What's An Affiliate Program

Affiliate programs are also known as associate, reseller, or referral programs. They are revenue sharing programs between companies (the merchant) and individuals (the affiliate).

An Affiliate can be likened to an independent contractor. Affiliates are basically self-employed people who are marketing the products and/or services of another company. They are then paid by the company they represent for referring customers to the company's website. Put simply, it allows merchants to extend their marketing reach by advertising on web sites other than their own. The web site owner, or Affiliate, gets paid a percentage based on the sale value.

If you have a service that you provide, you could maximise revenues by setting up your own affiliate program and letting the power of the internet expand your market place anywhere in the World.

When joining a program there are certain things you need to do to maximise your chances of success. Firstly, make sure the links and adverts you carry fit the theme of your site. Don't just have a bunch of links and banners on your site and nothing else. Content is King! You need to have good content so your visitors will use your site as a valuable resource.
The key to success is to choose the right program. Whilst it might be tempting to go for the program that pays the highest commissions, you have to be certain that the service you抮e promoting is of genuine interest to the kind of people that are visiting your site, or the people that you are attracting by advertising.

The key value to look for when comparing rates is the EPC (Earnings Per Click). This gives you a value of what a program has paid out, on average, per hundred clicks received and is a useful guide to your earnings potential versus what you can realistically spend in marketing.