You've probably heard of online affiliate programs. These companies use online affiliate programs to sell their products on the internet. The most common way for making money online with affiliate programs is through posting a link on your website that leads people to other companies products or services. When a customer clicks on the link given to you by the company your affiliated with and buys the product, you earn a commission for referring that person to that product.

There are many advantages to making money online with affiliate programs. Startup costs are minimal. The only money you spend is to promote the product,

whether through a website or through other means such as placing advertisements around the internet. You don't actually sell the product, so you don't spend time shipping the products or sending money to buy them at wholesale prices directly from the company, hoping to sell them later. Another advantage is that you don't have to worry about unsatisfied customers returning the product to you. Each affiliate company that you promote products for will have their own customer service to take care of all this for you.

A good way to start making money online with affiliate programs is to find a subject or a niche that you are interested in and start a website of your own. After your website is complete, find companies that sell your favorite product and register with them to become an affiliate. They will give you some code to paste in your website and/or an afilliate link. You can use text codes or pictures, but text code seems to be the most effective for converting to sales. People would much rather read your genuine words than to see some marketing picture or banner. You can place your affiliate link in your advertisements all over the web.

Look at websites in your area of interest. For example, if you are interested in music, look at sites devoted to your favorite musicians. Study them to see

how they place ads. Take note of your own responses to those ads. Some are annoying, but others will make you want to click through. Learn from this and place ads similar to those that have interested you and made you want to click on.

Starting a website devoted to something you love is very rewarding and it can generate revenue for you 24/7. If you need some extra money, or want to start your own work at home or home based business, affiliate programs can be a useful addition to something that you already enjoy. Just give it a shot and see for yourself.