Many people all over the world from many different walks of life and backgrounds are now looking to get started in online businesses and internet marketing to supplement their current income and more often than not with the hopes and dreams of it becoming their primary source of income one day.There are countless reasons as to why internet marketing and online businesses have captured the attention of so many hopefuls over the past decade.Firstly, setting up and running an online business requires only a tiny fraction of the capital usually required to set up a brick and mortar business establishment making the aspiring entrepreneur huge savings that could potentially be used on advertising, marketing and further growing their online business.Secondly, you can reach out to just about anybody in the world who has an Internet connection whilst marketing your products online (its called the world wide web for a reason you know). A larger and more diverse market easily translates into more profit in your pocket.A Huge advantage of internet marketing over many other business models is that you don’t have to have your own product to sell in order to get started online which seems to appeal hugely to many individuals looking to make a living from the power of the internet. An individual can make huge sums of money and a consistent residual income for years to come just from selling or promoting another companies product.The start up process is very simple and straightforward, All that is required is to make an agreement with an online retailer to sell their products to your website visitors for a percentage of the sale, in other words your paid a commission for every customer you refer.In the world of internet marketing this type of sales is known as affiliate marketing and is one of the largest sources of revenue for many webmasters and publishers. Most companies offering some form of affiliate program often have a very easy to complete online application and in most cases your affiliate account is created and approved instantly.The set up of most affiliate programs is fairly typical, the retailer will often provide registered affiliate members with promotional material such as text ads, banners, flash video presentations and buttons that link directly to the product sales page. An affiliate would then simply place these promotional materials on their website in the hope that their own website visitors would show an interest, click and purchase the advertised product. Being an affiliate is very stress free in the sense that there is no dealing with the actual transaction, payment, delivery, customers service, etc and you are simply the middle man redirecting your sites traffic to a sales page of a product that more often than not is closely related to your own websites content.Some affiliate programs will require you to fill out some basic information about yourself and your website, Typically affiliate programs will want to know what type of site you run, what it offers and whether or not it is related to the affiliate product itself, these types of programs tend to be a little stricter on approving affiliates and often will only approve new affiliates manually.Signing up and becoming a member of an affiliate program is only a small part of the battle, it is very important to decide what type of affiliate compensation plan would best suit your website in order to maximise your earnings. Many affiliate programs will reward their affiliates in one of three ways, the typical payment models are; Pay Per Sale (PPS), Pay Per Lead (PPL) or Pay Per Click (PPC).Pay Per Sale otherwise abbreviated as PPS is one of the more popular compensation methods often used by ClickBank and other affiliate networks, Pay Per Sale as the name suggests is simply paying out a fixed amount per sale made by traffic you directed to the sales page.Pay Per Lead otherwise abbreviated as PPL is often used by larger companies often offering financial services and similar high value products where the sales process is a little longer, Pay Per Lead is as the name suggests payment for a lead, I.E. someone who inputs their personal information such as a name, number and Email address for the company to follow up on and hopefully convert, you however are paid only for providing the lead itself and is not affected or altered whether they convert or not.Pay Per Click otherwise abbreviated as PPC is very popular with large ad networks and search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo. Pay Per Click is very common on information sites and tends to convert well as the individual only has to click and follow the text link or banner through to the companies websites and you get paid.Some affiliate programs also offer a two-tier affiliate program whereby you can refer other webmasters and publishers to become an affiliate, you would then begin making a small percentage of the referred affiliates commissions which can then translate into huge earnings if they then become one of the companies top paid affiliates, although on the other side of the coin if that affiliate is inactive and does not generate much business you will earn nothing on their referral.A great way out utilising and making the most of these affiliate programs is to promote programs and products that offer a residual income, these programs will generate you income throughout the whole life span of the referred customer, in some cases this can be from repeat one off purchases and in the best case scenario this can come from monthly subscription products, There is one product of this category that i love to promote and i find converts very well as it not only offers a great product but it also offers a 5 level deep affiliate program with a monthly subscription commission!The company I’m referring to is Global Domains International, a new age web host that offers their own unique.WS domain names on top of an excellent website builder package, huge bandwidth and multiple Email addresses.If you would like to get started with your own website and begin your internet marketing career as well as begin promoting one of the web’s best 5 level affiliate programs then simply read the GDI section of my website which you can find in the resources box.Regards, Lee Brown