If you are looking for new, cost effective ways to advertise your small or large business online and only wish pay for conversions, then you probably want to find out more about Affiliate Marketing.

Affiliate Marketing is performance based advertising. Typically, publishers/affiliates promote your products and services and are only compensated when they generate sales for you or the acquisition has been successfully completed.

Affiliate marketing is an advertising medium that can be adjusted for any business. Within Australia, affiliate marketing has been a slow one to catch on, but over the next few years I hope to see many of the bigger brands and the smaller ones starting to view affiliate marketing as a viable marketing alternative as it becomes more of a proven technique within Australia.

What is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing in it's simplest form is driving traffic from one website to another to perform a predetermined action. Whether this is a sale, signing up to a newsletter or simply by clicking through. It doesn't really matter, it's all based on the same principals. The publisher gets a commission for referring the traffic to the merchant upon a successful conversion. Generally conversions are tracked with an affiliate link. This tracking link stores the publishers details (usually with a cookie) so commissions can be paid correctly.

Publishers/Affiliates
Publishers can basically be anyone. Although most affiliates have a website or a blog, there are some that solely use PPC (Pay Per Click) to create their income. Doing this with Google Adwords or Facebook advertising is an excellent way to target interested parties and test offers and conversion rates.

Merchants/Advertisers
Merchants provide a service and/or product(s) to the market. There are merchants from virtually every kind of niche.

Commissions vary depending on the merchant and the products or services that they provide and the predetermined action that is required by the visitor.

Each merchant has different commission structures, some pay a fixed percentage of the total sale, a dollar value per sale, a dollar value per lead or a dollar value per click.

Australian Affiliate Networks
To find out more about affiliate marketing in Australia, or to start your own affiliate program, visit and compare the following Australia Networks.

Clixgalore
Clixgalore is a self serve network, and one of the cheapest to get started with. Self Serve means you run your own campaign and set up your own account. The clixgalore team help you setup the tracking on your website and are there to help with any questions if you cannot find a solution in their excellent help database.

DGM
DGM are a premium network that started in the UK. They hold many of the large players such as Dell, Apple, Surfstitch and many of the major credit cards and banks are with DGM exclusively also.

Commission Monster
Commission Monster is run by the Viva 9 Network and was started in 2003 in Melbourne, Victoria. Offering real-time tracking and reporting, available online, along with comprehensive security protocols and strict ethical guidelines for businesses.

New Players
2011 has seen 2 new players come in to the affiliate marketing arena namingly Commission Factory and Digital Lead Network