the.com/affiliate
A business that gets paid to send you somewhere you might've gone anyway.
means A person or company that promotes another's products for a cut of the sales they generate, or a smaller entity formally linked to a larger one.
from From Latin affiliare, to adopt as a son, from filius, son — so an affiliate is literally a corporate child taken in by a bigger family.
Amazon's empireIts 1996 affiliate program helped build modern online commerce.
Hidden taxThat product link often pays the recommender quietly.
Legal cousinAffiliated companies share ownership but stay separate entities.