Affiliate Programs

An affiliate is a person or company which sends visitors to a website in exchange for commissions. Affiliate programs generally refer to pay-per-sale and pay-per-lead programs. In a pay-per-sale program, the affiliate gets a fixed commission per sale or a percentage of the sale amount. In a pay-per-lead program, the affiliate publisher gets paid a particular amount for an action performed by the visitor, like registering with a website.
Affiliate networks bring together advertisers and affiliate publishers. Each affiliate is given a unique link to paste into his or her website, so the vendor can track which affiliate is responsible for generating a sale. You can promote products by text links or banners. Most affiliate programs require you to have a website for signing up. However, methods of promotion are limited to your website. You can also promote affiliate programs by advertising and sending the visitors directly from the ads to the merchant.
To be successful, you should promote products related to the content of your site. Hence, you should choose affiliate programs which match with the theme of your site. Affiliate marketing is not yet well developed in India. However, there are no boundaries for affiliate marketing and you can be successful in promoting US or European affiliate programs if your websites have traffic from those countries.
Affiliate marketing can be a full time career, or for many affiliates, simply a way to make a great part time income. Getting your affiliate business off the ground is not as difficult as one might think. There are literally thousands of affiliate programs throughout the internet, covering a variety of different niches. Likewise there are countless ways to promote these programs.