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@yorku.ca