Affiliate marketing grows in importance to ecommerce retailers-and in complexity

[mandy]

Affiliate marketing—using one site to drive traffic to another—is the stepchild of online marketing. While search engines, e-mail and RSS capture much of the attention of online retailers, affiliate marketing, despite lineage that goes back almost to the beginning of online retailing, carries a much lower profile.

Yet affiliates continue to play a fundamental role in e-retailers’ marketing strategies...

For better or for worse, an affiliate is the retailer’s representative. That means that any negative marketing tactics—spam, for instance—reflect badly on the retailer.

And illicit or questionable behavior by an affiliate can do more than just give a retailer a bad reputation. It can also land the merchant in legal trouble...

full article: http://www.internetretailer.com/article.asp?id=19108