Affiliate marketing is a means of earning income either through recurring income or a commission. Affiliate marketing is a business relationship that exists between a merchant and its affiliates where as much traffic has to be created to the merchants website. Once that traffic produces some action from visitors in the form of a purchase or creating a lead for the company, this affiliate is provided some compensation. This commission is either a percentage sales commission of the sales generated or in the form of a recurring income. This depends on the option of payment the affiliate chooses in the beginning of the merchants affiliate program.

Most of the affiliate programs offer the affiliate a one-time commission for all leads or sales brought to the merchants website. This commission can be anywhere from 5% to about 75%. There are some affiliate programs that offer fixed fees for each click through the affiliate sends to the merchants site. This program offers a low commission, but it is not necessary for the visitor to buy anything for the affiliate to get a commission.

The residual income affiliate program is another affiliate program offering recurring income to the affiliate. Here the recurring income can range from about 5% to 50% of the sales earned for all sales generated by the affiliate. As we can see, this look attractive but for certain reason, not many people consider this option.

Sometimes the one-time high paying commission affiliate program may pay you more than the recurring income program. However, this payment is only a single payment paid when the sale is done. In the case of a residual income affiliate program, you are paid regular commissions for that single sale. So this basically means that for the same amount of effort, you are paid multiple times while earning recurring income in a residual program.

So supposing there are two online merchants offering a choice between both these affiliate programs. One merchant offers a one-time commission program paying $100 for each sale. The second merchant pays $20 for every sale. The affiliate usually jumps at the offer the first merchant offers as $100 is much more than $20. However, if you think deeply, you will find that it is the second merchant that offers a more stable income for you every single month.

Every marketing campaign that you do is the same, whether it is for a one-time commission payment or a monthly recurring commission. The marketing effects are all equal. The beautiful part about recurring commission is that it will turn into passive income once you have secured your customers and as long as your customer pay for your merchant services every month, you can continue to get paid for months or years.

So this shows that residual affiliate programs are indeed worth promoting as you get more money from this program in the long run. Though it cannot be vehemently said that a recurring income affiliate program is better for you, you should never ignore such programs