With the growth of affiliate marketing and the companies that practice and profit from it, care must be maintained in order to avoid unethical and even criminal practice within these services provided.

Since the emergence of affiliate marketing, there is little to no regulation in the practices of marketers, and merchants alike. Some affiliates have used spam, false advertising, forced cookies, adware and other unscrupulous activity to drive traffic to merchants and sponsors. Even with the advent of a terms of service clause used universally throughout Internet marketing, this unethical activity still exists.

Currently there is no real authority curtailing such practice. While some affiliate networks have released codes of conducts to guide practices and set ethical standards of online advertisers, true regulation has not yet been enacted to control the industry.

The solution, without pushing for government agency regulation or even an industry-funded watchdog is through education and training into the nuts and bolts of marketing. What has been lacking in the affiliate industry is a true curriculum that would allow for the training of perspective marketers. Whether on the industry level or the university level, teaching the methods of affiliate marketing along with other more standard practices of business marketing offers a keen eyesight to what practices are successful, and not as well which ones are ethical and which are not. This training could streamline affiliate marketing and improve its practice and efficiency in the future, allowing for increased freedom and expansion of the business as a whole.

As the Internet grows and offers more and more ways to reach consumers on a point and click basis, Internet marketing groups will push for news ways to integrate affiliate theory into the marketplace. The responsibility of members of the industry grows to set limits to how these practices can be used to lure potential consumers.

Affiliate theory has also spawned a new business in itself. Affiliate sites turn large profits in conjunction with merchants, making it a business onto itself spawning groups and companies that rely solely on an identity as an affiliate to generate profit for them. As profits grow larger, so does the moral responsibility by these companies to take action to thwart the spread of unethical practices within their business.

Affiliate Marketing is an Internet business practice that has grown exponentially since its inception in the early 1990’s. Rapidly, Affiliate Marketing is becoming an industry standard for the Internet. It might be time that the industry itself takes a look at how it can regulate itself, to avoid advances in unethical behavior.