Pay Per Sale

Pay-per-lead - you are paid a set amount for each visitor you send to the merchant's site that performs an action, such as joining their program, signing up for their newsletter, filling out a survey, etc.

Pay-per-sale - you are paid a commission when a visitor clicks on a link or banner on your site, and then purchases a product on the merchant's site.
For the most part you will find that per-sale programs will have higher payouts than per-lead programs. A big reason for this being that the merchant has actually brought in money from the sale so he gives you a cut.





Per-lead on the other hand is done to acquire new customers. This may or may not result in money changing hands at that point in time. The merchant with this type of program recognizes the importance of a customer's 'lifetime value', meaning that they hope to sell that customer something in the future to recoup the acquisition costs.
In a time when traditional advertising is so expensive, and in many cases not very effective, per-lead programs can be as rewarding for the merchant as per-sale programs.

As an affiliate you need to educate yourself on these two types of programs to know which programs to join and how to effectively promote them.
On one hand some affiliates will opt for the per-sale programs due to the higher payouts, while others will join only per-lead programs because they appear to be much easier to make money from.

But, if improperly executed, both of the above statements can quickly become false.
By execution I mean pre-selling. If you don't pre-sell your visitors you may have far fewer sales, and even though there is a higher payout, it won't add up very fast.
Why would you need to pre-sell your visitors on a per-lead type of program? Many of these are free to the visitor, so what gives?

This can be a BIG misconception. While many per-lead programs do offer your visitors something for free, there is always something required in return.