A good affiliate program will benefit both the webmaster and the visitor. The webmaster will benefit from the amount of clicks a user does when they see something on your site they like. For example, let's say you are on a site about baby furniture and you see some ads concerning baby cribs and rocking chairs. Once a user clicks on these ads and buys a crib off of the ad on the website then you get a certain percentage of that sale and the crib company makes money from the sale. The buyer benefits because they are getting a great deal on a crib.

There are different types of Affiliate websites. These affiliate sites are classified by merchants or advertisers and the affiliate networks. The main categories are The Pay per click search engines, Comparison shopping, Loyalty sites, Coupon and Rebate Sites, Content and Niche Sites, Personal Websites, Blogs and RSS Feeds, Email list affiliates, Registration Path Affiliates, Shopping Directories and CPA Networks.

The pros and cons of affiliate marketing are when affiliate marketing in most common cases is a pay per performance model, this means that the merchants or advertisers do not get a marketing expense unless the results are realized. This excludes the initial set up and creation of the programs. On the other hand there are many people who have been very successful.

You can get affiliate software to aid in your quest for affiliate marketing, the types of software are the Stand Alone Software, this type of software is a pay a one time fee to own the software and you can install it onto your server. The pros of stand-alone software are that there are many more features and functions than other types of software. The ongoing fees are very low and do not change by the size of the affiliate program you choose. The cons are that is does require installation, you can install it yourself but if you can't you will have to hire someone.

That is just one type of software; other types are the Hosted Software, Affiliate Networks, MLM Software, Shopping Carts and Web Site Builder Systems. No matter what software you choose, it is as only as good as the site you put it on. Make sure you have the right programs to match your site. Give it time, success will happen.