What is an Affiliate Program?

If you look at the speed at which internet usage continues to grow, and as the number of websites increase as well, you can understand how valuable all that internet traffic is to website operators.

So valuable, that many companies are willing to pay for that traffic. One way they go about this, is to create “Affiliate Programs”. In essence, an affiliate program is when a website operator will allow other website operators to put up links or banner ads, so that their visitors can click on them and be transported to the designated website, which in all probability is an E-commerce site with products for sale. That company would then pay a commission for that transaction. Also, depending on the agreement, they may also pay on subsequent visits.

Some companies will also pay for leads. This usually means that if a visitor you send to a merchant site fills out a form with their name, address, email address etc.. is a valid lead. There are many variations of this and each individual merchant company  may have different requirements for what constitutes a qualified lead. 

There are a few programs that will pay affiliates for traffic based upon the click-thru rate instead. That means they may pay $.02, $.03, $.04 or more per click on a banner ad. Traditionally the majority of merchant companies are ending or cutting back their pay-per-click programs as it has been found that this is not cost-effective for them.

If you already have a website, you should consider looking into some of the Banner and Affiliate Programs available. If you are contemplating starting a website, many of the banner programs may give you a way to help add content to your site even while in its infancy, and may also help you raise capital for the overall project.

For more information on specific Affiliate Programs and Banner ads, click here. Or, you may want to try a search engine such as those available here.