How long did it take before you started to earn money?

There is no set time where you earn money or not.

It depends on which strategy you use.

Lucky you. I am into freelancing and yet to make any considerable amount of money. I don't know anything about CPA but wish you would share a little bit about your method

As a favour to people I know, but no, I'm not for hire as a designer. My time is better spent doing other things. You can find plenty of cracking designers for hire on WF, though.

PPL stands for pay per lead. Give you an example: SWTOR.com. You can promote that site through various affiliate networks and earn $2.25 for each person you refer who completes the form and signs up for free. No credit card is required. They just fill the form and you earn your commission.

That particular form on SWTOR - found when you click the sign up button - is what we call a "short form." Typically, short forms pay quite a bit less than long forms, since the latter require more details and conversions can therefore be slightly harder to come by. But commission rates are not just determined by the size of the form. Factors are as follows:

1. Form Size.
2. Offer Type
3. Market Type

As an example, compare paid survey commissions to dating website commissions. Since dating sites typically earn more from free joins than survey sites, affiliates are paid more for the dating offers.

PPL commission rates for me currently run between $1 and $12.50. I always recommend newbies consider PPLs since they're easier to convert than pay per sales or revshare. As you become more experienced, the trick is not to leave PPLs behind, but to simply diversify what you promote.

You'll often see people suggest that you stick to commission offers. Bad move. Yes, on the one hand it is rather nice referring someone to an offer and, in theory, securing a regular monthly commission, but the world rarely works so perfectly.

People cancel. And in some markets, such as dating for instance, you make a heck of a lot more money from PPS (pay per signup) than commission, since the industry average commission rate is around 2.5 months, and when you're sending volume traffic you receive more from a PPS. So diversification is key. You'd be surprised, many veterans like myself only promote PPL. I don't. I promote all types of offer. But when you learn how to send consistent traffic to PPLs, in a sense it's like a regular commission, since your EPCs are usually very consistent, day to day, month to month, year to year.

Speaking of which. It all boils down to what we call EPC - earnings per click. How much you earn, on average, for each click you send to an affiliate offer. Some markets, and indeed some offers, offer higher EPCs for PPL, some are better for PPS, and so forth.

Quite a bit more information than you wanted, but my fingers tend to ramble when I just get up. We do not. Oh yes you do. Sign off before he thinks you're mad. Good idea.

- Tom