Currently, looking for the money in social media marketing is like asking directions in a foreign land when you don't speak the language and don't know how the locals connect and communicate.

Social media is commonly defined as comprising "primarily Internet-based tools for sharing and discussing information among human beings."

Economists, politicians and media types are no longer arguing whether or not the economy is in a recession. Instead most are debating how long it will last.

Japan's had it hard. After nearly a decade of stock market doldrums and an economy on the brink of disaster - just as the rest of Asia struggled too - Japan bounced back. Growth happened. Its economy is still a tad slow, but there are many industries looking way up. Online marketing is one of them.

It's been seven years since interactive agency Razorfish embarrassed itself on national television. When reporter Mike Wallace of CBS' "60 Minutes" asked the agency's co-founders what the company does, the answer was none too clear.

It was a cold night in Pennsylvania when Leila Crooks was on Digg.com, the community-based popularity site, and came across a story about a "slanket" - a fleece blanket with sleeves that offers the freedom of arm movement so people can play video games or surf computers while snuggling under a blanket.

Thanks to social networking sites such as YouTube, online video has quickly become an everyday part of the online experience. While marketers have been slow to capitalize on video so far, the low cost of producing content and potential for increasing reach will make it essential to performance marketing.

The new geography features auction-based ad exchanges and conglomerated companies with divisions that buy, sell and distribute ads: something that would have been unthinkable a decade ago.

Like new confections spilling out of Willy Wonka's chocolate factory, the brain trusts at Web companies big and small over the last three years or so have spun out a brand new Web. Like candy, this version of the Web is flashier, full of speed, comes in a cool wrapper, has good stuff inside and is highly addictive.

Steve DiPietro is amazed at how frequently he listens to prospective clients parroting clickthrough percentages, Web traffic statistics and conversion ratios with great enthusiasm but little-to-no understanding of their value to their organizations. Increasing a conversion rate from 12 to 15 percent can become a goal unto itself as marketers immersed in number crunching can lose sight of the fact that sales aren't also growing.

Food has recently been called everything from the new theater to the new porn. Regardless of how you think about food, you certainly can't avoid it.

Tony Phillip will tell you the exact moment he knew that mobile marketing and advertising - predominantly via cell phones - had crossed over into the mainstream.

For online marketers, green could be the new gold. The events of the past year opened the eyes of many consumers to the importance of being Earth-friendly, which in turn has created an unprecedented opportunity for the sellers of green goods.

Hurricane Katrina, the popularity of the global warming documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" and President Bush's epiphany about alternative fuels have collectively vaulted caring for the planet from being the grist of environmentalists to the forefront of consumer consciousness.

They're wired, they're affluent and they are a largely untapped market. This prized group is teens. They are often referred to by a variety of different monikers including Echo Boomers, Millennials, Netizens, Generation Y, Trophy Children (because of the strong impact that parents have in their decision-making process) and Generation N (for Net).

Whether it's fashion, technology or commerce, what's old often becomes new again. Pay per call is the latest revolution in performance marketing, and it focuses on incorporating a 130-year-old technology - the telephone - into the process.

Microsoft was late in recognizing the profit potential of online search. Meanwhile, upstart Google surpassed older search sites such as AltaVista, America Online and Yahoo to become the clear leader in search and, therefore, online advertising revenue.

By the time Revenue magazine hit newsstands in January 2004, performance marketing and affiliate marketing had already had their share of ups and downs. Online marketing had survived the dot-com bust and continued to evolve from the e-commerce craze into something that sparked enthusiasm and life in a shell-shocked market.

Sometimes a click isn't really a click. Sometimes the person knocking on a website's door is really a wolf in shopper's clothing, perpetrating a fraud that wastes marketers' advertising dollars or steals commissions.

A former computer special effects artist, Christina Hills, ditched her star-studded career working magic for Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace, The Lost World: Jurassic Park and The Perfect Storm to move to Northern California's Sierra Nevada and launch her business as a shopping cart consultant.

As owner of ShoppingCartQueen.com, an affiliate of 1Shopping Cart.com and a few other related merchants, she quickly found that "the more affiliates can match the look of the merchant's site to the look of their website, the better their sales will be."

Affiliate Networks are striving to extend their reach by entering foreign markets, but local challenges threaten their chances of international stardom.

If the affiliate model is effective for selling necklaces in Nantucket, shouldn't it also work to move wurst in Wittenberg and mobiles in Manchester?

Tuan Le is mad. And when he's upset, he speaks quietly, deliberately and very thoughtfully. He's hardly a hothead. But nothing gets him more riled up, if you can call it that, than knowing he's losing a large percentage of revenue from his two affiliate Web sites to other affiliates that are acting in unethical and unfair ways.

SIX WEEKS. That's all it takes for many merchants to make or break the retail year. From the day after Thanksgiving – Black Friday – to the Friday after Dec. 31, the holiday rush generates a major part of year-round sales. That translated to $135 billion in gift sales last Christmas, according to the US Department of Labor. An estimated 8 percent of those sales occurred online, leaving affiliates with a superb opportunity to give themselves a nice little holiday bonus.

Schlepping his burgundy leather briefcase and navy canvas travel bag through the Portland airport, George Bragg doesn't care as much about how he gets his ticket as how soon he'll get home to Dallas. He'd happily buy tickets from affiliates, discounters, travel agents or airlines.

In a lot of ways, Cynthia Fanshaw is just another star in the affiliate marketing universe. With a specialty in search engine marketing, she works hard to drive traffic to her company's site and then to convert visitors to customers. She's anxious to learn new tricks that give her an edge over competitors, and glad to share a few tips with newbies.

Jeannie Otero wanted to change her life. A single mom with two young daughters, she hated the three-hour round-trip commute to her job in Miami, time she would rather spend with her girls. She dreamed about starting her own business, thought about investing in real estate. But she had the age-old problem: You have to have money to make money.