If you’re a small business owner, an affiliate marketing program is a fantastic opportunity to make a lot of money without having to have a lot of capital or overhead costs. And if you have a web page, affiliate marketing is a great way to make quick cash without adding a lot of extra work.

But just because you find a popular webpage to promote your product or the right product to promote on your page, doesn’t mean it’s going to work. In affiliate marketing, it’s all about the link. The kind of link you use and what you link to are going to make all the difference.

Here are the most common methods of linking for affiliate programs:

*Text links. These are a good way to put links on your site because they stand out, but at the same time, still look natural and don’t have the appearance of an ad. When you have a related word in your text, just embed a link in the word to a product or website. But if you overload your text with links, it will become unreadable or just annoying.

*Banner Links. These are ads that are usually at the top or side of the page. They can be plain, but are often catchy to try to get the attention of the reader.

Just remember that people who surf the internet a lot see hundreds of banners in a day and ignore pretty much all of them. If you’re going to make advertisement banners, make something that’s going to stand out and get you noticed. The more clever and unique, the better.

*Search Box. Most people are familiar with search boxes embedded in a website that will do a Google or Yahoo search of the web. You can embed search boxes that will do this type of search, but search a marketer’s webpage instead of the whole internet. That way people can search an affiliate marketer’s website, sometimes without even knowing it. And they can find exactly what they’re looking for, even if the marketer has thousands of products.

Just because they’re linking to an affiliate marketer, doesn’t mean all links are the same. The link depends on what the affiliate and the vendor want. Here are the most common options:

– Website main page. This is better if you’re selling services or simply looking for business connections rather than selling specific products.

– Specific product. This is a good idea if you have one product that is expected to make high sales and pertains directly to the website it’s linked from.

– Vendor Storefront. If a vendor sells a variety of related products, this is a great idea. If there is more variety in the products, you may be better off using a search box instead of a direct link.

Just remember that links aren’t everything; you still need quality products and a popular webpage to make money on sales.