[Air-l] Affiliate Marketing

[Yukari Seko]

Dear AOIRists,

Hi, I am Yukari Seko, a second-year MA student at York/Ryerson University
Communication and Culture programme. I am currently working on my MA thesis
about suicidal/self-injury blogs, focusing on self-injury community at
LiveJournal.com.

As a part of my research on blog in general, I am interested in "affiliate
marketing" system emerging in blog sphere. In my understanding, the affiliate
marketing is a sort of novice method of e-business in which an affiliate is
reworded for every visitor or reader provided through his/her efforts. For
instance, pay-per-click or pay-per-sale kinds of stuff which offers the owner
of site/blog by his/her promotion of sponsors (web hosting services).

Currently I am writing a blog in Japanese using a blog service hosted by
Amazon.co.jp. At the beginning of this month (October 2006), the provider
suddenly changed the whole system and informed me that I have earned some
e-credit because of my reader clicked the ads on my blog. It also mentioned
about if I would "promote" some products made by Amazon and cooperate companies
in my blog, I could gain more e-credit and get a cash back.
I was so surprised to know that I was unconsciously incorporated into the
affiliate marketing system. In other words, I just found myself making audience
commodity for the sale of advertisers. Or maybe I am becoming an opinion reader
in blogsphere... Anyways, it made me concern about the advertising structure of
blogsphere.

So, if someone knows any useful resources/references about "affiliate marketing
+ blog," could you let me know?

Thanks in advance,

Yukari Seko
-- 
M.A. candidate
Joint Programme in Communication and Culture Studies
Between York/Ryerson Universities
Comcult GSA Webmaster (York)
http://www.yorku.ca/cocugsa/
yukaseko at yorku.ca