Affiliate marketing is the latest tool of advertising and selling goods in this information technology age. The merchants can display their products through advertisements at much cheaper rates like never before. Apart from this they can easily sell and cater to the needs of a large number of customers through affiliate marketing. In this article we will discuss the requirements and various affiliate marketing programs.

First of all it should be made clear that there are three primary players in affiliate marketing. One is the merchant, who wants to sell his products. Second is the webmaster, who owns and runs a website and the third is affiliate network. Although a network neither owns a website nor a product but it plays an important role in affiliate marketing.

Merchant: The entrepreneur, who seeks to advertise about his products through internet, is called as merchant in affiliate marketing terminology. He or she uses various websites relevant for to be advertised product for this purpose. A merchant chalks out affiliate marketing programs and pays commission accordingly to those webmasters, who join his affiliate marketing programs.

Affiliate: The webmaster, which joins affiliate marketing, is called as an affiliate. A webmaster becomes an affiliate only to earn some extra dollars as commission from the rich merchants. For this purpose his website must have high volume of traffic. Only high traffic websites are suitable for affiliate marketing because the advertisement is viewed by a large number of people on high traffic websites. The webmasters continuously try to increase and maintain the traffic on their site. They have to maintain accounts of affiliate programs for furnishing commission claims before merchants.

Affiliate network: It helps the merchants and webmasters to come closer for finalizing an agreement for affiliate marketing. Affiliate network provides the right platform for discussing affiliate issues arising between the two key players. One has to take membership of an affiliate network in order to avail its services. Although most of the networks offer their services free of cost but some of the networks ask for a one time fees for the same.

The merchants get relevant high traffic websites for advertising their products by joining a network. They can rely on a network while distributing commission among the affiliates through a network.

The affiliates can concentrate fully on affiliate marketing programs as network keeps all the accounts regarding an affiliate marketing program on behalf of the affiliates. It also furnishes commission claims and help the affiliates in getting their due share in due time.

Affiliate marketing programs: There are three most popular programs available for the affiliates Cost-per-Click (CPC), Cost-per-Lead (CPL) and Cost-per-Sale (CPS) are the affiliate programs, which brings in sales for the merchants and commission for the affiliates.

In Cost-per-Click (CPC) affiliate marketing program the affiliates get commission whenever a visitor clicks on the advertisement. The merchants give dollars to affiliates in Cost-per-Lead (CPL) affiliate programs whenever they get lead from an affiliate site. The contact detail of a visitor is called a lead. When a visitor leaves his or her contact details by following the guidelines of an advertisement, it is deemed that the particular visitor is interested in the product. The Cost-per-Sale (CPS) program is the favorite of the merchants. The merchants give hefty commission to affiliates whenever they furnish a sale from an affiliate site.