Affiliate marketing is just one of a host of advertising opportunities for online industries. Whilst traditional off-line advertising such as sponsorship of events and individuals, magazines, newspapers, billboards and television or radio, produce results they are often very expensive. Whilst some industries or companies may choose to utilise some of these off-line options, most back this up with extensive online advertising, most notably that of affiliate marketing.

The affiliate-marketing program is a cleverly conceived advertising system, which utilises all of the capabilities made available by the Internet. Unlike traditional advertising where companies pay a subsidiary company money to advertise their brand in a bulk up front payment, affiliates work on a sort of reward or commission based level. Because of the way the industry is run there is no need for either the affiliate or the advertising site to pay money up front, which in turn benefits both parties. The fact that no money changes hands until a new client is generated, the onus is on the affiliate to provide results, which in turn benefits the site that has commissioned the advertising.

Many industries have utilised the affiliate style of advertising, but few have been as successful as that of online poker. By distributing advertisements throughout a plethora of sites, all at little or no cost the poker industry has been able to infiltrate a number of websites and therefore develop an increased awareness. Unlike many other online industries, the poker industry doesn't really have a recognised off-line equivalent. The game of poker is largely played by professionals behind closed doors or in large casinos or between a group of friends around a table. Therefore it was far more necessary to promote not only the sites but also the notion of online poker as a powerful and exciting gambling medium.

Affiliates are rewarded by the poker sites with large percentages, sometimes up to around 35% of the money generated by players that join through the links on their sites. So with each player they can hope to earn a regular, if slightly small income. In order to increase this income the affiliate must promote not only the site, but also themselves in order to increase their site traffic. Because in the affiliate program nobody is guaranteed to go to an affiliate site, click the link and become a fully signed up member. In fact the percentages don't really favour the affiliate. It is for this reason that so many affiliates have has to advertise their own whereabouts in order to gain visibility and hits, and then hopefully in turn earn some money. With affiliates becoming marketing machines looking to earn more money, the poker sites that they represent have been reaping the benefits by generating huge numbers of new clients. So with the affiliate industry earning more and the poker sites generating billions each year, it shows just how successful the system is at not only advertising but increasing the revenue of everybody associated with either industry.