You have to think about a real world shop for example your paper shop that you may go to in the morning will be mainly selling papers but will also probably have adverts in the window. So from this example you can see that although he is doing his main business from selling papers he is also renting out advertising space.

You need to view your website in the same manner either you are selling something yourself you may also want to put other ads that complement your website and bring in extra income from this.

The main thing to decide is how you are going to go about doing this there are two main methods there are providing context based ads from people like Google, Yahoo, and MSN there are general affiliates that you have to look for.

There is already a lot of information about contextual based advertising and I can recommend that if you are website owner that looking at Michael Cheney's videos are probably the best source of information.

As for affiliate marketing the two main players are commission junction and click bank and you can go to their respective websites and get an account and before delving into just whacking up ads anywhere, sit down plan your web page.

Look at Google's hot spot in there help file for advertisement placement you need a google account to access this but it s not that hard to get one.

Both click bank and commission junction have extensive help to get you started on the road to affiliate marketing and I know that it is well worth the time in planning and maybe doing a dummy run just to see how the ads and affiliates work and getting an understanding of the programs involved.

This is not a get rich quick system it's more of a steady method of generating extra income from your website without putting a great deal of effort in.

When entering this market also remember there are some major players in this field who generate large sums of income from these methods but they don't do this by trial and error. The main thing to remember is that when you have a method that works stick to it as long as possible.

The affiliate marketing game or business is very fast changing field of opportunities and you may be lucky to hit a particular niche to be very successful you have to look at new trends and do a lot of research on a wide range of subjects.

I have been in the affiliate marketing business around three years now and I'm still surprised by the speed of changes to what is hot and where did the traffic come from. You need to arm yourselves with the best tools available but it's not easy to get advice on what will suit your needs.

Keep up-to-date with the newsletters provided by commission junction and click bank and you can't go too far wrong. I wish you success in the fields of Internet marketing.