The websites of The Telegraph, Daily Mail, GMTV and Marie Claire, to name a few, use either ShopStyle or LynkU to power their branded shops.

Daily Mail’s online fashion shop

The publishing and media groups see online retail as a way of generating revenue by sharing affiliate commissions with the shopping aggregators.

You’ve probably heard that some publishing groups are looking to introducing pay walls, with users charged micro-payments for content.

If this happens it is likely there will be less visitors finding the publisher’s fashion content through search; leading to a reduced opportunity to direct people to a branded shop.

Less affiliate commission potential all round then? Not a problem for the publisher, if of course they end up making more money from charging users for content than driving online retail sales.

But it does matter to the aggregator, who needs the publisher to achieve reach.

It does matter to the online retailer, who sees conversions coming through from publishers.

And it does matter to the affiliate networks, for obvious reasons.