If you have done any research into making money online you will no doubt of come across Affiliate Program Marketing. While the basics of Affiliate Program Marketing are very simple, the volume of information about the topic can make starting such an adventure daunting.

Forget all the jargon, complex computer language and get rich quick schemes read on to find what the three most common Affiliate Program Marketing methods are.

Method 1 - Direct Pay Per Click Marketing

This method uses pay per click (PPC) advertising to drive traffic to an affiliate product sales page.

You create an advert with a search engine such as Google, Bing or Yahoo (for example Google Adwords). This advert appears is the search engine results or within individual webpages that have signed up for search engine advertising (for example Google Adsense). You select a list of keywords so that when someone types in your keywords in a search engine your advert appears. You then pay the search engine every time someone clicks on your advert. The more you are willing to pay the higher in the search engine results your advert will appear. In the advert you include your affiliate link.

When the person clicks on your advert they are directed to an affiliate product sales page (i.e. a Merchant's sales page) using your affiliate link. If they buy the product you get the affiliate commission.

This method is very quick to set-up but requires a really good niche, Merchant's sales page and most importantly good keywords.

If you intend using this method you better get yourself a good keyword research tool. Conversion rates are usually low with this type of Affiliate Program Marketing method. Without a good keyword tool you can easily spend a lot of money on advertising without getting any sale commissions.

Method 2 - Website Pay Per Click Marketing

This method uses PPC advertising, in a similar way to Method 1. However, instead of directing traffic to a Merchant's sales page, you direct traffic to your website. On your website you provide additional information about the product to try and convince people to buy it. This is called pre-selling. You then include your affiliate link from your pre-sell webpage to the Merchant's sales page.

This method has similar problems as Method 1, but conversion rates are generally higher as you are pre-selling the product to the person. It is a quick and easy way of testing the market for a particular product, sales page and keywords, while giving you increased chances of making a sale and more control over the selling process.

Method 3 - Website Generating Free Traffic Marketing

This is the method used by the big guns of Affiliate Program Marketing.

You create a website and market it big time with all the SEO methods and traffic generating techniques you can. This drives lots (hopefully) of free traffic to your website. Your website contains lots of good content to position yourself as an expert in your chosen niche.

Once on your website you offer free products (e.g. ebooks, videos, etc) that people can download if the sign-up to your mailing list. Once on your mailing list you then email them periodically recommending affiliate products.

Conversion rates with this method can be very high as you are building up a degree of trust with your email contacts and convincing them to purchase the product you recommend.

There is lots of money to be made with this method but it is no get rich quick scheme as it takes a lot of time and effort to implement the traffic generation techniques so your website ranks high in search engines.