Linda Buquet, the president of 5 Star Affiliate Programs announces the launch of Microsoft's affiliate program. The official post says "5 Star is proud to introduce the Microsoft(R) adCenter Affiliate Program. Earn a cash bounty for each new advertiser you refer that opens an adCenter account.

The highlights of the program include:

$50 adCenter credit sign-up promotion helps you close sales

• Tracking and real-time reports powered by Kowabunga MYAP
• Pro-active affiliate managers dedicated to your success
• Additionally adCenter will pay a bounty of $35 per sign up, if you bring a new Advertiser to the Microsoft PPC program.

There are at present two Microsoft affiliate programs. "Today there are two Microsoft services you can promote and profit from: MSN AdCenter and Windows Live OneCare. Over the next few months more Microsoft products and services will be added." says the press release.

This launch is infact Microsoft's second second attempt at the affiliate program. Earlier there was a program for Microsoft Shop via BeFree. However it shut down a couple of years back.

While affiliate marketing has been infamous for being associated with email spam, scraper sites, pop-up ads, Ad-Ware, spammy affiliate websites, at the same time there's is lot of potential in it if these maladies are excluded. This is perhaps the reason that large companies as Microsoft have affiliate marketing as a subset of their online marketing strategy.