Earn Money Online -Trusted money making websites

Writing articles online gained popularity during the last years. There are several possibilities to make money writing online and requires efficient searching which writing sites may be useful for you and the expectations you have to build up a writing portfolio. Is your goal a full time income or do you want an extra to pay some bills? Making money online can be easy but requires time and a learning process.

Here are some suggestions which may help you to make some money with writing online articles:

1. WRITING SITES

There are several writing sites which give you the opportunity to make money with writing articles. Some of these give you the possibility to write about any topic you like but there are also sites which ask to review products, websites and some others. Some of these sites will pay for upfront payment, page views or they share in the advertising money. Here are some sites which maybe useful for you to make some money online:

* HELIUM

Helium is a website where you can publish articles of almost anything. There are channels of almost every category you can imagine. There are a lot of different topics available to write about and you can create a new topic if you want to write about a non existing topic. The purpose is to reach a good ranking which will benefit you to get more traffic to your articles.

The money you earn depends from several factors but in general a higher ranking of your article will give you more money. Some channels pay more for every topic, for example technology, finance, business and some others. This site gives you also the opportunity to participate in contests and there are marketplace opportunities for freelance writers.

* ASSOCIATED CONTENT

Associated content is a site where you can publish articles of any topic you like. American writers can write for upfront payment but approval is necessary to receive these payments. It is always allowed to publish articles and get paid for your page views.

* REVIEWSTREAM

This site will pay you for every review you publish. It is not allowed to publish your articles at any other sites. The review rate varies but mostly between $1.50 and $2.00 for certain reviews; in other case they will pay the bulk rate which will vary between $0.30 and $0.40

* CONSTANT CONTENT

Constant Content is a site where you can upload some articles which publishers or webmasters may want to purchase. You can set a price and you can decide about the license options. Professionalwriters can make some good money in this site.

* HUBPAGES

HubPages is a site where you can write about any topic you like and you can add some pictures or videos. You need a Google Adsense account to make money and they will pay you 50% of the money they generated when readers of these articles clicked the ads.

2. PROMOTING YOUR ARTICLES

Your articles will not make immediately much money but there are several ways to get more traffic to your articles.

It is important that you write quality articles without grammar and spelling mistakes. Keywords are important and it is useful to use the keywords of the title of your topic in your first paragraph and also in the middle and the end of your article.

Social Bookmarking sites, for example Digg, Dropjack, Del.icio.us, StumbleUpon are useful to promote your articles. If you have written an article which may interest other people, you can submit these articles in these bookmarking sites. If members of these sites like your articles, they will likely vote them and your articles have more chance to appear in search engines.

Social Networking sites, for example MySpace, Facebook and many others are also excellent sites to promote your articles. If you have an account in these sites, you can upload your articles in these sites and everyone who will find your profile can read your articles. It is helpful to send requests to many people and build up a network with friends. You can alert them every time you have submitted a new article and may help you to get traffic to your articles.

3. BLOGGING

Writers can also earn money with blogging. Blogging gained the last years popularity and many writers started a blog for various reasons. A blog is a weblog and some writers have one to promote their business but many people write a blog to share some experiences, some thoughts or to help other people.

There are several ways to make money with a blog and promoting is important to get traffic to your blog. There are several marketing possibilities for your blog, for example advertising sites like Google Adsense, Bidvertiser and some others, submitting your blog to "Pay per post" sites or through selling text links.

There are several ways to make money writing online articles. Some writers may prefer writing sites like Helium or Associated Content; others prefer review sites or make more money with blogging. Joining several sites will give you the possibility to make money with writing online. It is really hard working but you will notice that after some time your earnings will increase and you will be pleased to build up an online writing portfolio.

There are a lot of sites giving people the opportunity to earn money.

Ever heard of something like: “We can help you make $30,000 in two weeks! Just buy our guide for $49!”. Something like that is a scam, where you pay them money and in return you either get something that doesn’t work, something you didn’t intend for, or most commonly, nothing at all.

So how do you tell the difference between a scam and the real deal? With the help of our website, you will be able to tell them apart almost instantly.

1. Check it out. If it asks for money, check it out thoroughly. If what you pay for is something like a “premium” service, where the site has a free section, usually it should be OK. If it asks for a payment upfront for the only product they offer, there is a good chance that you may end up getting nothing.

Also, if it asks for credit card details, be sure to see what it is for. If they get your number, they could spend it on whatever they want. Usually, reputable sites will accept PayPal, where you send them a specific amount.

A very common thing on scam sites is saying there are limited products left, and that they are on sale. An example would be like “We only have 8 left! Half price if you buy it now!”. This is to make people think that if they hurry they will get a better deal, and to make them rush more by knowing there is limited stock.

2. Site design. This doesn’t always apply, but you usually you can see the simple design of the site to identify scams. Usually, simply, easily-made designs are the ones that scam. A professional looking site means a lot of work was put into it. But a site with simple text, big red fonts, bright colors in general, simple backgrounds, and no logo’s etc is in a higher likely-hood of being a scam (a site like that could be done in ten minutes if you knew what you were writing).

3. Testimonies. Testimonies can be a useful way to tell if a site is scamming you. Many sites have testimonies where random people give these comments saying the site/product was great and you should buy it. Some sites even have a photo of the people. This is a major mistake on their part. If you bought a product online and thought it was good would you actually send them a photo of yourself, and brag about how amazing their product was? While you may do the latter, the former is breaking a rule everyone knows; don’t disclose your private information on the internet. In fact, many of these testimonies are stock photos coupled with made up rubbish comments

But there are sites that have proper testimonies, how to tell if it is proper? Well, you’ll usually find it on a forum if they have one, where you have to register yourself and post as a community. This means genuine users will be making a testinomy.

4. Community. Similar to testimonies. If you see a site with a active community (ie. large forum etc), usually that site is not scamming people.

These are the four most basic methods of scam identifications. Remember there are other ways, and there are ALWAYS exceptions (a dodgy looking site may just be newly constructed; still legit etc). But these guidelines will be enough as a general identifier.

I will give a complete list of scam sites.If you are cheated by other sites,do post it in the comment box.

If you are paid by any of the money making programs listed here,do let me know

I will will be updating this list.

The first thing you need to do prior to starting an online business is to choose a money making idea or a profitable online business opportunity. When selecting an online business idea, there are a number things to think about, including:

1. Passions - Most of the business opportunities on the Internet are just like any small business startup, they take time and effort to become profitable. So when choosing an online business, you should first think about what types of online businesses you have an interest in and what area of business work your are passionate about. Doing what you like and interested will keep you working consistently and avoid getting bored easily when profit is low on the initial stage.

2. Skills and abilities - It is very difficult to work on something that beyond your abilities. Before starting an online business, you need to make sure that the online business opportunity you have chosen fits well within your abilities and constraints. You may evaluate your abilities, skills and knowledge as an business owner, and ask yourself whether you can handle the record-keeping tasks, online marketing work, and other administrative tasks required of each business opportunity. If you cannot do it all yourself, outsourcing will be a good solution.

3. Market demand and competition - Before going into any opportunity, it is vital to conduct an online market research to identify the market demand for your product, service, or information you will be offering. You would definitely want to start an online business that has high market demand or at least has a reasonable amount of market demand. If the size of your target market is too small, consider looking for another business opportunity. Also think about looking at a narrower market within each business opportunity to find a need that hasn't been filled.

On the other hand, competition analysis is also needed, you don't want jump into a niche that is crowed with tons of competitors.

4. Operating expenses - Do some calculations to get a general sense of an online business startup budget before deciding a business to pursue. Weed out those business opportunities and ideas that will exceed your predetermined budget.

When you find an online business opportunity that:

• Interests you.
• Is manageable using your skill and knowledge
• has a profitable market with reasonable competition,
• and falls under your budget

Are you wondering why people keep on recommending Squidoo.com? Well, it is because Squidoo.com is one of the powerful and fast growing Web 2.0 sites available free for web publishers and marketers to make money online. Squidoo allows you to create web pages called lenses which can be posted with whatever content and information you want to share with the world.

By being part of Squidoo, you will be able to use Squidoo lens as the marketing tools for your online business. You don’t have to worry about the rules and regulations of Squidoo as it is perfectly OK to promote your affiliate products, business website or anything else you like to promote on your lenses.

To make your Squidoo lense work for you, the lense has to be attention-grabbing so that it can attract traffic constantly. Those visitors come to you lense not just will read your content but also will click on your affiliate links or business website to find out what you are offering. As a result, you may end up turning these lense visitors into paying customers.

Below are a few strategies you can use to attract attention and traffic:

Create an Impressive Profile
Building a Squidoo profile that appeals others isn’t very difficult. Squidoo lets you upload Youtube videos, Flickr images and much more. These features are great help for making your profile attractive. And the bio photo of your profile, make sure you upload a quality one.

Include Your Target Keywords
Your lense have the ability to attract search engine traffic. So, the content in your lense should contain your main keywords to let the search engines better understand what your lense is about and send you the most targeted traffic. But, don’t overuse keywords in your lense as this could cause your lense blocked by Squidoo staff.

Tag Your Lense
During the process of building a new lense, Squidoo lets you add a title and suggest some keywords. Those are actually your tags. For the entire lense to be effective, you need to tag your lense appropriately which means you should add tags (keywords) that are directly relevant to your topic.

Add in Interesting Images
If you browse on Squidoo lenses, you will find that most of the lenses have the similar format and look. This is a good chance for you to make your lense look unique and interesting. You can do this by placing images and photos to your lense. The images you use must be interesting and have a relation to your content. This way you will make your lense different from others, giving you advantage of drawing more attention.

Network in SquidU
SquidU is much like a bulletin board created for members (Lensemasters) of Squidoo to learn everything about Squidoo. SquidU can be very helpful to you as you can connect with people who know more than you. They can help you optimize your lenses, create attractive profile, and guide you on the effective way to use Squidoo to market your business.

Struggle to Become Lense of the Day
Every day the chief of Squidoo editor will pick a lense that stands out from the crowd and feature as Lense of the Day. The Lense of the day probably will experience a great increase in traffic and exposure. So, you may think about getting your lense to become Lense of the Day. I know this doesn’t sound easy, but you should set a goal to make it to Lense of the Day and struggle to achieve it. One marketer shares a method which is to target topics that are of current interest, such as Olympics. Big news items or clever lenses can end up featuring on the Lens of the Day in the Squidoo blog and gain a lot of traffic overnight!

Anik Singal, founder of Affiliate Classroom did an interview with a guy who has earned more than one million in affiliate commission. This guy was $20,000 in debt for the last 3 years but now he is making $7,000 per day by marketing affiliate products only. He has come up a system which involves the use of pay per click (PPC) advertising to make money with affiliate marketing.

Anik has asked this guy to talk about how he did it in the interview and yes this guy is willing to share his business model and his PPC strategies. He gave some new and advanced PPC strategies that you may also apply them to your affiliate business for achieving better result.

The whole session of this interview was recorded. If you like to get access and listen to this interview series for interesting strategies and tips, you may sign up at:

http://www.ppcclassroom.com

There will be a series of interview and this is just the first one. Anik will send you more upcoming interview videos once you sign up.

MySpace is the largest Internet community or social networking website where users can join to create their profile page and others can view the personal information about them in their profile page. However, the experienced online marketers found that MySpace can also be used for marketing and advertising products or services. But Myspace has its own rules and terms, so care needs to be taken when you are marketing your e-business on MySpace to ensure that none of your actions are violating their rules and terms.

Advertising on MySpace
Your MySpace advertising campaign will produce result so long as it is done correctly and not in a manner that is seen as spam by others. The effectiveness of MySpace arises from the huge number of users around the world who are using MySpace currently. This includes both existing members who networking with each other and nonmembers who only look for interesting profile pages. With so many people visiting MySpace every day it is likely that there are a specific group of visitors have an interest on the products or services you are offering on your MySpace page.

And the best part is that it is totally free advertising your business on MySpace. There is no fee associated when you create a MySpace profile page and include links to your ecommerce website or give more information about your products or services. To effectively advertise your business on MySpace, you are advised to follow the same rules that would usually be followed by online advertisers. This will include identify who your target prospect is and how to get their attention successfully.
Selling Products on MySpace
It will take time and effort to successfully sell your products or services to MySpace users. Most people who visit MySpace are not looking for product or sale offers. Their purposes are to network with others and look for interesting profile pages. So, you need to be an active participant on MySpace and take the time to meet others and making friends.

When growing your friend list. Look for those people who have an interest on your website topic. To make your MySpace marketing work, you should focus on making friends with those people who are interested to your website topic or subject.

There are two ways to market your products on MySpace. First, you can promote your profile pages to have as many friends and users to come your profile page. Those who visit your profile page find the advertisements on your profile page are interesting will click on it to your e-commerce website and consider making a purchase.

Second, you can send bulletin message to your MySpace friend list to market your products. As most of the MySpace users have no interest in reading product or service offers, so your bulletin message shouldn’t be directly promoting your products. What you can do is send a bulletin message whenever there is an update on your e-commerce site or business blog. Here are some of opportunities you can send bulletin message to your MySpace friends for marketing your products:

• When you added an interesting article on your ecommerce site or blog, you can tell them to visit your site or blog to read about it.
• When you hold a contest, you can invite them to visit your ecommerce site to participate your contest.
• If you offer free download of something, you can send them the link to your site for downloading your free gifts.

1) Comment on Blogs
Look for large traffic Blogs in your niche, visit them and leave your comments on their blogs posts. You may use blog search engine like www.blogsearchengine.com, www.google.com/blogsearch and www.searchengineblog.com to find blogs in your niche.

2) Submit Articles
Write articles that are related to your blog and submit them to popular article directories such as ezinearticles.com, Isnare.com, Articledashboard.com, Articlealley.com and goarticle.com. Quality articles may drive you a lot of free targeted traffic.

3) Participate in Community Forums
Use google to search for forums that are related to your blog. Look for forums that has over 10,000 members and read the rules of the forums to see whether you can promote your blogs and websites in your signature. Join forums that allow you to add a link to your blog in the signature and start participating in discussion. You can ask questions, answer other members questions and post your articles, ideas and thought in the forums.

4) Submit Your Blog to Directories
This isn't working to me but some bloggers claim that they gain a good amount of traffic from their listings in directories.

5) Post Often
You can lose traffic if you seldom update you blog, try to make it at least 5 posts per week. This not only will maintain your traffic but possibly attract more readers.

6) Write about Blogging
Write helpful and quality articles related to blogging can attract other bloggers link to your articles and gain may be truckload of free traffic.

7) Post Breaking News
If your found a breaking news of your niche very earlier, post it to your blog. It may give your blog's traffic a boost.

8) Social Bookmarking
Bookmark you blog posts in the large social bookmarking sites like Netscape.com, Digg.com, Simply and Reddit.com.

9) Run a Contest
Start a contest on your blog. Think about the prizes that people really want. It will create a viral effect and bring in new visitors.

10) On-page Optimization
Make sure your blog's title tag and description tag contain your targeted keywords. When you have posted plenty of quality blog post and done a lot of blog promotion, don't be surprise to see your blog ranks top 10 in Google and get free search engine traffic daily.

Yes .Its true .I have made it.To begin with you need account at myLot - A social Networking site(If you want details check `paid to post` section of my blog)
and CO.CC - A free domain site.

First read it completely before proceding .After you have made account in these two sites follow the steps

1. In the myLot homepage go to Tasks section.Here you can create different tasks and reward the ones who have completed it.
2. You can add funds to the task area from Paypal (I think you have got a paypal account)
3. Suppose you add 10$ and you create a task .For eg: Visit my website given here and go the link(Use your CO.CC referral link).Then sign up and create a new domain at CO.CC and paste the domain link you have created in the task area.
4. You should note note that for every free domain your referrals create you get $0.10 USD and for every paid domain they create you get 10% ~ 40% commission.
   
5. After you have got their domain link , you can check the SIGN UP LIST at CO.CC to know whether you are paid.
   
6. Offer a reward of $0.05(as you wish) for the task.Its worthy.If you offer $0.05 to the task you will get $0.1 as referral signup .Double you invest.
7. Intially you can try with $10.You can make it $20.

Google just released a Newbie Central for their AdSense program, those ads webmasters can include on their site to earn money for every click on the ad from a visitor (if you're using the program, part of the advertiser budget will go to you, and the other part to Google). I wanted to add some tips from my own experience:

1. Ads can work well in-between other stuff. On a games site of mine, some of the games don't contain ads next to the game area; the AdSense ad will only be shown in-between game rounds. This is the time the visitor is not concentrating on performing a task but might take a small break, and be open to the option of visiting new sites.

2. Put too much emphasis on AdSense and your site may be linked to less. The more available space you dedicate to AdSense on your site, and the less you differentiate between ads and content in your design, the more money you earn with the program, right? Not quite. While pushing the AdSense may result in short-term gains, it might also convince some visitors that the site is too crowded to be worth visiting again. And some of those visitors may also be bloggers or other people who might otherwise help to promote your site with links to it. And the less your site gets linked to, the less traffic it gets, meaning AdSense revenues may go down in the long term.

3. Even if you get huge traffic, the AdSense income from the site is more dependent on the site type and audience. Google targets AdSense ads automatically to the site content. Or at least, it does so ideally – but some types of content fare better than others with this targeting. I noticed for instance that AdSense does better on a games site than on a technology blog. I also heard people say that AdSense does quite good on product oriented blogs; say, one post solely about the iPod; another post solely about Gadget XYZ, and so on.

4. Image ads can be relevant and work for you, but they might also apall some visitors. Google's AdSense program gives you the option to choose between a couple of different ad formats. Two main groups are text ads vs text & image ads. When you choose the latter, Google will deliver what they deem works best for your content (or so one would hope, and it would be in Google's best self-interest to serve you the best possible ad, it seems).
   
   However, Google doesn't really know your layout preferences, and they don't really understand when your audience thinks ads are "too much"; and considering image ads include Flash animations (which you can't disable, once you go for image ads), Flash animations may well push some people away. One thing you can do is to only show image ads in areas where they don't disturb the content, e.g. at the end of posts. Also, you might want to listen to visitor feedback on the ads being served; I received emails before that the blinking ad on this or that site made a person want to leave the site, at which point I blocked the specific advertiser via the AdSense Setup -> Competitive Ad Filter option.

5. Be aware of risks when you change ad layouts too much. I once had a system on the server to randomly differ between various AdSense layouts on the same page. Doing so I was hoping to add some good variety to keep the ads at least somewhat interesting and notable. Shortly after I stopped doing so and simply included a rather big static area for the AdSense to "do what it wants," the AdSense revenues for that site increased. Now, I don't know if this was a coincidence of some sorts, as revenues often go down or up even when you don't do anything, but it might well have been that there was a connection between adding too much homemade randomization, and lowered revenues.
   
   At another time, during the redesign of this blog, I switched from one ad format to another for the end-of-posts AdSense ad space. This, combined with perhaps other layout changes, suddenly cut the ad revenues in half for the blog. It took me some time to realize that I had some ad channels* set up for the specific old layout size, and by changing this I must have kicked out all those advertisers who were pushing their ads through the channel.
   
   *This setting can be found at AdSense Setup -> Channels.

6. Use competing ad systems when AdSense doesn't seem to work for a site. At CoverBrowser.com, which shows galleries of comic and book covers and so on, I tried including AdSense ads in "non-annoying" places in the layout (including trying to use AdSense affiliate links via AdSense Setup -> Referrals), but this didn't seem to work at all. However I then tried "affiliating" the "buy" link below individual covers, utilizing the eBay affiliate commission system offered by AuctionAds.com*. (Disclosure: Patrick Gavin, co-owner of AuctionAds, paid me for consulting before on other projects, like Sketchcast.com.) This worked a lot better, and as it was simply connected to an existing site feature, it also didn't add clutter.
   
   A good start to find other ad programs is to search for adsense alternatives on Google... you will see a lot of lists which are dedicated to competitors. (Note that some of these competitors may be US-only.) You may also want to join an ad or blog network like The Deck, Federated Media (disclosure: I was part of Federated Media before), or 9 Rules.
   
   *CommissionJunction also offers an eBay affiliate system but CommissionJunction has really low usability, in my opinion; setting it up is confusing. Before joining such a network – which might require you to show them your traffic stats and so on – check if their typical ads and campaigns fit with your site layout and your general ad type preferences.

7. Sometimes you may get a sudden increase in traffic, hence ad clicks, but you can't locate the source of the traffic. I'm using Google Analytics to track my sites, though AdSense is also a good first indicator of traffic explosions... because it will show the combined page views of all your sites (provided you include AdSense on all of them), as opposed to Google Analytics, where you need to check site by site individually.
   
   However, sometimes even with Google Analytics, you won't be able to locate the source of your traffic because there's no specific new popular referrer being shown (a referrer is the site linking to your site, provided people click on that link). In these cases, it may well be that your site has been discussed in a TV show or similar, as the show won't "link" to you (but audiences will be entering your domain manually into the browser when they like what the saw on TV). When you feel that there has been a traffic explosion sometimes you may get additional email feedback in regards to your site, and it makes sense for you to ask your visitor: where did you first find out about the site? Maybe the can let you know about the name of the TV show, or magazine, or other "offline" source responsible for the peak. (I sometimes sent pointers to the BBC Click show for instance, with partly enormous effect.)

8. Consider using AdSense even when the page doesn't get any traffic yet. Who knows, some day the traffic suddenly explodes, and you might not realize fast enough and thus miss out on the action (as sometimes, traffic goes as fast as it comes).
   
   On the other hand, reversely I would suggest to never do a site just to make ad money with it. That kind of motivation may lead to spammy sites that don't help anyone really. (If a project is great, it's great even if it doesn't make any money.)

9. Making money with AdSense takes time. In my experience, it may take many months to years for a site to gain enough traffic to make OK money through AdSense... if ever. I have almost never experienced any site making quick and easy money with AdSense (though you may be getting quicker results than me of course, as it depends on so many variables!).
   I think for any site getting a couple of thousands of visitors a day, you might want to start playing around with AdSense to see where it takes you (if you didn't already include AdSense anyway just to see what happens, and following up on tip #9). As you are paid in US-$, the actual benefit the ad revenue will bring depends on your local costs of living as well (you might even ponder moving or going on an extended holiday trip if your local costs of living are too high for your site revenues to cover).

   
   

   
   

Google Page Creator now allows JavaScript. This opens you up to earning money with your Google Page Creator Web Site. Add Google Adsense to your Google Page Creator Web site and earn a little money from your Google Page Creator Web site.If you want to make money from your Google Page Creator Web site but you don't already have a Google Adsense account then the first thing you will need to do is sign up for a Google Adsense account.

NAME:NETLOAD GMBH
REGION OF PARTICIPATION : International
PAYMENT METHOD : Paypal
MIN. PAYOUT : $25

Netload another trusted site to make money online.
You have the chance to make real money with your uploads. Every user can earn up to $100 USD for 20,000 downloads. You will earn one premiumpoint for every download of one of your files with a size of at least 100mb.

The best 5 Affiliate programs

1. Pepper Jam Network: The Pepperjam Affiliate Network represents some of the biggest and hippest brands on the market today. The network is a pioneer in the way that it started out as an affiliate, and now is one of the biggest and most trusted affiliate agencies in the United States. Join this greatly experienced affiliate program and start earning money from your website.Also there's a $10 Sign-On Bonus waiting for you that is a new affiliate!

Base commission: $1-65 or 3-40%
Global Acceptance: Yes
Min. Paypout : $25
Realtime statistics: Yes
Commission type: CPA, CPO

2.Thinkhost: ThinkHost is a social responsible web hosting company with web servers running on wind and solar energy. The ThinkHost web hosting affiliate program is well worth a closer look, with high conversion rates and some of the highest commissions in the web hosting segment. ThinkHost.com pays $100 for each lead!

Base commission: $100
Global Acceptance: Yes
Min. Paypout : $10
Realtime statistics: Yes
Commission type: CPA, CPO

3.Linkshare: LinkShare.com is a good affiliate network with a broad variety of clients. Everything from clothes to credit cards is up for promotion. With such a large selection of brands to choose between you’ll be sure to find something that’s perfect for your website or blog.

Base commission: $1-100 or 1-65%
Global Acceptance: Yes
Min. Paypout : $10
Realtime statistics: Yes
Commission type: CPA, CPO

4.Medstore: MedStore.biz is a greatly designed website that offers its clients the opportunity from prescription drugs to hair care. They even have products for your pets which increases the possibilities of making money from this affiliate program.

Base commission: $0 or 21-29%
Global Acceptance: Yes
Min. Paypout : $200
Realtime statistics: Yes
Commission type: CPO

5.Market Health: MarketHealth Affiliate Network is the leading performance marketing network of the Beauty, Health, Weight loss and Skin care industries. This affiliate network offer great incentives (commission and payments promotions) for affiliates and thousands of active affiliates and high conversion on leads for merchants.

Base commission: $0 or 21-29%
Global Acceptance: Yes
Min. Paypout : $20
Realtime statistics: Yes
Commission type: CPO,CPS

As a webmaster, you may be wondering how you can increase the revenue of your web site without having to go through the headache of massive program restructuring or changing the content drastically. One of the simplest and easiest ways to do this is to enter an Affiliate Program.

Quite simply, an Affiliate Program is a marketing agreement between you and another web site that offers certain products and services. The other web site, which is called the "merchant" in the business, pays you a commission based on certain marketing and advertising services you render for them. These services can be as simple or extravagant as you want, based on the complexity you think your site can handle and the changes you want to implement.

If you enter such an agreement with a merchant, your web site then becomes referred to as a "publisher". As a publisher, one of the simplest and easiest ways to earn extra revenue is to enter a per-click and per-ad commission agreement with your merchant. In the per click basis, you simply add links to your web site that redirect people to your merchant's web site. For every person thus redirected, you earn a small fee. The per ad basis means that you actually set up small graphic, flash animation, or even video streaming ads on your web site on behalf of the client. Per-ad affiliate programs are paid on a constant basis, usually per month of ad space.

Aside from these two, there are also "loyalty" and "rebate" programs set up by some merchants that give you electronic coupons and the ability to help people register on line for a discount program from the merchant. In these cases, payment is made in tow ways: one, for every coupon or sign up, you get a commission. Two, every time someone buys a product from the merchant using coupons they got from you or from a discount program you offered, you also get a commission from the products bought.

A third type of affiliate program is perfect for web masters who run personal web sites with their own blog pages, member forums, write their own article content, or even publish their own periodic e-magazines. In an offshoot of the pay per click and pay per ad system, webmasters who run personal web sites can get paid for promoting the products through review articles, a slot on their discussion forums, blogs, as well as through the regular option of adding a link that you get paid for on a per click basis. This option actually appeals to a lot of merchants who feel they are better able to reach customers directly through personal web sites as opposed to "commercialized" methods.

Taking affiliate marketing a step up, you can also choose to become an etailer, short for electronic retailer. As an etailer for your merchant, you become a licensed sales representative that gets relatively larger commissions from direct product sales. This tends to make more money for webmasters who are also aggressive at sales, but in general is too much of a bother for webmasters who prefer to let their web sites run on "autopilot". If direct action is your thing, however, you might want to consider this form of affiliate program.

Lastly, there is also multi level affiliate marketing. This works like the classic multi level marketing programs where sales representatives of a company get commissions not only for direct sales that they personally make, but can also recruit other sales representatives on behalf of the company. They then get extra commissions both from these referrals and the actual sales made by the referrals. On a diminishing returns basis, they can even earn profit from the direct sales of the referrals made by their referrals down the line of the hierarchy. In affiliate marketing, this is done almost exactly the same way, except that instead of sales reps, the web masters find other interested web masters and bring them in as publishers for the merchant. This tends to be a very powerful and self sustaining marketing tool that benefits it's publishers and the merchant IF the network of publishers can be made to rapidly and steadily expand.

Last is the "hybrid" affiliate program. This employs a fusion of most of the methods outlined above, and this can prove to be the most profitable for a hard working web master. It will probably entail the most effort, but can also bring in the largest revenues through multiple, overlapping programs.