affiliate programs
Added on Jun, 22 2008 at 6:13 PM by Sarah
I have never understood how people with websites make money. I don't pay to use Google or any other services unless it's an online shopping site or something similar to that. Then finally one day my friend explained to me that a lot of the website people make money through advertising or affiliate programs. Basically what that means is that one online service pays another to advertise or put a link on their website. They have some sort of an agreement before hand and they are paid according to how much traffic or users they send to that specific website from their link on their own. This whole arrangement is dependent on the number of people who even go to the affiliate's website in the first place and then the number of people that click on the link to the paying websites page. This agreement also depends on the number of people who actually end up buying a product from the individual's webpage. What I still don't understand is how they know that a particular customer who bought from them came from the link off of the affiliate's webpage. And if they can track which websites I'm on as an individual or which link I clicked on to get to a certain website, it kind of creeps me out. It is really weird knowing that someone can monitor your every move online and know what websites you are on and what you are purchasing. And if they can do that, does that mean someone can see my personal information, like my address and my credit card number?
It just amazes me how online businesses works. It makes a lot more sense to me now, but before I didn't really understand where the money was coming from to pay for the sites or the people working for them. It makes me think of professional athletes kind of. Until a few weeks ago I never understood how they can afford to pay each athlete (say baseball players for example) millions of dollars. I had no idea where the money was coming from. Until my dad explained to me that thousands of people go to each game (including us, because we have season tickets), and there are almost 170 games a year. That is A LOT of money that I didn't think about. So it is a lot like the internet and online businesses. They get money from the consumers and from advertising.