Making Money by Promoting Affiliate Programs

What are Affiliate Programs ?
An affiliate program is an online advertising mechanism that enables advertisers (mostly commercial site owners) to offer monetary rewards to their affiliates (that's you) for driving traffic to their sites.
Sound like a complicated definition?
Well, it's not.
Let's try to define it with even simpler words:
ArrowYou put a link on your site to an advertiser's site.
ArrowA surfer on your site clicks on that link and buys something or signs up for a free offer on the site you linked to.
ArrowYou're getting paid for the successful referral and receive a commission.
Sound clearer?
The next step is to understand the popular types of programs that you can join.

How PPS(Pay Per Sale) Programs Work?
Let's say you're running an art-related site.
You join a poster shop affiliate program and place links to this shop on your website.

Whenever a visitor from your site clicks on an affiliate link, he's being forwarded to the poster shop website.

If he buys nothing, you're not being paid.
If he buys anything (like art posters), you're getting a commission for the sale, for referring that paying customer.

How PPA(Pay Per Action) Programs Work?
When you work with pay-per-action affiliate programs, you're being paid whenever a visitor on your site clicks on an affiliate link, goes to the advertiser's site and performs "an action" there.

What's an action?
An action can be various activities such as filling out a form with his contact details (a lead), signing up to a website, joining a free trial, filling out a free quote request, etc.

This model is also called Pay-Per-Lead, because that's what the advertiser is basically getting from you as an affiliate: leads that he can later convert to sales and from which he can profit.

These types of programs are being run by lots of types of sites, like insurance companies, online game sites, dating services, free sample providers and so many others (almost in any market niche).