The ultimate question for you should be which affiliate program do I choose? But also: Is it right for me? Do I get everything I envisioned out of it? With the amount of information available today, it is a difficult task to begin with. And most important, are the sources even trustworthy? In some situations, you could face legal consequences; be aware and use your common sense and seek legal advice if you’re unclear on anything concerning your business.

You can earn commissions by promoting credit cards from some of the largest banks in the United States. While It is very competitive, yes, it also pays a large commission amount – but how much money do you have to spend to promote it?

Your Action Plan should be: Research – Research – Research ……… and again Research There are some affiliate programs that offer only one way to make money, there are others that give you a combination of ways to earn your commission. In order to accomplish your objective of referring prospects to your advertisers program, choosing an affiliate program that offers you more than one way to earn money is the best choice.

Finding a program that will pay for a combination of actions is hard to find, however this is the BEST and fastest way to make money. Examples include: The click of your referral link. The lead when they complete a signup box on their site. The trial download of their product or service. Their purchase of the product or service. At the end you want a program which gives you the most return of your investment, Period!

Pay Per Sale (PPS) is the most frequently used form of affiliate marketing; You are paid a commission when a visitor clicks on your link and then purchases a product from the website. This method is most often used by large retailers. The best advantage this type of affiliate marketing provides is the high commission these internet retailers pay out. Top shelf items equals top shelf commission; take for instance software programs such as Dreamweaver (software for designing your own site pages) which retails at $899-a 25% commission on this is $224.75! The only thing you need to watch out for is low pay -outs and the fact that returned items also strip you of your commission.

Pay Per Lead Information is the oil that makes the Internet run, and this is why the Pay Per Lead (PPL) type affiliate marketing programs is extremely popular. In this type of program, you arepaid for every inquiry for information about the advertisers’ product or service that meets a certain criteria, i.e., the visitor is in a particular age group or income bracket. Industries that cater to the basic human needs such as financing, housing and health tend to offer the most generous pay per lead programs. Advantage: Because no purchase is involved, the chances are higher that the visitor will be “converted” from being a website visitor to a prospective customer when they complete the action of entering their contact information on the lead form. Risk: Commissions are not as generous as pay per sale affiliate programs.

In Pay Per Action the objective is essentially to find potential customers to invest a little more time in the product or service you are promoting by downloading a trial version of a software program for example. Again, such as in Pay Per Action, commission will be less generous because there is no actual purchase made. Risk: If the performance of the product or service fails to impress the visitor, they will simply cancel the program rather than purchase it.

Another way to make money is to promote your affiliate product via PPC (Pay Per Click). You should know, because of the high risk of losing your money, this is not for everyone, and probably not the one you want to get your feet wet with. You will have to investigate your niche thoroughly to know the “WANTS” and needs of your customers, combined with the perfect set of key word-mixture; this one will be worth your while and it end up being the most cost effective as well. Another point of trouble with PPC, is someone may steal your affiliate link and you’ll end up with nothing, however, the trucking(or is it tracking?) methods have significantly improved over the last years and the risk of loosing your hard earned money is significantly lower. PPC can be very lucrative if done right.

Stay tuned for part two: Making Visitors Remember Their Visit To Your Site.

Stop right here and look at Johns website for one of the best paying affiliate marketing products out there – Period! The question isn’t really affiliate marketing versus selling one’s own products it is the success YOU accomplish in what you are doing.Copyright information…. This article is free for reproduction but must be reproduced in its entirety & this copyright statement must be included.