With an Affiliate Program, you put a link on your site and if a user click on it and buys something, you get a percentage of that sale. This can let you create highly relevant items for sale on your web site. Say you are giving people cooking tips. You could pick a couple of cook books from Amazon or Barnes and Noble, display an image of the cover and recommend the books to your visitors. If any of them buy the books, you get 10% or 8.5% of the sale respectively.

As usual, this is just a partial list of affiliates to get your mind thinking. If you have something in particular you would like to sell or point your users to buy, just go to a site and see if they have an affiliate program. They sometimes call it a partner program. You may have to hunt around the site some, but chances are there is an affiliate program of some sort. Link Share is also a good way to find affiliates relevant your site since you can search for affiliates by category.

Google AdSense
Google Ad sense is a very cool concept. You sign up, they let you configure the size, shape and color scheme of your ads and they give you some code to paste into your pages. The Google serves up ads relevant to your site. The amount you get paid just depends on your content and the ads and how much people click on the ads. To give you an example, this site earns about $200 / month from Google AdSense.

Link Share
Link Share is a consortium of advertisers. You sign up with various advertisers and they pay you through Link Share. There is no cost for you involved. Link share manages the affiliate programs for hundreds of companies such as 1-800-Flowers, H&R Block, Hickory Farms, Petco , Target, Walmart and tons more.

Amazon
Amazon's affiliate program pays you between 5% and 10% of transactions depending on the number of referrals and the kind of link you use.

Barnes and Noble
The Barnes and Noble affiliate program pays 8.5% for books, 5% on CDs, DVDs, textbooks prints and posters and 2.5% on Questbook dealer direct items.

Ebay
Ebay will pay you between $12 and $30 per new registrant who bids or buys something on their site depending on the number of referrals. They also pay between $0.10 and $0.25 on bids that come from your site. Just click here an scroll to the bottom of the page and select affiliates.

Clix Galore
Another group of advertisers that work through one site. They don't have as many well known advertisers as Link Share, but its another pool of affiliates to look at.

Napster
Get paid a "Bounty" as they say for every new user you send their way. There affiliate program pays between $8.00 and $10.00 for every new sign-up depending on the number of referrals you send.

I-Tunes
With Apple's I-tunes affiliate program, get 5% on purchase you send their way.

BestBuy
Best Buy's affiliate program pay scale: Music, Movies, Software get 3%, Computers and Peripherals get 1% and 2% on home essentials.

Walmart
Walmart's affiliate program pay scale: Gifts -12%, Jewelry -12%, Apparel -12%, Books, Toys, Sports, Home, Lawn & Garden, photos and tires - 8%, Electronics - 6%, Video Games, Music, Music Downloads, Movies, Optical and other 5%.

Target
Target 's affiliate program pays 5%.