The main benefit of a paid affiliate is relatively obvious. People see the affiliate link on the highly trafficked website, and they should follow it to the smaller, paying website. This should be a good source of traffic for the smaller website. In this manner, it is more useful than a standard affiliate relationship, since the website providing the affiliate has more traffic and has more to offer that way.
Since affiliate links are not actually advertisements, they often look more appealing, and people have a better chance of not ignoring them. This will drive more people to the website than any standard advertisement would. Often, affiliate links take the form of endorsements, so devoted customers of the first website will see these beneficial reviews and will want to visit the second website, rather than just being mildly curious, as they would be with an advertisement.
Affiliate links also have an advantage over normal affiliates in that they are valued more by search engines. Because the website offering the affiliate link is larger, it carries a larger value with search engines when it has a link from its web page. It is much more valuable with search engines than a standard advertisement, which is often marked as “no follow” with search engines. Therefore, standard advertisements are often not counted at all by search engines.
As previously mentioned, paid affiliate links often come at a lower price than standard advertisements. Although many of them can be worth less than their fee, they can equivalently be worth substantially more. Often, people selling affiliate space are just trying to get some easy money and are not trying to get everything they can out of what they are offering.
Paid affiliates can be beneficial for someone looking for an easy way to get people to their website. As mentioned, it is generally a one-time fee and is easy to execute and maintain. You do not have to worry about monthly visitor statistics or any of the more complicated maintenance requirements of advanced modern advertising.
Unfortunately, there are some negative aspects of paid affiliate relationships. Overall, depending on personal preferences, these negative preferences may cancel out the positive aspects of paid affiliate marketing.