One of the easiest methods of making money on the Internet and one that requires very little technical skill, is affiliate marketing.  Sometimes referred to as referral programs, affiliate programs are normally commission based sales, for selling someone else’s product.  You recommend a site to your visitors and then pick up a percentage of any sale that those visitors may cause.  You benefit from the commissions and the merchant benefits from the additional sales.

If you already have a website set up, you can run an affiliate program from it, or you can simply build a site to promote a particular product or service.  As long as it brings in more cash than it takes to build or to run it, you'll be fine.

With any marketing program, you'll need to be careful when you select an affiliate program.  The benefit of an affiliate program will give you another way to make money from your users. Instead of selling them a product of your own, you simply send them to a partner site and then take a cut of the resultant profits.

Even though it may seem tempting to go for programs with the highest commissions, those programs won't pay you anything if your visitors don't buy them, so it is better to recommend a decent product than a costly one.

The old story applies here. It is better to have 20% of 10 sales, rather than 60% of one sale.

Below, you'll find some tips to help you select an affiliate program that's right for you:

1.  Do not accept any less than 25% commission.  You can find many programs with great payment structures and high percentages of pay, in just about any field. Clickbank has a higher commission structure than most and you can easily find products there that pay around 60% or more.

2.  Look for statistic pages that list the number of click throughs, sales, and earnings, so that you are able to see how you are doing and monitor changes. 

3.  Look for programs that offer a wide variety of tools to put on your web site, including banners, text links, and of course graphics. Pre-written e-mails and articles also make it easier to promote the product.

4.  Find out how often you'll be paid and be sure that the payment schedule meets with your own expectations.  Some programs pay monthly, while others will pay quarterly. Some pay fortnightly, but others pay out only after a minimum ceiling limit has been reached. Read the small print.

5.  Be sure that top level support is included.  If they can't answer your questions in a quick and timely manner, you don't want to work with them.

6. Look for reviews to see what others are saying. It is not necessary to actually buy and use every product you want to sell, but you must be sure that you are recommending a decent product from a reputable source. 

Once you learn what you are doing with affiliate programs, you can make a lot of money.  Some of the top earners on the Internet are affiliate marketers. If you are just starting out, you should always use common sense and not rush into anything.  As you become more familiar with how things work, you'll be well on your way to making a lot of money - and enjoying making it. 

Now joining affiliate programs and promoting their products is all very well, but you need to determine which are attracting the most attention and monitor and track your campaigns effectively. This can be a laborious task and even a little confusing.

With a wonderful piece of software called Affiliate Elite, anybody has the potential to increase the sales they make on the internet without doing any extra work. In fact, technically, you'll probably be doing even less work than you currently are.

Affiliate Elite isn't just some piece of software that spits out data that takes a rocket scientist to understand. Well known marketer and innovator Brad Callen created this program so that anybody can start building their business immediately. Not tomorrow, not a week from now... but immediately! You owe it to yourself to give it a try. See more about Affiliate Elite by clicking here, or copy this link into your browser: http://www.linkbrander.com/lb/7422

Derek Robson has been a successful Internet marketer since 2003. He has a vision of empowering others, particularly fellow South Africans and other non U.S folk, to have equal opportunity and success on the internet, by finding solutions to the many obstacles facing them. He is a syndicated article writer. He and his wife Sally, have started a string of sites, resources, courses and articles, as part of Dersalsites. For informative articles on making money, setting up a simple business that actually makes money, Internet marketing, South African online business, list building, affiliate marketing, article marketing, blogging, seo, the law of attraction, rugby and other general topics, such as gardening and fitness, visit Derek and Sally at their blog, part of http://dersalsites.com/