Affiliate marketing works as well as it does because it is mutually beneficial to the merchant and the affiliate marketer. It is a great way for both to make money selling products on the Internet. Let's take a closer look at five of the benefits of affiliate marketing from the point of view of the merchant and the affiliate marketer.

1. As an affiliate marketer you do not need to create your own product. The merchant takes care of that for you. For this reason you are able to get started very quickly as an affiliate marketer making money online once you have joined the merchant's affiliate program. From the merchant's point of view, there is no need to engage in time consuming interviews or vetting procedures. On the Internet, anybody who can complete the affiliate sign up form with valid data and accept the terms and conditions by ticking a box will most likely qualify automatically.

2. Most affiliate marketing programs are free to join. That is good from the merchant's point of view because it means many more people are likely to join. It is obviously good for the affiliate marketer because there is no financial risk involved in signing up to the program.

3. Affiliate merchants make it very easy for their affiliates to make money online. They provide everything the marketing materials, they collect the money, deal with product shipping and customer service. Your one job as an affiliate marketer is to promote your affiliate website.

4. One of the biggest benefits of affiliate marketing is the opportunity it gives you to earn money 24 hours a day. Unlike a traditional business you do not have to open a retail store to sell products. On the Internet sales are not dictated by your personal working hours.

This is a benefit to the merchants because they can provide you with an affiliate website at little or no cost to themselves and you can promote around the clock. Any time and every time someone makes a purchase on your website both the merchant and yourself benefit from it.

5. One benefit the Internet provides affiliate marketers is the option of responding swiftly to new developments. Many affiliate marketers choose to capitalize on what's going on in the world today and make product sales around that.

The Internet literally allows you to be promoting online in minutes with such marketing tools as Google Adwords, social networking, blogging and so on. So if you can find an angle to a big news event that fits in with your product niche, the quicker you post a blog or publish an article about it the better!

The real benefit to affiliate merchants is that when they recruit active and determined affiliates they get their products promoted instantly without doing anything themselves. They leave it up to their growing team of committed affiliate marketers to handle all of the advertising and promotion for them.

These five benefits of affiliate marketing from both the affiliate merchant and affiliate marketer's point of view demonstrate that affiliate marketing has the potential to be a powerful form of online income generation. Whether you are a merchant looking to get your products sold, or whether you are a marketer looking for more ways to make money, the benefits of affiliate marketing are many and evident.