The vast majority of affiliate business opportunity programs provide compensation through revenue sharing. In some cases, revenue sharing is called a cost-per-sale transaction. Essentially, the affiliate earns a fixed amount or percentage of the purchase price when someone locates and purchases the good or service through the portal provided by the affiliate. For example, a family website that allowed companies that produced baby care products to display ads on the home page of the website, complete with links, would pay the family for each sale made through that link.

Many affiliate business opportunity programs require earnings to reach a certain level before payment is made. Others will pay weekly, biweekly, or monthly, with no minimum amount of income required.

Another, less popular means of generating income through an affiliate business lead program is the cost-per-action method. This differs from the cost-per-sale method, in that the cost-per-action simply requires the prospective buyer to view the ad on a website and click on it to investigate for a minimum period of time.

It doesn’t have to end in a sale. As you can imagine, the amount of revenue generated by this type of deal is much less than by a cost per sale revenue sharing plan. With the world of cost per action, pay per click may be the format that most people immediately recognize. However, it is also the least popular method of affiliate marketing today.

While PPC started out with a large following, the method proved too susceptible to click fraud, resulting in few sales but a lot of money being paid by advertisers. Current methods, which help trace customer addresses and require a minimal amount of browsing time, have greatly reduced the incidence of fraud.

Today, the affiliate business opportunity covers a wide range of products and services, from household items to telecommunications offerings. Any enterprising person with some experience in a certain area could very well find an affiliate business opportunity that would generate some recurring income. All you need is a look around the Internet.