Affiliate marketing is a very simple way to make money online. You take a service or products found on the internet and promote them to someone else using a special link.

When a visitor reads your website, article, email, or blog, they click on your special link and are taken to a page on the internet where they can purchase the service or product you recommended. When the visitor uses your link to purchase a product or service, you receive a certain percentage of the sale.

Obviously, the higher the cost of the product or service you recommend and your visitor purchases, the more money you make. And, if someone you recommend signs up for a monthly service like web hosting, you not only receive a commission on the first month, but for every month for as long as they continue the service!

You can make money on the internet by recommending products that will help other people? That sounds like a win-win arrangement to me.

Many sites offer affiliate marketing. One of the first “pioneers” in the area was Amazon.com. You can link to books about your subject on their site and if the visitor buys the book, you make money. Another site that I like is Click Bank. Click Bank is a depository of e-books to which you can link. Again, if the visitor buys the product, you earn a commission.

Affiliate marketing opportunities on some other sites are not always so easy to find. If a site has a product to sell and you don’t see a link to sign up as an affiliate, go to the bottom of the page and look at the site map. Perhaps there will be an affiliate link there, or you might see “Join Our Team,” “Work for Us,” or sometimes “Employment Opportunities.”

Most websites will have you complete a short form and will then notify you within a day or so whether or not you have been approved. Don’t worry if you aren’t approved, you can try again later when you’ve built up the traffic to your site.

More good news!

You don’t even have to have a website to do affiliate marketing, but a website certainly can help. With a website, you can build visitor loyalty, develop your own contacts list, take advantage of Google Adsense, and, of course direct links to the sites you recommend.

Some people make their entire living from affiliate marketing. You can start very easily, with very little upfront money and build your business by working only a couple of hours a day while you keep your real job. After you get your online business going you can take it full time and be your own boss for the rest of your life. The really good news is that you can be very, very successful and still only work a few hours a day and make huge sums of money.

With affiliate marketing, you can make money without having your own product or service. What you add is the time to identify and market the products.

Author Bio: Sharon Harrison is an Online Business and Marketing Coach. Visit her website at http://www.maverick-money-coach.com to learn more about affiliate marketing.

Category: Internet
Keywords: affiliate marketing, affiliate marketing training, affilate marketing system, money online