When this happens in a single level affiliate program, original affiliate earns nothing. In a MLAP, original affiliate would also be paid a referral commission on sales made by these sub-affiliates.

Depending on number of levels MLAP uses, commissions from sub-affiliate sales get multiplied at each level, resulting in greatly increased affiliate earnings.

For affiliate, MLAPs provide a way to maximize value of their "wasted traffic" using viral power of "word of mouth" marketing, without risks associated with MLM programs.

For MLAP merchant, an MLAP allows his affiliate program to sign up affiliates more effectively by standing out from crowd of single level affiliate programs.

Because they are relatively new, certain issues, (such as ideal number of levels a MLAP should have, and percentage of referral commissions that should be paid at each level), are still open to debate.

What has become clear though, is that MLAPs have become an important option for both merchants and affiliates, to increase their share of ever-growing size of E-Commerce.

Terence Tan is the project manager of HugeAffiliates.com, a website dedicated towards the development of Multi Level Affiliate Programs as an alternative system of business.

Visit http://hugeaffiliates.com to learn more about how MLAPs can multiply your affiliate referral commissions.