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Most companies selling products or services offline, offer incentives to their sales staff to increase their sales. Similarly their commission agents are paid a percentage of the sale amount. Online, few companies have a dedicated sales staff. They usually specialise in development and support of a product and the marketing is done by the affiliates

Currently the affiliate programs available can be classified as:
1. Affiliate networks like Clickbank, ShareaSale, Commission Junction, LinkShare. You can sign up for the affiliate network and are assigned a user id. You then sign up for individual products depending on the subject of the website or type of traffic you are able to send. The payment to the affiliate is usually handled by the affiliate network, which sends a consolidated check for all sales.
2. Affiliate programs for individual merchants : Most companies selling products online have an affiliate program, where the affiliate selling a product or service is provided a tracking id and is paid for every sale which is made through the tracking id. Payments are made directly by the merchant. The amount paid per sale is higher, but there are many dishonest merchants who avoid paying any commission to their affiliate by not tracking sales correctly.