Webmasters: Were you aware of the fact that you could make money by sending traffic to other merchants? That's what's called an affiliate, or associate, program. A brief summary of how it works is below.
Someone visits your site. Somewhere on your page, you've placed a discrete small banner, or a text link to the link of a merchant that you're affiliated with. Most commonly, that merchant is one that has a product that your visitor might be interested in. For example, if your site is about designing web sites, your visitors might be interested in software or web hosting providers, or DSL lines. You could establish a relationship with one or more merchants that would gladly pay you a commission for sales generated from the traffic you send them.
In an arrangement like this, you are called an affiliate, or an associate, or a publisher. The merchant can also be called an advertiser (they are advertising on your site, for example, but you are actually doing it for them).
The amount of affiliate commission you receive is set up front, it is normally a percentage of the value of the sale that is made by the merchant, but sometimes is a fixed amount for each sale, or each lead (for example when someone fills out an application for a credit card account). It can be a one-time commission, or it can be a recurring commission (for example, if someone signs up for a web hosting agreement, the customer will pay the merchant every month they need the service, and the merchant will give you a percentage of every month's payment).
Affiliate arrangements can be a way to earn a lot of money from the traffic that is coming to your web site anyway. You do some work up front to find merchants you like and recommend, set up the relationship, and set up the link on your site, and then just wait for the money to come in, month after month. Of course no amount of income can be guaranteed or even estimated. It all depends on how much traffic you have to your site, how many of your visitors visit the merchant(s) you're recommending, and how good of a sales job that merchant does for you both. Some affiliates earn thousands of dollars a month, some earn almost nothing. The risk is minimal, the potential rewards are very high. And there's nothing that says you can't set up several sites, each for a different theme that you have selected different merchants to recommend.
You can also take advantage of affiliate programs without having your own web site, using "pay per click" (PPC) search engines like Overture and Google Adwords, just to name a couple. Using that method, you post a small advertisement that's shown whenever a web searcher searches for a particular term, and if the person clicks on your ad and makes a purchase, you earn money. Using PPC search engines is much more risky because you pay for each click, maybe a nickel, maybe more depending on the relative value of the search term you want to buy (for example there might be more competition, and more value, for the term "web host" than there would be for "elephant food". The benefit of PPC search engines is that you know that the traffic you are giving to your merchant is highly qualified. In other words, your ad would not be shown unless the person typed in the exact search terms that you feel qualifies them as a hot prospect for the merchant you're recommending.
This has been a short introduction to what affiliate programs are all about, there are many good ebook courses about them also, some of which I recommend below, if you're interested. If you're already an affiliate pro, and just came here to find some good health related affiliate programs, where's some that I recommend:
InternationalVitaminPower.com
GetSmartVitamins.com
GoodHealthSupplements.com
iPharmacy.md
USAPrescriptions.com
AffordablePrescription.com
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Recommended Information about Affiliate Programs
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If you'd like to learn more about affiliate programs, and how you can use them to earn income, here are a few that I can definitely recommend:
James Martell's Affiliate Marketers Handbook -- without a doubt this is the highest quality affiliate guide I've run across to date. It's a bit pricy, and worth 10 times the cost, but still affordable for anyone seriously looking to earn as little as a monthly car payment, to as much as a full time income developing affiliate sites. You can also read a more extensive review of the Affiliate Marketers Handbook here.
(more recommendations coming soon)
