Affiliate Programs

Affiliate marketing is one of the fastest growing and most lucrative internet businesses in the world. Simply stated, affiliate marketing allows anyone the opportunity to make money online by promoting various products or programs. Unlike starting a traditional business, as an affiliate marketer there is very little overhead or barriers to get started.

Affiliate marketing allows website publishers to earn a commission by selling products on their sites. Affiliate programs are extremely popular due to their simplicity and effectiveness. You can join an affiliate program, set up links and begin earning money in a matter of minutes.

A publisher, also known as an affiliate or reseller, is an independent party that promotes products and services of an advertiser in exchange for a commission on leads or sales. A publisher displays an advertiser's ads, text links, or product links on their Web site, in e-mail campaigns, or in search listings. The publisher is paid a commission by the respective advertiser when a visitor takes a specific action such as filling out a form, subscribing to a service (both lead examples) or making a purchase (a sale).

To get started as an affiliate, you must find services that provide different affiliate programs. Some of the best services that I've found include the following:

Commission Junction - This is the best affiliate network to join in my opinion. They have thousands of merchants to choose from and an excellent library of information for anyone interested in learning affiliate marketing. They have, and always have had, a very slow search function when looking for specific products to promote but it's pretty easy to find merchants and promotional links for general products and services. I especially like the resources provided to affiliates.

Pepperjam Network - This network is great for affiliates as well. Although they do not have nearly the number of quality merchants available, the merchants they do have are really committed to their affiliates.

Be very, very careful about joining Google's affiliate network. They tie it to AdSense and if for some ridiculous reason your site gets banned from AdSense, you will also be banned from their affiliate network. In addition, if you have setup domain parking, the domains will no longer be active. This can be devastating to a site that has been built around AdSense, the Google affiliate network, and parked domains. I know from experience that Google doesn't have the ability to distinquish between loyal affiliates and scammers, and their policy is to shoot first and ask questions later.

Diversify when it comes to choosing affiliate networks and never put all your eggs into one basket.