[blhack]

Basically it's just being better at advertising for ['amazon','okcupid','ebay','zappos','etc.'] than they are.

I know that for a while, netflix was paying something like $40 or $20 or something really high for their trial membership signups.

So what affiliates will do is buy space advertising for netflix or whoever, hoping that the people that see their ads will sign up for the product.

As long as their cost to get somebody to sign up for netflix is less than what the affiliate is paying out, they make money.

Say my overall cost to get somebody to click my ad and sign up for netflix is..$16. If netflix pays me $20 for that, I make $4 every time.

Repeat that enough times, and you're making enormous amounts of money.