The affiliate program is one of the many online marketing tools that is said to be an effective and lucrative way to earn big and extra money online. It is a means of promoting products with the use of partners or affiliates. These affiliates help the advertiser to get or increase traffic to the latter's website. The former will then get a commission from the advertiser or merchant for helping in the generation of sales, increasing clicks and others required by the advertiser/merchant.

There are actually three types of affiliate program payment methods and these are: pay-per-sale, pay-per-click and pay-per-lead.

In the first method, pay-per-sale, an affiliate will only get a commission when it gets the merchant a buying customer. Either the merchant can set a fixed amount to be paid to the affiliate for each successful purchase or the he can just give a percentage of the sale. This will all depend on the arrangement between the two during the negotiation.

In the pay-per-click program, affiliates are paid by the merchant based on the number of visitors who click on the link that leads to the merchant's site. An affiliate will still be paid whether there is or there is no purchase done.

In the last method, the merchant pays affiliates based on the volume of visitors they were able to refer to sign up as leads. This method requires visitors to enter some requested information at the seller's site, which the latter can then use as a sales lead.

These three are the basic types of affiliate program payment arrangement and there are actually still many other arrangements a merchant could set up built on any promotion technique that would profit them. Payment will then be based on the quantity of visitors the affiliate sends them.

Now, as there as many ways to do payment scheme in affiliate programs, there are also many ways for one to earn regular affiliate income.

Creating good articles is one money-spinning way to reach your target market. You have to make sure, though, that the articles are of good quality and are useful to the readers. Include the link of your affiliate site and then submit your articles to different sites (Ezines) or article directories.

SEO or Search Engine Optimization is another form of promotion that is most advantageous, however, it can be very time consuming, unless of course if you are internet savvy. However, most often than not, it takes a few months to notice a positive result using this.

Email Marketing, perhaps, is the most popularly known to everyone since everyone gets to receive at least one advertisement on a daily basis. The only downside of this one is the email advertisement might only go directly to the spam folder because of the strict span filter incorporated in emails.

These are just three of the many effective ways to promote an affiliate program. Whichever you choose, make sure that you make the most of it and do not waste an opportunity to earn big because affiliate programs promises you the chance to earn extra online.