There tends to be much confusion about online marketing and the best ways to approach the business. Some will say that online marketing does not work. Others will tell you that it takes a lot of time and money to make it work. The later statement is more accurate. If you think about it, if Internet marketing did not work, than why are there millions of searchable results on the Internet covering every conceivable topic? Sure some of these pages are personal and not for profit, but the largest majority are business related or have a commercial aspect to them. Not for profit and purely informational sites are online, but often these point to a commercial application or are philanthropic in nature. Today affiliate marketing has become one of the most widely used means of promoting a product or service. This has happened for a number of reasons.

Affiliate marketing is one of the easiest and most common ways to make money online. It allows everyone to make some money online whether you are the marketer or the product owner. This method of marketing is an indispensable element to any online business. However this takes time, patience and the implementation of a series of steps in order to be successful, but its principles are easy to understand. Many people give up in frustration before the results of their efforts are realized.

In simple terms, Affiliate marketing is a commission-based sales program. You as the affiliate marketer make a set commission for every lead, sale, or sign-up that you generate. This can happen through traffic (people visiting a website) learning about a product or service and making a decision to purchase after reading about a product or service. Alternatively, a person may search for something online and come across a review or editorial about something and decide to visit a link to a particular product. Additionally, affiliate marketing is the process of providing a financial incentive for others to promote your product or services. The incentive could be either a payment for each lead, a % of each sale or a fixed amount per sale.

This method of marketing is fairly easy to get into and is often a great way to get started with an online business as you really have no start up costs. It is however not a simple and easy road and one that does take hard work and determination. This process involves a learning curve because you as the affiliate marketer are trying to find the best ways to get this product seen by others and develop ways to convert those just looking for information into customers or at least potential customers. Potential customers are those who, although they may not decide to purchase this time will at least come back and take a second or third look.

It is important to always give people valuable and credible information. This must always be the first goal. Give people information that they can use from you so they will come back and look for more. Whatever topic you are giving others information about, make sure you jam it full of information and practical advice that makes sense. This needs to do more than just skin the surface or be too general to be of any value. You need to carefully research anything you promote. Make certain that whatever company you act as an affiliate for has good verifiable customer contact information. Contact after a sale is what people want.

Once you have researched product to promote as an affiliate then you can use a combination of free and paid for methods to promote your particular product. If you do a Google search for Clickbank and Paydot, you will find a huge number of products to promote. Here you will also find the sales and payment information, commission percentages and detail specific information for that particular product or service. These companies require you to sign up on their website and you are given an affiliate identification code or number that you can select/ The product information and code usually become part of link inserted into a web page or promotional material such as a review or article. This link usually takes people to what is called a "landing page" where people can decide whether or not the information is relevant for them, and ultimately, if they want to make a purchase or take some other directed action.

Although there are many ways to promote an affiliate program, those starting out generally reserve the paid models for when they have generated some income that they can put back into their business through programs like "Google Adwords". Adwords and similar programs use what is called "pay-per-click" meaning advertisers pay a certain amount of money, usually between say five to fifty cents per advertisement clicked on based upon things like keyword relevance. It is beyond our scope here to get into all the terms associated with Internet and affiliate marketing, but numbers and the number of people that "click through" to a particular page usually determine sales.

None paid methods of getting people to buy your particular affiliate product can include article reviews or article marketing, being directed from a blog post, social networking by engaging friends on popular social networks, free advertising websites and discussing a particular product in a related forum or answering a question about a particular product, service or review in a forum. A forum is simply a place where people of related interests come together on the Internet. You can find forums on virtually any topic by putting the word forum at the and of your search term in a popular search engine like Google. For example, if you type "work from home forum", you will find forums related to working from home.

It is important to educate yourself on the subject of affiliate marketing. Do your research, learn all you can and get started. There are a couple of resources at the end of this article to provide you with additional information and help you get started, but ultimately the decision to get involved with affiliate marketing is up to you. There is so much information available today that it is hard to digest it. Harder still is being able to separate fact from fiction. Being able to discern the legitimate from the false can be a difficult task. However there are people successful at affiliate marketing and it is a topic well worth exploring.