Affiliate programs are likely the most popular way to make money from a Web site. The Web master of a site signs up with a company such as Google or Amazon to allow advertisements to appear on the host site. Each time the user clicks on an ad or purchases something by following a link to the vendor ’s site, the Web master earns a fee. These programs can be so lucrative that large sites can earn literally thousands of dollars a month strictly from affiliate income.

Joomla can host most of the popular affiliate programs through extensions that encapsulate the code (HTML and often JavaScript) necessary to display the advertisements on the site. To activate most affiliate technology, you need only install the associated extension, set the parameters to match your service, and specify the location where the affiliate content will appear on your site.

Google AdSense Affiliate Program
One of the most popular affiliate programs on the Web is Google’s AdSense. AdSense provides code that displays Google ads on a Web site that are relevant to the site visitors. Each time a user clicks on an ad, the owner of the Web site is paid a fee. These fees can results in large sums if the site is very popular, or if the content of the site targets a market where the advertisements for that sector are very expensive.

To host AdSense advertisements, you must first sign up for the program here:   www.google.com/adsense

When you first set up your Google account, only public service announcements are displayed until a Google representative examines your site. Once the site content is confirmed to comply with the user agreement (no pornography, illegal content, and so on), advertisements with links are provided by the Google servers.

The AdSense program has numerous options, including the capability to categorize content in separate “channels” so that placement of the ads on various parts of the site can be tracked. A Web master man- ages the account through a Web interface.

Through the AdSense administrator, you can generate the link code you will need to add to your site. The code is simple JavaScript and appears like this:

<script  type=”text/javascript”><!-- google_ad_client =  “pub-2440224655555555”; google_ad_width =  728;

google_ad_height  =  90; google_ad_format =  “728x90_as”; google_ad_type  =  “text_image”; google_ad_channel  =”1035475555”;

//--></script>

<script type=”text/javascript”

src=”http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js”>

</script>

To add the code to display AdSense to your Joomla site, download the extension called Mod HTML (http://fijiwebdesign.com). It is a very simple and straightforward module that allows you to insert any type of HTML and/or  JavaScript for display on a Joomla site. By default, when the module is installed, one instance is automatically created called Html  Module. You can edit this instance by click- ing on the name in the Module Manager and the editor will be displayed.

Set the Title to something relevant (I chose Google01 because this is my first Google ad). Turn off the Show Title parameter, turn on the Published parameter, and choose a Position for the module display. Enter the code into the HTML box. After you click the Save button (in the upper-right corner of the screen), the Google AdSense advertisement should appear in the location you specified.

To create another module instance to display another Google ad, click on the New button at the Module Manager screen. Select HTML Module as the module type, and click the Next button. From there, you can configure the module to contain other ad link code.

Amazon Affiliate Program
Like Google, Amazon.com has an affiliate program (http://affiliate-program.amazon.com/gp/ associates/join). While Google’s program pays for clicks on the ads, Amazon’s only pays if the click directly results in a sale. However, if the visitor to your Web site clicks on an item, you will earn a payment for that user if he or she buys anything on the site during that session — not just the item that was linked.

Amazon has a large variety of advertisement styles from specific products to context links. Click on the “Build links” button next to any one of these items to generate a small segment of JavaScript code that the Web master needs to insert into the page of the Web site.

As people purchase goods through links on the site, Amazon includes reporting that breaks down the purchases and even the effectiveness of the click-through response. You’ll want to track this information closely so that you know what products interest your site visitors and which items they never select.

A number of extensions can help you manage the Amazon ads that will appear on your Web site. You can use the Mod HTML that was demonstrated for the Google AdSense code, or select from a variety of Amazon-specific extensions.

Amazon Associates Extension
The Amazon Associates extension is a plug-in that allows you to embed the affiliate advertisement directly in article text. It works with most international Amazon programs, including Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.ca, Amazon.de, and Amazon.fr. You can download the plug-in from here:

www.q-square.com/component/option,com_docman/Itemid,37/task,cat_view/gid,23

After you install the extension, you will need to set your affiliate ID by modifying the plug-in parameters through the Plugin Manager. The Amazon ID parameter for the extension is the most important setting since it will tell Amazon when a click was generated through your Web site. The other settings regulate the presentation of the product link.

You will need to know the product ID of any items you want to list on your site. The IDs may be deter- mined by finding the item on the Amazon site and looking at the URL for the currently displayed page.

Then, you need only add the following text to your article content with the ID of the desired item and (optionally) setting the justification to either LEFT or RIGHT:

{amazon   id=’0399154213’ align=’LEFT’}

You can add as many of these references to your content code as desired, although each ad must be retrieved from the Amazon servers. That means the rendering of your page may slow down if your server has a slow Internet connection, or the Amazon server is experiencing heavy traffic.

If your product isn’t properly displayed on the page, try selecting No Editor and then reinput the code into the article. Some WYSIWYG editors corrupt the entry when trying to interpret it before the article saves.

Amazon Products Feed Bridge
Much more powerful is a package called Amazon Products Feed (APF). It is an Open Source, PERL- based application that accesses Amazon’s Web services API. It provides a real-time listing of Amazon products on your Web site.

There is an APF Bridge extension that lets you use APF with Joomla. The extension features modules, components, and a plug-in that allows you to create a virtual Amazon store on your site.

APF is available for download here:   www.mrrat.com/aws

The APF Joomla bridge is available here:   www.deanmarshall.co.uk/demo/apf_bridge

The APF Bridge package is made up of a number of different extensions that provide various parts of the Amazon functionality to your Joomla site. The individual extensions include the following:

❑       APF Bridge component — Bridges the APF Perl library into Joomla.

❑       mosAPF_0.5b3 Amazon plug-in — Works in conjunction with the bridge component by scan- ning article text and replacing defined APF tags with the proper code for displaying Amazon information.

❑       mosAPF_button WYSIWYG Editor Button plug-in — Adds a button to the Joomla editor interface that will insert the various tags for the APF Bridge. Entering the tags through this extension saves typing time and minimizes typo errors.

❑       mod_apf_search — Displays a search box that will search an Amazon store for the selected country.

The APF Perl implementation uses the cURL library for transferring files. If your Web host doesn’t have the cURL libraries installed, you won’t be able to use APF.