Affiliate marketing is a modern day marketing tool in which business rewards their affiliates for bringing in new customers through the means of using marketing tools. Affiliate marketing leads are mostly seen in internet marketing, where we see referrals of other sites or where we see the customers offered various cash or other gifts on the completion of a specific offer. The affiliate marketing industry has four key players to handle this process, the retailer or the brand, the affiliate network,( that acts as an intermediary force between the web site publishers and the on line merchants or brands in marketing terminology), the publisher and the customer.

Affiliate marketing leads have much in common with other generally popular internet marketing tools such as, search engine optimization, e mail marketing, and perhaps the most common display advertising, affiliate marketing is an effective online marketing tool that helps drive potential customers from one site to another, but affiliate marketing leads are less practiced than it should be by on line marketers, for this has proved to be a well effective marketing practice. As of late affiliate marketers have been in the practice of using less common or perhaps unorthodox affiliate marketing leads to attract more customers such as by posting reviews of brands to attract more customers to the sites.

There are many affiliate websites which are categorized for the benefit of the publisher and the networks, they are essentially affiliate marketing leads that enable the customer to contribute more to a cause or enable the customer to proceed further to visit the brands or services thus displayed. E mail hosting sites such as Yahoo, Gmail and social networking sites have become a great affiliate marketing leads, their potential in this category is far greater for e mail and social net working sites are perhaps the most widely accessed web sites in the world. Then there are other affiliate marketing leads in the form of web blogs, loyalty websites- where they have a systematic reward system or points or cash back returns, websites with ad bars, comparison shopping websites and directories are all in all are good affiliate marketing leads.

With the growth of web sites search engines have become the navigators of the World Wide Web, their wealth of potential in the sphere of internet marketing has resulted in an extremely lucrative and expansive sphere to which affiliate marketing leads such as SEO has been in integrated quite successfully. However with the growth of many affiliate marketing leads there however has been little censure over unscrupulous practices such as spam, cookies and ad wear to drive traffic to their brands.