing up for a product trial. There is more opportunity for fraud in this area, so often a telephone interview is involved in the marketer qualification process.