Affiliate Marketing allows you to make money online by hosting an ad or content designed to drive traffic to another site (the advertiser).

Affiliate programs are a great way to get started in online business. You promote them via a web site, blog, email or cost per click advertising such as Google Adwords. The top online Affiliate marketers make a great living from this and there are thousands who make a decent amount of extra cash each month.

There are some companies that have their own Affiliate programs but many rely on a Affiliate Networks such as Commision Junction to manage things for them.

Basically, being an Affiliate earns you commission by reselling other companies products or services. The transaction and payment is handled by the Affiliate Network. You don`t have to develop a product, stock inventory, deal with orders, shipping and/or customer complaints. All you need to do is get people to click on your affiliate link.

An Affiliate link will usually be a unique code you add to a URL link to the merchants web site. This code tells the merchant that the visitor has come from you. If someone clicks on this link and purchases the product you will get a percentage of the overall price paid to you as a commission. The percentage can vary from single figure percentages to over 70%.

When someone follows your link to a product page they don`t necessarily have to purchase the product first time for you to earn money. In many cases a `Cookie` is saved on the prospective customers machine. A cookie is a file which in this instance tells the merchant that it was you that first attracted the customer to the site. These cookies are valid for a period of time after the customer first uses your link. This depends on the merchant / affiliate network and can be as long as one year. If the product is purchased in this time period you get the commission even if the customer subsequently goes directly to the merchants site.

Some Affiliates programs have `tiers`. In this instance not only do you get a commission on any sales you refer but if someone you refer sells the product themselves you get a commission of these sales.

Some programs have recurring commissions. These reward you for the lifetime of the customer. Not only do you earn commissions from the initial sale, but you`ll continue to earn a recurring commission as long as that customer remains active.

An example of a recurring commission would be where there is a membership fee involved. Not only would you earn commission when the customer signs up but you would earn further commission every time that customer renewed their subscription. You would get paid for as long as that customer was active.

I hope you`re getting the idea now that promoting other peoples products can be extremely profitable!!

As stated above Affiliate marketing is where you can promote another company`s service or product and make a commission on every sale or lead. Your job is to drive traffic (customers) to your affiliate link.

There are Affiliate programs for every area and you will be able to find several that fit your interests.

Affiliate programs offer a low cost and risk free way to make serious money. The reason affiliate programs are so great is that you only need to focus on marketing. All the rest is looked after by the network or merchant.

If you?re looking for a low risk way to start making money online Affiliate marketing is as good a place to start. It gives you the potential to make great money with no (or little) financial outlay by yourself.