Store or magazine?

Is your website a store or is it a magazine? Are you selling merchandise and shipping it to your customers? Or are you selling advertising space to other merchants?

If you are an affiliate marketer, then you are essentially a publisher whose website consists of interesting material which visitors like to look at--just like a newspaper or magazine--and you make your money from the advertising you sell (just like a newspaper or magazine does.)

Unlike a newspaper or magazine though, you don’t get paid for simply running the ads. People have to buy something from the advertiser before you get a cut. In certain situations (like Google Adsense) you get paid if people simply click on the ad. They don’t have to buy anything from the merchant in order for you to get paid. The pay is much lower for a click, though, than you would get for a commission on a sale.

In either case, if you are an internet publisher, your job is to get your visitors interested enough in a product to click on the link. If you are an internet merchant, then your job is to get people to actually buy the merchandise that you are showing pictures of on your website.