According to The Worlds Glossary of Internet Terms, Affiliate Marketer is defined as a business relationship with a merchant or other service provider who allows you to link to that business. When a visitor clicks on the link at your site and subsequently makes a purchase from the merchant, you receive a commission based on the amount of the sale, a referral fee or a pay-for-click fee.

This is a simple, straightforward agreement between a merchant and an affiliate. Budding affiliate marketers run into a problem when they try to reverse the success process. Instead of starting at the beginning, they try to start at the end.

Making money is the end of the process. The beginning of the process is education and there are several steps in between. Too many people, who are just getting started in affiliate marketing, fail to take the steps necessary to get to the end of the process and actually make money.

This leads to people giving up early, and putting their goals of making money online to the back burner. You will never be a successful affiliate marketer if you do not first understand the steps you must take to get the end result, which is a monthly paycheck.

Below are four steps you should first follow before you start your affiliate marketing adventure. These steps will help you understand what it takes to go from the bottom to the top, and will help keep you on track so you become successful.

Step 1. Educate yourself. This is the key, opening the door of opportunity. It is also the common thread connecting successful affiliate marketers. Education lays the foundation - the building blocks to success. Start by gathering the best information you can find about affiliate marketing and absorbing it.

Step 2. Turn that information into usable knowledge. Even the best information remains kind of worthless, however, until after you discover how to use it - how to make it serve your purpose.

Step 3. Start applying the knowledge, take action, and start building your affiliate business. Will you make mistakes, even though you have invested all that time educating yourself? Yes, you most likely will make mistakes. However you will learn from your mistakes as time goes on.

Step 4. Test and tweak, test and tweak. This one never ends. And it's often the dividing line between succeeding and failing. Attention to small details often returns big rewards.

Following these steps will define you as a successful affiliate marketer.