Affiliate marketing is the most cost effective and efficient method of marketing today, and it works very well as a form of online advertising and cash share. Essentially, a web master is paid by a company to display advertisements on his/her site - either by the amount of clicks that advert receives or the quantity of actual sales the advert generates. Usually, the second is the preferred kind of affiliate marketing, presenting virtually no risk at all for both the company wanting to sell its services/product, and the affiliate.

Affiliate promotion shouldn't be confused with multi-level-marketing (MLM) or internet promotion, though many companies do make use of online internet promotion methodologies. Affiliate marketing works differently, though, in that the website owner himself (the affiliate) earns earnings, and does not sign up or register anybody into the program himself. Both forms can produce a huge revenue for both parties, but multi-level promoting is an entirely different subject.

Affiliate promoting has its arguments, but the benefits are definitely more. The sole real disadvantage of the program is that it's not simply scalable, and many bad management systems have led to adware, false advertising, spam or "spamdexing" - which is a website that consists only of advertising, and no real content. These frequently just link to useless sites or produce pop-ups. These issues are getting smaller and lesser, however, thanks to the upward thrust of blogs.