What is an Affiliate Program ? An affiliate program is a general term used to describe an arrangement you have with a company where you market and sometimes even sell their products, but don't have any inventory on hand. Once a sale is completed they ship the product, and you get a cut of the sale.

Why Should I become An Affiliate? The simplist Reason to become an affiliate is to make money. The dream of being an affiliate is to make so much income online, that you can quit your day job and live wealthly and hassle free. Still not convinced that you should become an affiliate? Read More Here.

So are the only Affiliate Programs in retail ? No, although many affiliate programs are retail, where you sell a product, many others are very different. For instance there are gambling affiliate programs, as well as many others, where you just put a link, with your affiliate id embedded, to them on your page. If a person clicks that link, they are tracked to you and you get a commission on any purchase they make, or product they sign up for. Additionally, although not technically an affiliate program, there are things such as pay per click advertising. In contextual pay per click advertising you simply add their html code to your page. They automatically scan the content of your page and display relevant ads. When someone clicks that ad, you get paid.

How can I find / sign up for and Affiliate Program ? Generally you can just go to the website of the company you wish to sign up with. There are literally hundreds if not thousands of different affiliate programs out there. A directory of some of the better affiliate programs is available here.

Is there any other way to make money with an Affiliate Program ? Yes, in addition to 1st tier sales, which is what you would do if you market the affiliate program directly, many programs let you recruit other affiliates, and they are placed on a tier below you. Whenever they make a sale you get a commission, typically 5%-20%, on whatever they are paid.

How much money can I make ? There really is no upper limit to the amount of money you can make. It is all dependent on how creative you are and how much work you put into it. I personally know some affiliates who make more than $20,000 a month, others who make a lot but won't tell me how much, and still others who make only a few bucks a month or even nothing at all. Here is a case study on how much you can make through affiliate programs?

Someone wanted to sell me a ready made Pay Per Click/Affiliate/Ebay site. Should I do it? Generally no. Most of the programs that offer you a ready made site and promise huge amounts of money without much work are scams. After all, if they could make $1,000's a month with a copycat site and warmed over content, why would they sell it to you for a couple hundred? If you want to make serious money as an affiliate, you have to do the work yourself and generally find an area that no one has done before, or pick something that other people do, but do it better.

How can I get started ? Since many new affiliates don't know what the first steps are in creating a webpage, joining an affiliate program, and getting traffic, we created a Quick Start / Getting Started tutorial. It is designed to help you in all the areas you need to get your affiliate program off the ground. That's not to say there won't still be work for you, but it will help you focus your attention on writing content and getting traffic instead of looking for Affiliate Programs to join, figuring out how to design a site, and spending hours tweaking layout and colors.

Can I join an affiliate program if I don't have a webpage and don't want one ? There are affiliate programs that let you do offline promotions. I know a few people, especially college students who can market to a whole campus, who have been successful making money doing that. However, in general, if you are going solo or with 1 partner, and especially if you are doing this part-time, there is more money to be made easier online than offline.

Wow! I took your advice, joined an affiliate program, made millions of dollars, and now I want to cut you in on it. Where should I send the check ? E-mail me and we will find a time that is mutually agreeable.