For people looking for an online community with a lot to offer, Craigslist is a natural choice. With billions of page views every month it's not a surprise that Craigslist has the ability to offer many financial opportunities for the alert internet marketer willing to learn how to cash in on Craigslist's popularity. Internet marketers in the know use affiliate marketing to increase their online profitability. Craigslist is beneficial to ecommerce business owners looking for affiliate marketers to promote their offers. It is also beneficial for people who do affiliate marketing searching for new businesses to promote for. This article is an overview of locating affiliates to promote for you or to locate affiliate offers to promote.

Affiliate Marketing Basics

Basically, affiliate marketing is a marketing technique where business owners pay someone (an affiliate) on a performance basis. In conventional marketing business owners pay upfront for advertising. No matter what outcome is produced by the ads. Affiliate marketing is different in that business owners pay only when specific actions occur. Businesses typically pay online affiliates for performing one of three certain actions. This could be paying per click (PPC), per sale(PPS), or per lead(PPL). All three of these are also referred to as 'pay per action' or PPA.

In PPC affiliate marketing campaigns an affiliate uses a coded link in their email or website. Each time someone clicks the coded link it goes to business' website. The business can tell which affiliate generated the click using the code embedded in the link. The affiliate then receives the agreed upon payment. For PPC this usually varies from fractions of cents to several cents.

With PPS campaigns an affiliate doesn't get compensated just for sending visitors to the sponsoring website. The visitor also has to purchase something for the affiliate to get credit. Again, payment varies. Typically ranging from several cents to several dollars per sale or sales. This can be a flat rate or percentage of sales the affiliate generates.

In PPL programs an affiliate gets paid if visitors click through the affiliates coded link and then follows through on giving the additional information the sponsoring business wants. This could be as simple as visitors sharing their email address for an online newsletter, or as complex as filling out a loan application. Again, payment varies, but is usually a flat rate.

Finding Potential Affiliates

A business owner that is interested in locating affiliates for promoting their offer can use Craigslist to help them find such affiliates. Though it seems logical to list affiliate opportunities under the jobs category at Craigslist, it's important to know that this goes against the sites rules for job postings. This simply means that if you are looking to find affiliates you'll have to do so by using different areas on Craigslist.

Any discussion forums that are related to your offer are a way to locate potential affiliates. If you use this method, though, be careful to avoid spamming the forums with sign up links for your program. Spamming techniques like this make you look unprofessional to any potential affiliates and if the Craigslist moderators see fit, they will ban you from the forums. Making a logical and relevant contribution to discussions and getting to know other forum participants is an ideal way to connect with potential affiliates. Then you can add a link for more information about your affiliate offer when you make posts.

Affiliate Opportunities

People who earn an income by being an affiliate promoter for business owners can locate new affiliate programs on Craigslist. Even though there are rules against it, sometimes such listings do end up in the jobs section. These ads will probably removed quickly, but it's possible to take advantage of them if you act before they are taken down. Of course, some forum postings may contain links to affiliate programs as well. Another way is to post requests in the services or resumes section.

More information on Craigslist can be found at: http://www.guidetocraigslist.com