If you did, then you would have heard of "customer reciprocation", the new buzzword taking root in the world of affiliate marketing and customer acquisition.

It describes two of the newest services around namely affiliate directories (not to be confused with affiliate program directories) and customer acquisition exchanges. These are in effect an evolutionary improvement on link exchanges in that they provide paying customers instead of potential traffic (leads, click-throughs, or visitors).

From a merchant's perspective, imagine selling more of your own product each time you purchase anything online. For merchants running an affiliate program, you will make additional sales each time any of your affiliates shop online.

However, the ultimate benefit customer reciprocation brings to merchants is that their products become exponentially more appealing. This is because a customer acquisition exchange will subsidise the cost of the purchase to their customers with no loss of profit to the merchant.

If you are an affiliate marketer, imagine partnering with other affiliates in a way that allows each of you to gain the commission for personally referring each other. With "customer reciprocation", this happens automatically each time you purchase anything online.

A customer acquisition exchange allows all affiliate and network (MLM) marketers to leverage off each other's commission and downline potential. It also allows merchant website owners to leverage off each other's profit potential as well as super-leveraging off their own affiliates should they have any.

The beauty of customer reciprocation is that it can be exploited without risk!

Merchants just need to list their sites for free while affiliate and network marketers just enter their referral URLs for free.