Have you ever heard of affiliate marketing? You probably have. You have also probably heard that there are a lot of people making some serious income in the affiliate marketing business. If you are like most people however, you probably only have a vague idea about what affiliate marketing really is and how to get started in it.

Affiliate marketing is like any other sales business. There is a consumer, a product, and a sales person (or in this case a sales page). The affiliate marketer's role in this process is to pre-sell the product to the consumer and to drive traffic to the products sales page. If the marketer did their job correctly the consumer will visit the products sales page and make a purchase which results in the affiliate being paid a commission.

What does it mean to pre-sell an item? Think of it as like wetting the consumer's appetite. Your job is to make the consumer see the need for the product you are promoting. You are not trying to sell the product to them, you are however trying to highlight a problem that the product can fulfill, or maybe you are giving an in depth review of the item to give the consumer a good idea of what the product is. Remember that pre-selling is not the same as selling. Your goal is not to actually sell the product. It is to make the consumer want to click through to the products actual sales page. Hard selling a product usually backfires on the affiliate marketer. People hate to feel like they are being sold to. As an affiliate marketer if you try to hard sell the item to the consumer you will most likely increase their skepticism and decrease the likelihood of them making the purchase. The best thing you can do is to let the products creator do all the hard selling. After all they are the ones who really understand the product and all of its benefits to the consumer.

Of course before you can actually begin finding a product to promote you must first find a reliable source for affiliate products. There are a few ways you can do this. A simple Google search of the term “affiliate programs” will yield a lot of excellent products you can promote. Of course you could simply go to Clickbank or PayDotCom and browse their vast selection of affiliate products. Amazon, Ebay and Google all run excellent affiliate marketing programs. For the beginner it is probably easiest to begin with Clickbank.

The affiliate marketers who do not take the time to learn about the affiliate marketing business are almost always doomed to failure. Those who take the time to learn everything they can about affiliate marketing can easily find themselves making $4000 or more per month. This is something that almost anyone can accomplish so long as they are willing to put in the required effort into their new marketing business.