According to Wikipedia here is the definition of Affiliate Marketing:

"Affiliate marketing is a method of promoting web businesses (merchants/advertisers) in which an affiliate (publisher) is rewarded for every visitor, subscriber, customer, and/or sale provided through his/her efforts.

Affiliate marketing is also the name of the industry where a number of different types of companies and individuals are performing this form of internet marketing, including affiliate networks, affiliate management companies and in-house affiliate managers, specialized 3rd party vendors and various types of affiliates/publishers who utilize a number of different methods to advertise the products and services of their merchant/advertiser partners.

Affiliate marketing overlaps with other internet marketing methods to some degree, because affiliates are using the same methods as most of the merchants themselves do. Those methods include organic search engine optimization, paid search engine marketing, email marketing and to some degree display advertising.

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.[1]"

How much a website can earn with affiliate programs depend on a number of variables including: 1) How much traffic is driven to that particular website 2) What kind of offers are being presented to viewers of the website 3) What kind of commissions and payout each offer brings to the table to the website 4) What is the average % click through of the offer 5) What is the % of deterioration of the offer month after month

Once a publisher or affiliate has these variables identified the mathematic formula is as follows: daily traffic (X) % average click through (X) $Commissions = $Daily Revenue

Then take the $Daily Revenue multiply by 30 days in a month and multiply that monthly end total by the % rate of deterioration and you can find out what you can earn over 3-6-12 months with any specific affiliate offerings.

Example: myrunnersite.com (sample site placeholder) gets 3000 visits a day. There is an affiliate program for Foot Locker Coupons offering $3 commissions with an average click through of 2% for a targeted website such as myrunnersite.com. The rate of deterioration of this offer is normally around 20% month over month.

In this particular case myrunnersite.com maintains its daily traffic it will earn $180/day and $5400/first month. On Month 2 it will earn $4300; Month 3 it will earn $3440; Month 4 it will earn $2752; Month 5 it will earn $2200; Month 6 it will earn $1759...

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