If you are new to owning and operating your own website you may or may not have heard of the term affiliate program as it applies to websites. It's actually a pretty easy concept. It basically is getting paid for providing leads and sales to other websites. To further explain I'll briefly describe the process.

I own a website that sells DVD's and you own a website that sells music CD's. Now since we have similiar businesses but are not directly competing you ask if I would be willing to put an ad with a link in it to your website. In that ad is a tracking code that tells you when a customer comes from my website. Next we'll say you have a thirty day trial program for your customers that my referral signs up for and that maybe you received a second referral from my website that buys a product on your website. So how do I get paid? One way is for the referral that you received when the customer signed up for the free trial and the other is when the customer actually purchased a product from you.

Now the payments for such referrals vary depending on what the advertiser wants to pay. But there are multiple companies from every industry offering up affiliate programs so you can to some degree pick and choose what ads to display. Some companies offer better commissions than others in the same industry. Who you choose to sponser is up to you.

So how do you go about becoming an affiliate? There are a couple of ways. One is to check websites that you would like to be an affiliate with and see if they already have an affiliate program in place. Some websites owned by larger companies have their own programs that they run themselves. They will have sign up forms available that you can fill out. But you need to realize that they will want to review your website to make sure it has appropriate content and that it is not a direct rival to their own. It may take awhile for them to review your site so be patient and they will eventually get to you. If you are still in the process of designing your website make sure you have enough finished and published for them to see what your site is about.

The other way to find websites that you'd like to be an affiliate of is to join a site like Commission Junction. They act as a middle man lining up websites that want to expand their advertising with people looking to place ads on their own websites. It costs you nothing and you'll find a large selection of advertisers to choose from. This allows you to choose advertisers that are more appropriate to your own website. They'll also tell you what the commissions being paid by that company are.

So once you've decided to become an affiliate how do you place ads on your site. It's all copy and paste. The advertiser is responsible for providing a selection of ads for you to choose from. They'll vary in size and shape and you can pick what is most appropriate for you. You can place as many ads as you like on as many pages of your site as you want. It's all up to you. Within each ad is a tracking code that allows that customer to be tracked so that you can be paid.

So if you're interested in making some extra money from your website you might want to consider becoming an affiliate and offering up some space to place some advertising. It could be really beneficial to your bank account.