Affiliate marketing is basically  a revenue sharing system between online merhcants and online marketers. The payout for the marketers is measured by performance, typically based on sales, registrations, or per click. For the most part, information resources will usually refer to the companies with the affiliate programs as affiliate merchants or advertisers, and the marketers are known as affiliates.

The lure of affiliate marketing for the most part is that marketers can make great money by promoting someone else’s product using their promotion tools, and in many cases, not even need a website of their own. Affiliates can also set up marketing campaigns that automate the process of traffic and sales, thereby creating a set it and forget it system of passive income.

One of the early adopters of affiliate programs was Amazon.com and the system has helped their business as well as many others grow exponentially year after year.

The basic idea is a win win situation for both parties. The advertisers get hundreds or thousands of affiliates driving traffic and doing work on their behalf that brings in more income, and the affiliates benefit by making consistent income without having to deal with creating products, dealing with customers, or anything else of that nature.

Affiliate marketing also allows people who are already passionate about a product or service, easily make money by simply spreading the word about something they already know and love.

However, aggressive marketers use many tactics to promote whatever will make them money and not always something they’re necessarily passionate about.

Affiliate marketing is one of the most popular ways of making money online, especially for people who are new to online business because it is fairly easy to get started and you can often make hundreds if not thousands of extra dollars a month in a relatively short amount of time if you are serious about the business.