Name of the pattern:
Affiliate program
Associate program
Summary:
In a nutshell, an affiliate program is Internet-specific commission-based selling. Specifics come from the way it’s done. An affiliate (advertiser) puts links to the merchant site in a special “hoplink” format, which has the ID of the affiliate embedded into it, so the merchant know who earned the commission from the specific sale. The sale itself is processed by the merchant, affiliates just send prospects using the hoplinks.