An affiliate link leads to a vendor's site. You put it on your webpages or in your e-mail. If someone clicks on that link and makes a purchase, you get a fraction of the selling price.  You use affiliate links to make money indirectly from your information: You give away information to attract visitors. You get paid when they click through to buy somebody else's product. The fraction of the sales price varies from 4%-6% at Amazon to more than 50% at some of the high-paying affiliate programs. Some affiliate programs give you a one-time payment. Some pay you a fraction of recurring charges.



Related to affiliate links are Google AdSense ads. Whereas affiliate links are part of a three-way relationship between you, the customer and the vendor, AdSense ads are part of a four-way relationship. You attract customers to your webpages by giving them valuable information. You allow Google to place ads on your page. The vendor pays Google when people click through those ads. Google pays you a share of the price per click. Unlike affiliate links, you don't get to choose what ads appear on your page. Google examines the contents of your page to decide what ads are most appropriate.

Why should you care about affiliate links? Income. They can possibly bring you a lot of income. Moreover, if you put up hubs (pages at Hubpages) or lenses (pages at Squidoo), you will automatically get AdSense ads inserted. You should make yourself familiar with them.

You should not, however, use them on all of your webpages. You should never use them on your pitch pages or your squeeze pages: you don't want people clicking off those pages except to buy your product or to give you their e-mail information. You cannot use them directly in e-zine articles. Resource boxes are not allowed to contain affiliate links; although they can link to pages that do contain affiliate links. You may want to use some affiliate links in your mini-course, blog or e-zine -- that's one of the way to make money from them. You can also include affiliate links in e-books and online courses.

When should you use an affiliate link? My rule is this: if I'm going to recommend some product or service anyway, if I believe it will be of value to my reader, and if the vendor is offering an affiliate program, I'm no fool, I'll use the affiliate link. I will not recommend something I don't believe in just because it has an affiliate program. I will not fail to recommend something I do believe in just because it does not have an affiliate program. And overall, I recommend what I prefer, and I strongly prefer things that are free. You'll have to make your own ethical decisions.

Beyond the ethics, there is a practical consideration: You only make significant money out of repeat sales based on long-term relationships. You will gain or lose respect based on the quality of the products and services you recommend.

Unfortunately, affiliate links are often quite long. When an affiliate link is broken between lines of an e-mail, it ceases to function. To get around that problem, go to tinyURL.com and, for free, convert the long link into a short one. This also allows you to cloak affiliate links, preventing people from removing your affiliate identification, which people seem to enjoy doing.

A way you can get in on an affiliate program is to go to the website for the product or service you wish to recommend and look for a link labeled "affiliates," "associates," "partners," or something similar. It may be hidden at the bottom of the webpage in tiny print along with links to other sections of the website.

Use affiliate links where you think they are appropriate. Affiliate links provide some people with fortunes, but even if they don't do that for you, they may give you a few extra income streams.