When people come online looking for ways to earn a full time income or supplement their income,they usually face the problem of not having a product or service to sell. Even if they do, they usually do not have the require knowledge on how to successfully market their products/services online.

Since this is so, many have to seek for other ways of making money online without necessarily creating their own products or services; this is where affiliate marketing comes in.

Many companies online give people the opportunity of earning commissions on sales generated by way of an affiliate marketing relationship. They provide products for you to sell, assist with any marketing resources that will enable you to successfully send potential customers their way and for each that buys, you get compensated. It is sort of a win-win situation whereby the company makes sales and you as the affiliate who directed that customer gets compensated for your marketing efforts.

A really nice thing about affiliate marketing is that you do not have to burden your self with the provision of the product, following up on the prospect, handle customer complaints and inquiries etc. All of this are taken care of by the company. All you have to do is send visitors to the company's site and let the company take it off from there.

Being an affiliate is a choice decision. While some people will be comfortable with running their own companies whereby they produce their own products, create relationships with prospects, follow up on the sales, handle customer complaints and inquiries, ship products (where necessary) etc. others are not just cut out for all that and prefer to send visitors to the company's site as an affiliate and get paid on a commission basis when a sale is made.

Something else that could be really nice about affiliate marketing is that an affiliate can earn a great share of the profits realized from sales. There are companies who pay their affiliates more than they pay themselves per sale. Yes, these companies realize that the affiliates are responsible for the sales generated in that they are the actual ones involved in driving prospects to the company's site; so they reward them accordingly.

Of course; such companies are rare to come by and that brings us to the next point; how does one know the right affiliate programs to join?

There are thousands of affiliate marketing programs out on the net; but for success, one should focus on the ones that pay huge commissions for little marketing effort. If not, one would just be said to be working like an "elephant" yet eating like an ant. Not so great.

The question of if or not the program pays residual income is another important factor. A program which does not pay residual income may not be worth your salt. The truth is; one could put the same affiliate marketing effort into one program as one does another and earn 100 times more and even for life.

To succeed in affiliate marketing, one must join the right programs. Many fail at affiliate marketing because they put their efforts into the wrong programs. They would probably have succeeded if they had directed their efforts into the right programs which actually convert prospects into buyers, pay a lion share to affiliates and give residual income.

In my opinion, affiliate marketing, when done brilliantly and with the right programs is the best way to make money online.

Think about this as you embark on your journey in affiliate marketing. It will be worth it.

In our next discussion, we will be looking at Key factors that affect an affiliate's success.

I hope you have benefited from this article, until next time.