If you've got a piece of paper and a pen handy, write down your answer(s). My bet is you probably answered something along the lines of: "It looks like an easy way to make some money on the Internet." You're right! Affiliate marketing can be a very easy way to make money online. However, you should know from the start that affiliate marketing is not a ‘get rich quick scheme!'

Talented affiliates can generate real wealth - they can even ‘get rich' - but they do so by taking affiliate marketing seriously and treating it like a real business.

This mindset of commitment is crucial. Far too many people just ‘play' at affiliate marketing like a hobby, then wonder why they aren't making real money. The answer, of course, is that doing things ‘halfway' only gets you half the results - and its often even less than that.

Affiliate marketing is a method by which you can sell other people's products, and you never have to touch the products or deal with the big customer service issues at all. You just pocket a percentage of the sale for leading the customer to the product.

If you are unfamiliar with affiliate marketing, here is hypothetical scenario that will help you understand the basic principle behind it. Let's say a friend of yours is selling off his guitar collection.

He asks for your help in finding people who might be interested in buying his guitars, and tells you that he'll give you 20% of his take for every guitar sold if the buyer mentions your name.

In essence, your friend is paying you for the referral. This is affiliate marketing, which is also sometimes known as "referral marketing", in a nutshell. As an affiliate marketer, you can earn 'commissions' by referring others to all sorts of products and services. There may even be an affiliate program out there for 'used guitars' ;-)

Affiliate marketing encompasses far more, however, than the sale of physical goods.

You can also promote intangible items, like e-books, video or music downloads, software, memberships and online services. What's great about this is that the products are downloadable. The customer you refer receives his product right after the sale.

A focus on this type of 'digital' product is often referred to as information marketing, because it is information that is most often sold in these formats.

As I mentioned in that example you don't have to have a product to take advantage of affiliate programs. There are many internet millionaires who earn their money selling other people's products. Those people are called affiliate marketers. And if you are looking to start earning an income online then affiliate marketing is the simplest, and least expensive way to start. All you need to do is find a product that is offering commissions to sellers and start promoting that product.

Affiliate commissions are the heart of an affiliate marketer's income. You've seen an example of one type of percentage-based commission, but there are other types of commission structures you may come across depending on the affiliate program you're involved in.

First, there is no set rule about how high a percentage commission a merchant can offer you. It can be as low as 1% or as high as 100%. Most merchants, though, will set the percentage at a level that is attractive to potential affiliates.

Also, it is important to note that your commissions may be based on a per sale basis or on total sales. Some merchants skip all of this and go with a flat-rate commission.

For example, a merchant might decide to pay a flat-rate of $50 on sales of all products priced from $75-$150. Now, you might be wondering exactly how a merchant tracks your referrals and knows to credit you with a sale? The key to your commissions is your affiliate link. The easiest way to explain this is to take you through a real world example. Think about all of the websites that you visit on a daily basis. Whenever you go to Ebay, for example, you type in http://www.ebay.com/ , right?

This is just a ‘direct link.' Now, imagine that a friend of yours if an affiliate of Ebay. If you typed in http://www.ebay.com/ or clicked on a plain link, there would be no way for Ebay's affiliate program to know that your friend referred you.

Why?

Because the link just takes you directly to the site, and doesn't contain any special, personally identifying information about who referred you. Now, let's say that your friend gave you his affiliate link to Ebay instead. It might look something like this:

http://www.ebay.com/affid?=6699124

The above link is just an example I made up, but it's good enough to show you what's going on here. See the affid?= part of the URL? It indicates an affiliate referral. The number series of "6699124" represent your friend's actual "affiliate ID" in this hypothetical scenario.

Once you click that link, the affiliate ID is noted by the affiliate program where your friend's name is associated uniquely with his affiliateID. Affiliates links come in many lengths and formats, and you'll find they vary from merchant to merchant depending on the software solution they use to run their affiliate programs.

The digital store known as Clickbank (www.clickbank.com), for example, formats all affiliate links like so:

http://affid.merchantname.hop.clickbank.net/

The ‘affid' part of the URL gets replaced with your unique affiliate ID, while the "merchant name" is replaced with the unique ID of the merchant.

Clickbank is an interesting case because it is actually a payment processor for multiple, different merchants. Hence, the "merchant name" portion of your affiliate link will change depending on which merchant/product you're promoting.

Here are some common questions when it comes to Affiliate Marketing

Q. What is an affiliate program?

A. An affiliate program is a type partnership between an online merchant and a website owner where the online merchant compensates the website owner for any revenue generated through the merchant's links on their website. As an affiliate you are paid a commission every time a customer referred through your website and generates revenue for the merchant. It's that easy!

Q. What is an affiliate?

An affiliate is a person or company that promotes an other person or company's products or services for a commission.

Q. What is a tiered affiliate program?

A. A tier affiliate program is when the person or company that is selling the product will pay the affiliate a percentage of the commissions paid to the people (sub-affiliates) that they recruit.

Q. Are there any fees to become an affiliate?

Each company will have different policies on how to become an affiliate but for the most part the majority of affiliate programs are free to join. This is what makes affiliate marketing one of the best ways to start earning an income online

Q. What type of commissions do I earn from each affilaite program?

A. Each affiliate program or merchant offers unique affiliate commission percentages and structures, they can very from 10% all the way to 75% of the sale price. Before you start as an affiliate make sure you know the commission rate for the product/program you want to promote.

Q. How and when do I get paid?

A. Again each merchant and program will have a differnt payment plan. Some pay every 2 weeks, some pay monthly and some require you to earn a minimum before they pay out.