Affiliate programs are a way for various online businesses to promote their products. In simpler terms, they are internet marketing strategies. More often than not, it's only big online businesses that use affiliate programs because of the fact that it can cost quite a bit, but also there are small businesses that have affiliate programs too, so overall, it really depends on that certain company's internet marketing strategies.

Now, the question hanging in the air is: "How to make money from these affiliate programs?" Once you've enrolled in an affiliate program, here are some of the ways by which you can make money online through the various affiliate programs available.

You can earn through the pay-per-click system. After you enroll in a program, you are given a number of choices by which you can display the affiliate's website on your blog. There are text links and banners, all of which come with codes that you need to paste somewhere in your blog or personal website. After you have done that and someone, a reader of your blog, clicks on the link or ad and ends up on the company's website then you earn a bit of money.

It's not a lot, but if you get lots of targeted traffic and people eager to learn about stuff you are recommending and clicks on the links you have up, then you earn a significant amount of money.

You can also earn money every time someone on your site clicks on a link and then subsequently purchases a product from the website you are promoting. The profit here is significantly bigger than that from the PPC system because you can earn as much as 75% from the total selling price of the product. Think of it as a commission for every time you manage to help in selling some of their products.

You can also earn money whenever you get someone to sign up for a newsletter or to register on your affiliate's website. Again, the profit here isn't as big as it would be if you managed to sell a product, but you still earn, nonetheless.

I know you must be thinking that this would be a very easy way to earn money, but that's where you're wrong. First off, you do need to have regular traffic, meaning visitors, coming into your site or blog on a daily basis. Basically, the more traffic you get, the higher the chances are for making a profit.

So you need to have a very interesting blog or site, with great content so that people would find you reputable and consider whatever it is you are recommending to them. After all, in cyberspace, we are all strangers and would you trust the words of a stranger? So you have to build your blog or website's reputation from scratch. It would require effort, patience and time.

Remember, you only reap what you sow and that saying applies perfectly when it comes to making money online.