The concept of affiliate marketing is very simple. In an affiliate marketing program, the affiliate drives traffic to the merchant’s site via his own website.

A merchant who is trying to sell his/her product or service on the net pays a commission, whenever a visitor from an affiliate’s site visits the merchant’s site and completes the necessary transaction. The affiliate’s site has a unique link to the merchant’s site which helps in identifying where exactly the visitor came from.

No two affiliates to a merchant site can have same affiliate link. The role of the affiliate is to drive targeted traffic to the merchant’s site via the unique affiliate link. While, it seems easy enough a good amount of effort goes in setting up the affiliate site and making it successful.

One should first understand that affiliate marketing is not a ‘get rich quick’ scheme. It requires a lot of patience good understanding of the concept.

One would require a computer with decent internet connection and good guidance on affiliate marketing. A few hours should be dedicated every day for various tasks involved in making the affiliation program a success.

The tasks would include writing articles, posting ads, working on ad words etc. It is important to define the marketing goals and the time frame within which the goals must be achieved. Affiliate marketing is now looked upon as a cost-efficient and a reliable way of delivering long-standing results.

For affiliate marketing to workout successfully, it is important that the affiliate should have a clear understanding of the product that you wish to promote, this helps in writing reviews and articles that can be published on the net.

There are many ways by which an affiliate can drive traffic to the merchant sites; the most common ways are ‘pay per click’ ads, blogging, emailing, ad posting, article writing, etc.

Check out some of the following affiliate marketing sites and programs (free to join):

• SFI Affiliate Clickbucks Program
• SiteSell 5 Pillar Affiliate
• Legit Online Jobs
• More Niche
• High Profits
• Click Bank
• Commission Junction
• Affiliate Scout
• Dish Network