Q:  What are Thin Affiliates?

A:  Affiliate marketers who create marketing campaigns around affiliate offers, instead of the reverse.

"Thin affiliate" is a term that originated around 2005 possibly by Google.  This term refers to affiliate marketers who first seek affiliate products to market and then wrap the product offers with a "thin" covering of legitimacy.

The best-case scenario, what we call the Affiliate Cartoon Fantasy, is where a person already has a popular website about insomnia.  The site racks up thousands of visits a day, and has tons of original content and lots of user participation with forums and blog comments.

The Cartoon Fantasy Affiliate is passionate about the topic of insomnia and doesn't care about making money.

Then, this person just happens to run across an affiliate offer:  let's say, it's an e-book that helps people beat insomnia.  If the person advertises the book on their site, and the book sells, then the person gets $21 from the sale.

Thin affiliates turn it around.  They seek out profitable affiliate offers, such as the insomnia book example.  Then the create a marketing platform around it (like a blog or simple website).  Then they drive traffic to the marketing platform by way of pay per click advertising.

Search engines and the pay-per-clicks hate "thin affiliates" because they feel it corrupts the spirit of search engines.  They feel that search should largely be non-commercial, and be populated with hobbyist bloggers and webmasters who are passionate about their subjects.

"Thin affiliate" is not a term that is used much, but all online marketers are painfully aware of what it means.