Affiliate Program Basics

Once you have a website and have traffic you want to make money from it.  If you have a product or service you are selling directly then that should be easy, but if you are simply providing information or some other service then you might want to put advertising on your site to make money and offset costs.

Affiliate programs are an easy way to find advertisers that you can promote on your website.  Most big companies have some sort of internal affiliate program such as Ebay which offers you a chance to refer people to their site and you make a percentage of the sales you refer.

There are also third party companies that manage affiliate programs for many other websites so you only have to signup once and can promote any number of products and services and recieve one paycheck from the affiliate program, such as Click Bank or Commision Junction.

Affiliate Programs Terms and Definitions:

PPC – Pay Per Click is similar to how Google’s Adwords works where you get paid a certain amount for every click on designated links you display.  While it can be very profitable there is problems with fraud so most affiliate programs no longer offer this option.

PPS – Pay Per Sale is more widespread and means that you get paid a certain amount for every sale you refer to the program.

Revshare – This payment option means you get paid a certain percentage of every sale you refer, this is very popular because it aligns both the advertiser and companies goals.