The great advantage for the affiliate marketer is that you do not need to create your own product. The merchant takes care of this for you. This means that you are able to start making money very quickly once you have joined the merchant's affiliate program.

For the merchant there is no need to engage in time consuming interviews or vetting procedures to find people to market his products. The internet allows anybody who can complete the sign up form with valid data and accept the terms and conditions by ticking a box to become an affiliate. Automatic qualification is likely in most cases. There does not need to be any communication between the two.

As most of the programs are free to join is another reason why affiliate marketing is such a popular online business idea. From the merchant's point of view this is good, because it means many more people are likely to join the program. There is no financial risk involved in signing up to the program so this is also beneficial for the marketer.

As a marketer your job is just to promote your affiliate website. The merchants take care of everything else making it very easy for them to make money online. They provide them with all the marketing materials required, including website, banners, emails etc., they deal with product shipping, customer service as well as collecting the money.

Another reason that affiliate marketing is such a popular business idea is that it gives you the opportunity to earn money twenty four hours a day. Online sales are not dictated by your personal working hours. You do not have to open a retail store to sell products as do traditional businesses. This in turn benefits the merchants as they can provide you with a website at little or no cost to themselves and you can promote around the clock. Both the merchant and you as the marketer will benefit any time and every time someone makes a purchase on your website.

The Internet provides affiliate marketers with another benefit and that is the option of responding swiftly to new developments. Many marketers capitalize on what is going on in the world today and make product sales around that.

The internet allows you to start promoting online in minutes with such marketing tools as Google Adwords, social networking and blogging. If you can find an angle to a big news event that fits in well with your product niche, you will likely benefit if you quickly make a blog post or publish an article about it.

Merchants benefit greatly in that when they recruit active and determined affiliates they get their products promoted instantly for them without having to do anything themselves. They are able to just leave it up to their growing team of committed marketers to handle all of the advertising and promotion for them.

These benefits of affiliate marketing, from both the merchant and marketer's point of view, demonstrate that this form of online marketing has the potential to be a powerful form of online income generation.

The benefits of affiliate marketing are many and evident whether you are a merchant looking to get your products sold, or whether you are a marketer looking for more ways to make money online, hence the reason it is one of the most popular online business ideas.