This article began as a question sent to “Ask Stephen!” Wherein “Omar” wanted to know the basic differences between Per-Click, Per-Signup, and Partnership programs. He wanted to know which was best, and which would make the most money for him…This article began as a question sent to “Ask Stephen!” Wherein “Omar” wanted to know the basic differences between Per-Click, Per-Signup, and Partnership programs. He wanted to know which was best, and which would make the most money for him… As I receive this type of question fairly often, I thought it would be good to go into the answer in a little more depth than I am able to in an issue of “Ask Stephen!”

While each of these program types is very different, they all have their place and use on your site. I don’t recommend one over the other; to make the most from your site, you should use a mix of all three, placing each to make the best use of your particular traffic. Let’s take a closer look at each:

Per Click Programs
Per-Click (or “click through”) programs fall into two primary categories: flat rate and conversion based. Flat rate per-click programs pay you a set amount for every “unique” or “raw” click on a banner or text link. For this discussion, unique clicks (“uniques”) are defined as one individual surfer clicking on a banner one time. If that one “unique” surfer clicks the same banner (or a different banner or text link using the same link code) again, that generates a second “raw” click.

Flat rate programs work well when used as the first banner at the top of your free site’s home page. This is the best “pulling” banner slot on your entire site, and putting a flat rate per click banner here will make you money. These programs also work well on exit consoles and with historically “bad” traffic, such as from TGP’s.

Conversion-based sliding scale programs pay you a variable amount per click, based on the number of clicks you send divided by the number of sales made. Read the fine print with these, and any other sponsor programs, because unless a sale is made, you may not get paid anything for the traffic you send! Sponsors often tout such “productivity” based programs as an excellent way of “rewarding” webmasters for their best traffic.

If they say so, but I once sent 3 uniques at 50 cents per to a sponsor who paid me $1.50 on the sale he made… This left a bad taste in my mouth, and so I avoid conversion-based programs.