What's An Affiliate Program?
Earning Through Ads
Affiliate programs is an online method of marketing products and services by paying commissions to websites for ad placements. The ad can be a banner or text link, when a sale is made as a result of clicking the ad, the publisher of the website makes a commission.
Some online merchants have their own affiliate program while others are part of an affiliate network such as Shareasale. Affiliate networks give access to thousands of merchants and commissions from those merchants are rolled into a single paycheck from the affiliate network.
It's Free
Signing up with any affiliate program as a website publisher is free. Some may require conditions such as only accepting websites that have their own domain address and/or having a certain amount of monthly traffic. Others might only accept publishers from certain countries.
Once a website publisher is accepted by the affiliate program he/she will have access to banners and links they can put on their website, as well as statistics that record number of clicks the ads get and of course any sales made from those clicks.
Some people have made websites around specific affiliate products they want to promote, for example pet related stuff. These kinds of websites are known as affiliate sites and can be quite profitable if you know how to bring targeted traffic to it.
Disclosure
This site is an affiliate for Shareasale and earns $1 for each free sign up