1. You can get paid selling advertising in a pay per click program. For example, Google Adsense offers a program where you earn money every time someone clicks on an ad that you place on your website. It is free to join and easy to run.

You simply join the Google Adsense program and place html script on your site. The script will bring up relevant advertisers according to the theme of the page. This is a very easy way to make money as an affiliate marketer. There is plenty of information available on the Internet about how to increase the amount of money you earn per click and how to increase the number of clicks your ads receive. Some people focus their entire Internet marketing strategy on these techniques.

2. Another way to make money as an affiliate marketer is to sell leads. You join a merchant affiliate program and place banners or text link ads on your site that lead to a lead capture form. Each time that one of these is filled in, you will earn a commission.

3. Selling products is the most common method that affiliate marketers use to earn money. You can sell physical products or downloadable products and earn commissions on every sale. There are literally millions of affiliate merchants looking for people just like you to sell their products. You don't have to purchase and store stock because in the case of physical goods, the handling of the products is undertaken by the merchant; in the case of online products, a simple link is all that is required. As for physical products, the merchant deals with the shipping and handling operations.

4. A two-tier affiliate marketing program is one in which affiliates earn over-ride commissions on the income that is generated by their team. This is a popular form of earning money for people who enjoy working with other people.

The recent growth in the popularity of social networking sites is good news for two-tier affiliate marketing programs because of the emphasis that is placed on building personal contacts as a step towards building a two-tier team of income generators. If you are able to teach people to duplicate what you are currently doing, you can make a lot of money as a two-tier affiliate marketer.

5. If you don't want to work for the rest of your life then joining affiliate marketing programs that offer residual income may appeal to you. With the residual income programs you get paid over and over each time you make a sale. For example niche membership sites are extremely popular right now. People sign up to these services so that they can get training or access to certain types of fresh information products month by month. In many cases the subscribers then convert the PLR material into unique products of their own.

Residual income affiliate programs offer a great way for you to get paid over and over selling membership subscriptions. Website hosting is another example of this.

Many membership sites have great retention rates therefore they will earn you commissions on a ongoing basis. Affiliate marketers find that once they have made several sales, residual income is one of the best ways to make money online.

As was noted at the start of this article, these are the five most typical methods of making money online with affiliate marketing programs. I suggest that you try one type of affiliate marketing program, thoroughly master it and then add another, and then yet another to your portfolio until you are able to use all of them to maximize your earning potential with multiple streams of income.