Cash on the spot
Some relationships pay you for each purchase made through the related vendor. The clearest examples of this would be affiliate programs from companies like CDNOW, Amazon.com, and Reel.com. You set up some sort of link on your site - either to a specific product or group of products - and you make a commission based on what is sold through your link. Now if your company or site deals mostly in beverage distribution, linking to an online video store may not be the best relationship for you. Why. Because interested folks might follow that link and never come back since it will send them on a completely new path of thought.
Banner Hell/Heaven
We are all familiar with programs like LinkExchange; you hopefully get more traffic by having your banner ad show up around the internet on various and sometimes quite random sites. In return, you must host some of these ad banners on your site. It's all free, and supposedly by your company's online flower shop banner showing up on the "Marilyn Manson Fan Page," and other random destinations, you will get more traffic and of course make more money. Am I saying it never works? No. Probability dictates that at least one person since the start of the world-wide web has made a sale because someone saw their banner as part of an exchange program. However, I would like to steer you away from turning your site into banner hell. Companies and individuals who believe that the more exchange programs they can join the more hits they'll get are setting themselves up for a common website fall; this is when you see a webpage that starts with the company name/logo, has 9 random banners, and then has actual relevant site content. I think those people forget that their website is supposed to be marketing THEIR product or service, and not that of 9 random advertisers. Also, the more ways you give people a way to leave your site, ie: links off your site, the more likely you are to lose them. Then so much for your marketing!
I believe that these exchange programs, especially when not interest targeted or related, fail in an overwhelming percentage of the time. Statistics currently indicate that clicks on banner ads run an average of 3-7% when targeted (ie: your ad for flowers shows up on flower-related sites or in flower-related searches), and some people say the real number is less than that. I can only imagine the statistics on clicks when it's not interest based. I also feel that depending on what surfers are doing, they can be very hard to distract. If someone is dead set on finding out about digital cameras, chances are they are not going to click on your banner for flower sales even if your company and service is the best thing on wheels. I wasn't looking for a flower shop, so seeing an ad for one is less likely to interest me than if I had been looking for a flower shop.
