LinkShare

Web Page: LinkShare.com
What is it: LinkShare is an affiliate marketing program. You apply to programs and place text links and banners on your website.
Revenue Type: LinkShare is a pay per action company. You get paid when someone clicks through one of your links and then makes a purchase, fills out a form, or performs some other specified action.

Pros: LinkShare has a good variety of programs and many of them have big name brand recognition. Many programs offer generous commissions or bounties. Some programs offer data feeds to make it easier to sell.

Cons: Each of your websites must be approved for each of their programs. Their reporting system is accurate but difficult to manage if you have more than one website. While pay per action has higher payouts, you need to send more motivated people through your links to get a conversion and a payout.

Overall: LinkShare is a good place to start for affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing is hard. In order to be successful you need to have a focussed website with a lot of traffic and you need to motivate your visitors to not only click on links and banners but also complete the purchase or other action when they get there.

You have a few options for affiliate marketing:

1. Build a website around a specific affiliate or group of tightly related affiliates.
2. Find affiliate programs that really appeal to the audience of your existing website. Then push, push, push.
3. Search Marketing: You can create search ad campaigns with Google, Overture, MSN Search or others and send clickers directly to the destination website or create a landing page for that specific ad with affiliate links imbedded in the landing page. Read the terms and conditions for each program before bidding on keywords, many have forbidden words and many don't allow you to send traffic straight to their site.

Good luck.