It is a true fact that you can make money online with Christian affiliate programs as the source of starting your own Christian business. Through building an affiliate web site, blogs, or email marketing as a source of your business, it’s a great way to have a steady flow of income. Joining free Christian affiliate programs is the less expensive way to start, and at the same time, you can make a very good living, if done properly.

Christian Affiliate web sites post links to the merchant site and are paid a percentage according to an agreement. This agreement is usually based on the number of people the affiliate sends to the merchant’s site who purchases something from them. If a link on an affiliate site brings the merchant site traffic, the merchant site will then pay the affiliate site according to their agreement. Usually these Christian affiliate programs are free to join.

A good Christian affiliate program will provide you with the tools necessary to promote their product, such as text links, banners, graphics and articles. You will also find that many affiliate programs will provide sample email news letters set up and ready to use. Change it around a little, add some good content so you can be unique, then copy and paste them in your email news letter with the unique url they give you so you get the credit for it. If you’re not familiar with affiliate marketing, a unique url is a cookie used for tracking the customer you send to the merchant site so you get the credit for the commission.

When your signing up with Christian affiliate programs, check out what the cookie duration is. Cookie durations vary. Some companies have a short duration and others have a long duration. The duration of the cookie is how long the cookie will last after you send the customer to the merchant site. When that duration of the cookie is up, your cookie then expires. The longer the cookie lasts, the better it is for you. Customers usually don’t buy the first time, it generally takes several contacts before the customer makes a purchase.

Check out if the cookie can be overwritten. When a cookie is overwritten, the customer who first learned about the product from your affiliate link, but go’s to another site or blog and so forth, and go’s through their link, and buys that product, you will not get the credit for it, therefore you will not get the commission on the sale.

You’ll find that most merchants who are serious about selling their products will give you the tools and training you need to promote them. This gives you a good opportunity to get the concept of how online marketing works, when you see how the merchants use their promotional tools to their advantage and your advantage.

Your advantage of starting a Christian affiliate website as the source of your Christian business is that you don’t have to do any copy writing. You don’t have to do the hard work that is involved with making a sales copy. Your job is just to get the customer to the merchant site. It is up to the merchant to make the sale. This is why it is very important to pick a Christian affiliate program with a merchant who has a good sales page and a good reputation. Remember, it is your reputation that is on the line, so choose wisely and choose a merchant that is honest and has a good reputation that will match yours.

To be successful with Christian affiliate programs you must select a company that offers a product that your costumers will be interested in. For example if you run a video game site, do not place links to a site that sells oil paintings. They will seem out of place and do poorly. You have a much better chance of making money by placing affiliate links to game stop, EBGames, GameFly, on other video game companies that have affiliate programs. Choose your affiliates that meet your criteria.

Affiliate programs are arrangements in which an online merchant web site pays affiliate web sites a commission to send them traffic, usually in the form of a commission based on a percentage of sales.

There are different types of commissions that range anywhere from 5% to as high as 75% depending on the type of affiliate program payout. There are also affiliate programs that pay you in the form of residual income. A residual income program is a program that pays you on an ongoing basis as long as the customer stays with the program, where a product site pays you a one time commission for each product they sell through your referral.

When you choose an affiliate program, pay special attention to the profits you receive from each sale. In order to make money with affiliate programs, you should choose a higher percentage commission pay out rather than a lower commission pay out.

Let us look at it from this point of view; if you are only paid 5% commission on the sale of a $10 product, you will only be making 50 cents per customer. It would take 2,000 paying customers just to make $1,000 in profits. You cannot make money online like this! Look for reasonably priced products with a high conversion and higher commissions, especially commissions in the 25% or higher range.

If you want to make money online with Christian affiliate programs, the best strategy to use are a combination of both, residual income programs that pay on a ongoing basis and product sites that pays a one-time commission.

To be truly successful with Christian affiliate programs, ask yourself these questions. Is this something that I can really use? Would it help me? Would I buy this product myself? If the answer is yes, you’re off to a successful and profitable Christian business.