Affiliate programs are a great way of earning additional income from your website, whatever your niche, even if you don’t sell anything on your site. There are affiliate programs for virtually every product you can think of.

What are affiliate programs? Any organisation, company or individual can run an affiliate program to help sell their product or service. Affiliates are like an army of commission only salesmen.

There are thousands of companies, selling millions of products and services, that run affiliate programs for you to join and promote or recommend their products from your website.

If you have a popular website, with plenty of regular visitors or readers, recommending affiliate products related to your niche, can be extremely profitable for you.

This is how it works: You open an affiliate account by joining the product or service owners affiliate program and they provide coded text links or images you add to your website. When your visitor clicks on the link or image, he is directed to the product owners website where a purchase can be made.

The link or image is embedded with a ‘cookie’ or hidden code, which tells the product owner where the referral came from so the commission from any sale can be credited to your affiliate account.

For example, if you joined amazon’s affiliate program, and you wanted to promote a book complimenting your article perfectly, you simply add a specially formatted image of the book to your website, provided by amazon, to track all sales resulting from your referrals.

Amazon’s associates can promote an enormous range of products as well as books but doesn’t pay a very high commission, usually less than 10%. But you do have the credibility of being an amazon reseller.

So, how do you find affiliate products to match your website? It’s easy. Simply search the 10,620 affiliate programs listed on the associate programs directory. Every listing gives a summary with the commission you can earn.

If you want to promote a digital product or ebook, clickbank is an excellent affiliate promoter. It’s easy and free to join as an affiliate of clickbank. Some clickbank products earn 50% commission, or more.

And if you want to promote a physical product, commission junction promotes the largest range of affiliate products and would be my choice. It’s also free to join as an affiliate (they call you a publisher).

There is almost an infinite number of products available for you to promote as an affiliate, so you are sure to find the perfect match. It’s the easiest way of generating extra income from your website.