If you have ever wondered how people can claim to make money from their website, without actually having anything in it to sell, the answer is that they will have an affiliate marketing based website. This means that in their website theyll have links out to other companys websites that are selling a particular product, and every time someone uses that link to the other company and buys something from them, they get a commission on the sale. Sometimes companies even pay a commission just for having someone link to their website from an internet affiliates website.

The percentage of the commission that you get and the actual amount of revenue you can accrue depends on the companies that you are providing links to. Obviously, the higher the value of the item being sold the more money you will make. For example if you average 5% commission on sales through having an affiliate marketing website; 5% on a $20 CD sale = $1 but 5% on a $1000 music system sale = $50, not bad for having a simple link on your website! The very best types of links to have are ones to finance companies. I will leave you to work out the potential commission on a $500,000 mortgage. Sometimes, if you promote digital products, such as ebook or ecourses, the commissions can be extremely good in the 50 to 75 percent range.

Anyway, first things first, whilst you must of course think big - to start with you need to create an affiliate marketing website. Setting up an affiliate marketing website requires a little more thought than preparing a personal or even a company one. You must ensure that anyone searching the internet for the product you are an affiliate marketer for is attracted to your website. To do this you need to make sure the website name is relevant to the market you want to sell for and that, at least on the first page of the website, between 3% and 5% of the text is your keyword(s) or phrases.

Remember, when preparing this text not to just keyword stuff it, it needs to be good prose - well written, grammatically correct and no spelling errors. Of course, dont forget to add the links to the companies you are affiliated to and make sure your webpages meta tags are appropriate. Many of the larger companies use affiliate networks or merchants to manage their accounts, so you are advised to see which would be the best one to register with to maximize your profits.

Competition to be an affiliate to high finance companies is very strong, so to start with you would be better targeting a market that you can be a big fish in a small pond, rather than vice-versa. ie. A niche market. Build up your reputation in that and then later you can tell the finance companies how successful you have already been. Remember the more visitors you attract to your website, the greater the chances of them using your links to buy something, giving you plenty of commission on those sales.