Yes affiliate marketing is legit. Nearly every major online merchant has an affiliate program (Amazon, eBay, Zappos, Overtstock, Apple, Best Buy, etc). There

Yes affiliate marketing is legit. Nearly every major online merchant has an affiliate program (Amazon, eBay, Zappos, Overtstock, Apple, Best Buy, etc). There are numerous companies that utilize affiliate marketing to monetize their content--FatWallet, Woot (on deals.woot.com), theFind, Like.com, and so on. Affiliate marketing gets a bad wrap because of PPC arbitrage (sometimes provides a value-add), lead gen/offers for low quality products, thin landing pages, cookie-stuffing, and so on. I think Forrester projected affiliate marketing will be something like a $4.7B industry by 2013 (my best recollection), so it is clearly a huge part of any ecommerce company's marketing strategy. IMO, if you have a product oriented site, it is one of your better monetization options.