What Are Affiliate Programs ?

Affiliate programs are programs which allow you to make money without having your own products to sell. All you have to do is promote other peoples' products and you then get paid a percentage or a flat fee for each sale.

Affiliate programs have made it extremely easy for anyone to start making money with them. Once you sign up for the program they will give you a unique affiliate ID which will be in every link or banner which you put up on your website. This unique ID helps the merchants to track how many impressions, clicks, leads, and sales were generated through your affiliate link.

With most affiliate programs the ID is automatically inserted into your ad or link. But in order for this to happen you need to sign into your account before getting the link or banner code. Always check to make sure that it is there before placing it on your website.

There are different kinds of affiliate programs which you can join, some will pay for every click, others for every lead, and most only pay after a sale is made. These programs are called: Pay Per Click, Pay Per Lead, and Pay Per Sale.

Pay Per Click programs will pay you for every click on one of your ads or links.

Pay Per Lead programs will pay you for every form that is filled out at the merchants website. This is usually just entering an email address so the merchant can market to the individual.

Pay Per Sale programs will only pay you for every sale that is generated through your affiliate link. These are the highest in pay-out, and every effort put forth within these programs is well worth it. Some merchants will pay you a percentage of the final sale, while others will pay you a flat fee.

Before joining an affiliate program, always make sure to read all the terms and conditions before agreeing to them. Each program is different and it is important that you understand how each program works.

All you need in order to get started with affiliate marketing is a blog where you can put up ads, or your own website. If you want to get started with a blog, then I recommend Blogger. It is a great blogging platform which makes it easy to integrate AdSense, as well as Amazon products.

Then once it is set up, you need to drive lots of traffic to your website if you want to make some real money.

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