The Postal Service uses the services of one or more public affiliation networks. A public affiliation network is a Web site that is open to owners of Web sites that wish to participate and it helps those owners to place links on other Web sites within the network.
The Postal Service may also use a direct affiliation approach to select Web sites by category or on an individual basis. The Postal service will select the Web sites according to predetermined selection criteria, will be consistent with the policy in this MI, and will not use the services of a public affiliation network.
In exchange for allowing visitors to the affiliate’s Web site to directly transfer to the merchant’s Web site, the merchant compensates the affiliate based on a percentage of sales or a flat fee received from the affiliate’s visitors. This diagram illustrates the activity flow in a simple transaction:
