I've recently began placing ads on my sites from Amazon and other affiliate programs. Amazon pays out about 4 or 5 percent of the total sale price. It's en extremely small amount, but conversions are good because people trust Amazon and are likely to already have an account there.

What I like best about Amazon is that if I'm selling a pair of shoes, someone clicks my affiliate link and then later buys a DVD, I'll get credit for that DVD sale. They're also paying out on gift certificate sales, but I don't know if that's a permanent thing. I'm not going to put up any links for a gift certificate if I have to remember to remove those links later if they end that promotion. I like to just build and forget.

Up to just recently the Amazon creatives were awful, but they came out with a product preview creative that displays a pop-up review when you hover your mouse over the ad. Very effective since it's a new type of ad. Banners are a dying breed, and text ads are becoming extremely saturated because of Google's Adsense program and other similar programs.