The Internet continues to grow at a phenomenal rate. There are about 700 times as many websites in existence today as there were in 1998. (Wow! If only my money would grow that fast!) There are currently over two billion websites on the Internet, and that figure is expected to continue growing.

Therein lies the opportunity for people to make money. Every one of those sites has to be hosted somewhere. Some of them are hosted for free by Internet Service Providers (ISP’s). But a very large number of them are hosted by companies that charge a fee for their hosting services. Many of those fee-based hosts offer affiliate programs.

An affiliate program allows you to refer customers to purchase a product or service that is provided by another company (the merchant). Each time one of your referrals makes a purchase from the merchant, you collect a commission.

You can take advantage of this by checking with your own web hosting company to see if they have an affiliate program. These programs are usually free to join so you have nothing to lose. Most web hosting affiliate programs will send you a percentage of the monthly sales that are generated by your efforts. If you send 100 people to the web host through your affiliate efforts and three of them open accounts paying ten dollars per month, you would receive a percentage of that $30 each month. If, over the course of a year, they opened 50 accounts through your efforts, you would earn a percentage of the $500 monthly amount. Each company has a different percentage that they pay their affiliates so the amount will vary from company to company. But wouldn’t it be nice to start receiving monthly checks instead of paying them?

If you are using free hosting through your ISP, or if you are unhappy with the service that your web host is providing, you can find hosting opportunities by doing a search for “affiliate hosting programs”. You will find page after page of affiliate programs for hosting companies. It is important that you do research before making a final selection. Do not base your decision solely on the amount of commission they pay. Narrow your search down to the top 5 candidates or so. Make sure they are reliable. One of the complaints that I hear most often has to do with web hosts whose sites go down frequently. Also, make sure that the site you recommend offers sufficient disk space and bandwidth. It is also important that they provide telephone support. If the site is down, web support is not much help.

To be successful with affiliate sales is hard work. You have to market the program and get visitors to the affiliate site. There are many free advertising methods that you can use. I suggest that you write articles, use blogs, free ezine ads, and forums. I recommend that you start out using these free methods. Then, if you decide that it is too much work, or you are not making any money, you can back out without losing any money.