Affiliate Schemes are essentially commission-based advertising. You recommend a product or service, and you get money in return if your visitor ends up buying a product or service. The money you receive is often a small percentage of the order value. Cashback Systems such as Greasy Palm use this technique to earn you cash.
The technique uses a special link that contains your unique affiliate ID. When a customer buys something from a site which they reached via your link with the affiliate ID, then you affiliate ID is used to identify that you sent the visitor there. So the affiliated company pays your affiliate account with a small amount of cash for the order.
Many popular websites such as Play.com and Amazon.com have their own affiliate schemes. So you should be able to find a scheme that you can use to recommend a product or service for a business you particularly like.
Here are some of the affiliate systems that I recommend:
- Amazon Associates Central - Amazon’s affiliate system that will allow you to recommend individual products or types of products. Amazon is a recognised brand, so getting sales is easy. Recommending books, DVDs and CDs is often the best way to earn money on this one.
- Tradedoubler - A European affiliate system, with a very large number of major brands. They have very comprehensive link databases to help you advertise products and services.
- Webgains - Another European affiliate system that support many top merchants, such as Maplin, Sainsbury’s and Gadget Shop.