If you offer an affiliate program, you already know that there are many ways to reward your affiliates, for example, you might give the affiliates a percentage of the sale, or even pay them per visitor that they send you.

One of the less popular ways to reward affiliates is through a pay per lead program, and this is mainly due to the fact that most online business owners are nervous about paying for leads that might not result in business.

Contrary to this belief, most pay per lead programs, if planned correctly, can have a much greater impact and success that the traditional affiliate programs since the program is easy to promote for affiliates and generally yields a large number of targeted prospects for your business.

With this type of program, the affiliate will earn a commission for every lead that they send to your business. Adding this type of program can have many advantages for both the affiliate and the business.

The affiliates will more than likely be bringing in targeted leads that are already familiar with the type of products or services the business is offering, and this will, of course, lead to higher conversion rates and increased sales.

When a pay per lead program is in place, your business will need to pay the affiliate for each lead they send, whether the lead converted into a sale or not. If the leads coming in are less than targeted however, you could end up losing money.

There are a few ways to prevent this from happening. One option would be to implement an invitation-only program. In this case, you would look over the list of affiliates and do a bit of a review of each affiliate's blog or website to determine if they are reaching your desired target market.

After the review, you conclude that quality leads could be gained from the affiliate's website, the affiliate will be sent an email with a link that allows them to sign up for the program.

You should not let the fear of paying for leads stop you from using this as a very powerful and rapid tool for generating new leads. You simply need to put checks and balances in place and you will most certainly see a good return on your investment.