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Affiliate programs can be used to increase your web income by placing
ads on your website. They are provided by companies who offer a
product or service on the internet, many of which want to increase
traffic to their site, and therefore sales. By signing up to an
affiliate program, you become an affiliate, or partner.
As an affiliate, and providing a link to certain sites on your
own website, you can earn commission from these companies, as you
increase traffic to their site. Some companies will pay you purely
for the fact that you send people their way, and will pay you on
a "per-click" basis. Others will pay you a percentage
commission of the sales that people make after they have clicked
on your link. Some pay both! Obviously the person must have clicked
on YOUR link to their site, as each affiliate has a unique code
that is tracked and shows which affiliate has earnt what.
It's not a guaranteed "get rich quick" scheme. You must
spend time building and updating your own site, and making it appealing
for others to visit, and keep coming back! And while merchants will
provide the HTML code for your advertising banners, you can't just
copy someone else's site - that's known as plagiarism, or stealing,
even on the internet! The only exception is if you take part in
one of the so-called leasing programs, where you buy a ready-made
site that is advertised as such.
On some sites, you can make additional money by referring other
affiliates and in a few cases can make commissions on their sales
too.
Affiliate schemes are still in relatively new in the UK. Using
web searches for affiliate programs can often give you a heap of
sites in the US that don't pay out to the UK. All the affiliate
schemes listed below are either based in the UK or indicate that
they pay in UK pounds.
One final word of warning... Be careful to check your Internet
Service Provider's (ISP) small print before putting advertising
banners on your site. Many free ISPs don't allow the use of anything
on your site intended to make you money. The safest way is to find
a free host or to rent commercial webspace. Remember, though, that
free site hosting is just that - if you run a huge commercial site
and the site is unavailable for days you have no come back. You
may if you rent a commercial domain. With all ISPs, take care to
check the small print first!
Try some of the affiliate programs we've listed below, and welcome
to the world of Affiliates! If you discover a program that we've
not included, we'd love to hear from you. Email us at links@freestuffuk.freeservers.com.
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