It sounds as if someone may have suggested to you that you can make money by signing up as an “affiliate” and then paying for traffic, with the hope of making money from the resulting sales. Perhaps someone is trying to sell you an “online course” or “program” or book which describes this strategy.
Yes you definitely can earn money through advertising. But your website must have good content that will bring in traffic

There are several ways you can earn money from advertising:

1. Join an advertising network. Advertising networks are organizations that aggregate Web sites that offer advertising space, and sell banner ads (and other advertising options) across them. Traffic requirement is often a minimum of 5,000 monthly impressions, although many do not accept sites hosted by free page services.

Burst Media http://www.burstmedia.com
Fastclick (ValueClick). http://www.fastclick.com
Advertising.com. http://www.advertising.com
Tribal Fusion http://www.tribalfusion.com

2. Participate in contextual advertising networks. Contextual advertising are text ads delivered based on the content of the web page using an automated system.

Google Adsense https://www.google.com/adsense/
Yahoo! Publishing Network (currently in beta and available to US publishers only) http://publisher.yahoo.com/
Intellixt http://vibrantmedia.com/site/web_01a5.ht…
Quigo Adsonar http://www.quigo.com/adsonarexchange.htm
IndustryBrains http://www.industrybrains.com
Commission Junction Evolution http://www.cj.com
Kanoodle Brightads http://www.kanoodle.com/about/brightads….
Clicksor http://www.clicksor.com/affiliate_progra…
Contextweb http://www.contextweb.com/
Bidclix http://www.bidclix.com/
Bidvertiser http://www.bidvertiser.com/

3. Sell advertising for your site directly. This is admittedly a more difficult route for a small business site wanting to earn advertising revenues. But hey, as they say: “no pain, no gain!”

4. Affiliate Programs - you sell other people’s products that your audience may be interested in; and you get a certain commission after the desired action was done (whether a sale, a lead, subscription to email newsletter, or however this is defined)

Commission Junction http://www.cj.com
Linkshare http://www.linkshare.com

Categories: Make Money
Tags: advertising network, advertising revenues, affiliate programs, automated system, banner ads, business site, commission junction, network advertising, publishers, publishing network, s, sell advertising, text ads, traffic