Searching for people has become a Booming Business. In fact according to my research, the people search topic makes up about 30% of all searches done on Google and Yahoo. That translates into about 20 Billion searches a month. WOW.

If you don't believe the search for information on people is big, consider this in May of 2007, mega Internet search engine giant Google hosted a People Search SIG forum at their headquarters in Mountain View. Michael Arrington of TechCrunch presided over the session that included 3 of the top People Search Company CEOs.

Some of the PS industry leaders who attended this session include Michael Tanne CEO of Wink, Jaideep Singh CEO of Spock, and Bryan Burdick COO of Zoominfo. Needless to say if Google is paying this much attention to this Service there has gotta be something to it.

So How Do You Make Money In The People Search Market?

I think it is safe to say that there is with a doubt a market for this service. in fact in addition to the ones mentioned above, companies like Reunion.com and rival Classmate.com have millions of subscribers, many who pay a monthly fee to use their services. If want to get into this field and you can't start your own company, why not be an affiliate of an already successful company.

By becoming an affiliate of a successful company you get a percentage of the total sale of a product or service the company provides. These companies set you up with your own website and promotional tools. All you do is drive traffic to your affiliate site to create an online income for yourself.

In doing my research I discovered that there are individuals making a good second income in the people search industry just by signing up as an affiliate. The way most PS affiliates get paid, is when someone purchases a certain program that locates specific information on another person.

Let me give you some examples. For instance if you are looking for someone and you received 8,9.15 or more people from your search with the same name in the same general area and you want to narrow it down to a specific person, you will need to purchase the use of a program to give you the specific person or information on the person you are looking for. When you pay a fee to use the program a sale is made by the company and a commission is paid to an affiliate.

In addition lets say you wanted to see if someone had a criminal record, or you wanted to do a background check. To access that information you would have to pay a fee to use a specific program. When you do, another sale is made, the company makes money,and the affiliate gets a commission.

Some companies will attach several different affiliate programs to their search engines, like adsense. This gives affiliates more incentive to promote their sites in order to get multiple streams of income. I even found one company that attached an affiliate program that pays a monthly residual income. Great Ideal. Most affiliate programs are free to join. You just need to know how to get traffic to the site in order to generate income.

I wanted to see if someone can really make money with these PS companies, so I decided to test one for myself. I went through the process of joining as a affiliate, received my very own search engine, did a little free advertising, and low and behold I actually made a commission the very next day.

In conclusion, I find that millions of people actually use these search engines and they are also paying to use specific tracking and informational programs attached to them.

There seems to be a growing market for people searches, and their popularity is not slowing down anytime soon. Big money is being made by some companies, and now affiliates who join them may be able to ride the wave all the way to the bank.