Electronic commerce

Main article: Affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing typically refers to an electronic commerce version of the traditional agent/referral fee sales channel concept. An e-commerce affiliate is a website which links back to an e-commerce site such as Amazon.com.

However, as the e-commerce continues to evolve, e-commerce affiliates are no longer restricted to website owners. Bloggers and members of different online community forums can be affiliates as well. Many emerging affiliate programs are now accepting bloggers and individuals, not necessarily webmasters, to be affiliates.

Affiliates can also be referred as publishers. Affiliate marketers don't necessarily have to be affiliate marketers specifically. Sometimes such marketers can actually be the e-commerce web site that actually sells the products and services. The advantage of this method of marketing is that it cuts out the middleman but it does require the affiliates to have a high degree of trust in the software and people behind the e-commerce web site in question.