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Affiliate marketing is one of the most popular, fastest growing forms of internet marketing today. Every company that you can think of off the top of your head has an affiliate marketing program. They can have their own in-house affiliate program, or they can be a part of an affiliate marketing network. Affiliate marketing is beneficial to both the company and the affiliate marketer, as both stand to profit considerably from the arrangement.

An affiliate marketer is an internet marketer who signs up with the company with an agreement to sell their products for them. Depending on each company or network, the qualifications to become an affiliate marketer for each company may differ. For example, the majority of companies require an affiliate marketer to have his own relevant website to the product being sold. Other companies are more lenient, and allow for affiliate marketers to use such marketing methods as social marketing and e-mail marketing. An affiliate marketer is not compensated on salary, as if he is an employee of the company, but rather as a subcontractor making a commission under the company defined terms. There are three ways in which an affiliate marketer is compensated based on commission. These three ways, depending on the company, can be combined for added benefits to the affiliate marketer. These three types of compensation are:

CPA -- This stands for cost per action or cost per acquisition. In this scenario, an affiliate marketer only needs to "sell" a prospective customer into submitting an e-mail address or zip code, in order to receive more information from the company. Commissions in this case can be very low, as little as $.50 per submission to three dollars per submission.

CPL -- This stands for cost per lead. With this arrangement, the affiliate marketer makes a commission for each qualified lead that he provides a business. Compensations are slightly higher, and although this seems to be the same as CPA, more information is required with CPL. A CPL arrangement generally requires credit card information, customer phone numbers, mailing addresses, etc. The most common are trial periods for particular products or services, which would otherwise cost substantially more.

CPS -- This stands for cost per sale. This represents the most profitable for an affiliate marketer, as the affiliate is compensated for an actual sale of a product. Commissions can take the form of a flat fee or a percentage of the sale. Many companies offer bonuses with this arrangement; for example, if an affiliate refers more than 100 sales, then the percentage or flat fee is raised.

If you have a business, and do not have an affiliate program, you may be leaving a lot of money on the table and refusing money from customers. Having an affiliate program, is equivalent to free advertisement, as the affiliate working for you aggressively promotes your company to make a sale. While you, as a company, may provide promotional tools such as templates for e-mail marketing, sample articles, patterns, etc., an affiliate may use his own resources in trying to make the sale. Because an affiliate is a subcontractor, there's no need to pay benefits, taxes, and any other employee related costs; as such, this will save you a lot of money -- using affiliates to promote your company. The only time they get paid is when they perform the necessary actions for which they are hired.

With the growing trend of affiliate marketing, every individual should look into afiliate marketing if they're trying to make money from home; and, every business should look into creating an affiliate program for themselves to maximize profits, and to increase promotion of their products or services -- at little or no cost.