You’ve probably heard of affiliate marketing before, although maybe not by that name. It’s also known as a partner, sponsor, or associate marketing. If you’ve never made use of affiliate marketing, but you have a business to run… well, now’s the time to get cracking. You’re missing out on a new breed of marketing that is changing the landscape of business forever.

Affiliate marketing provides incentives to outside entities or affiliates to market your products. It sets up a spiderweb style marketing network where the individual strands of promotion eventually all reach into the center where you, the merchant, sits. With the advent of the net, affiliate marketing has become more effective and easy than ever before. It now requires almost no effort to make use of affiliate marketing or become an affiliate yourself. Even the prospective customers barely have to do anything to be a useful and profitable part of the affiliate marketing system.

Latest web technology has enabled the affiliate marketers to get their statistics and income figures the moment they make an affiliate sale. It is now possible to use companies like PayPal for payment and receipt processing.

Today?s technology has put an end to the times when affiliate members would have to wait for statistics to be tallied and receive payment. Affiliate programs work well for both the company offering it as well as the participating member. It gives the merchant and opportunity to market their merchandise to possible customers they may have otherwise overlooked. It also gives them advertising for a very low return fee. The affiliate benefits from being able to generate income without having to deal with the day-to-day sales aspect.

Just as the reputation of affiliate marketing has gone up, similarly the attitude of people has enhanced with respect to affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing is no more regarded as an inferior method of marketing by the merchants or as a secondary source of income by an affiliate marketer. Both merchants and affiliates regard affiliate marketing as a main source of profits and revenues.

If you’re still holding back on affiliate marketing, maybe you’ll be more enticed if you explore all the diverse options it can offer you. Not all affiliate programs work exactly the same. By diving in to see what the market has to offer for your personal situation, you can find something to tailor to your exact needs.

To whet your appetite, here’s a quick glimpse at some of the more popular kinds of affiliate marketing. Pay-Per-Click marketing allows you to pay affiliates for each click a visitor makes to travel from the affiliate to the merchant site. Other means of determining payment, such as when a visitor listens to an ad (called Per-Per-Play) or actually buys your product (known as Pay-Per-Performance), are also available. Choose what works best for you and you can be making money hand over fist in no time flat. Remember, every moment you spend not making the most of your company’s potential visibility is a moment where you just lost a customer. With how easy the net makes it nowadays, you have no excuses.

Justin Harrison is an internationally recognised Internet Marketing Consultant and entrepreneur who has built up multiple 7 figure online business and consults to some of leading online brands including Amazon, BBC, AIG and many others.