If you're thinking about an easy way to generate income online quickly, legitimately and with very little cash outlay affiliate marketing is your best bet. Affiliates are making lots of money these days because affiliate programs are a win-win for the merchant and affiliate.

What is affiliate marketing?

Very simply, affiliate marketing is based on the sharing of revenues between the website owner and an online merchant who actually produces and sells a tangible product.

This is accomplished when you, the affiliate (who markets and advertises the merchant products or services) refer visitors to the merchant website who then ends up making a purchase. Merchants love affiliates because they provide free advertising and marketing. Affiliates love merchants who offer these plans because it allows them all the benefits of earning great income with none of the headaches of owning a typical business.

Here is an example:
The majority of affiliate websites are information based - not hard sell product advertisements. Say you have a website all about guitars. People will search for all kinds of guitar related stuff, "guitars", "guitar accessories", "guitar repair", "guitar strings" etc.. You get the picture. People visit your site filled with great information - people trust you - you are giving them what they want and you're recommending guitar products you feel strongly about.

You may have an affiliate link that leads to guitarstuff.com ( merchant site ) where your visitor ends up buying a box of strings. You just made the commission. It's awesome..

So what are the main advantages of affiliate Marketing?

1. You don't need your own products to sell
2. You don't have to process any payment
3. You don't have to handle or ship the products
4. You don't have to handle any complaints
5. You don't have to pay anything to join
6. You can get started immediately, part-time and if you want, gradually go full time..

The nature of affiliate sales marketing is based on doing all the heavy work upfront, which basically requires learning some basic marketing techniques and how to promote and pre-sell products. Once that is done much of the business virtually runs itself.

So now that you understand the basics lets get this understood. It takes knowledge, study and patience. Anyone that tells you any different is dead wrong. Fortunately, there are structured ways to shorten the learning curve, many programs work... many are scams. Watch your wallet, because the scams are hard to detect.

If you hate working for someone else and want to gradually become independent, affiliate marketing is the best online business opportunity out there. Start learning as much as you can now! .. and be willing to spend some time studying. I'm sure you'll find it truly exiting when you log into your paypal or click bank account and see commissions generated by people you've never seen!