We often are bombarded with videos or blogs / emails or in an ebook where an individual claims to make $50,000 or $500,000 per month. More so if the time it takes them to earn this income is relatively short, like 6 months to a year. In your mind, you would be wondering whether this is possible or is it for real!

The great advantage with promoting as an affiliate is you get a ready proven product with a sales page that works (assuming you do your research properly). That relieves you of one burden; product creation and making a sales page. So it allows you to focus on the other problem; getting traffic.

To that extent, affiliate marketing is a great way to start but, because it is not your own product, you don't get 100% of the sale and there is no scope for doing joint ventures or having your own affiliates.

You need to generate your own traffic from nothing. If you are just starting out, be wary of spending vast amount on advertising such as AdWords because if you do not do it correctly, it can wipe out your bank account faster than a hacker. An advise would be to look carefully at claims of vast earnings by people in a short space of time to see how much of that gross figure is actual profit.

If someone collects $50,000 in commissions but spends $40,000 on AdWords, they would probably sleep better at night if they used all the time they have to spend monitoring their AdWords account, on marketing methods that cost nothing but a bit of time (such as articles, Squidoo, HubPages and others). Not only do you get better and more receptive customers from these methods than from advertising (you get to pre-sell yourself), but it is perfectly possible you could match the $10,000 or even exceed the profit achieved by risking vast amounts with AdWords, yet all you have risked is a bit of your time. And articles and Squidoo lenses stay around for ages, unlike an ad, which requires a constant trickle of money to keep going.

Plus, with affiliate marketing, you have the added problem of having to battle with other affiliates marketing the same product. You have to be more aggressive than them, spend more money, take more chances and so on.

Affiliate Marketing is not necessarily fast and easy. If you are prepared to learn and work hard, it will be fantastic. But if you go in thinking it is fast and easy you could be disappointed. For every person who made it, there are 5,000 other affiliates that have been at it for over a year and still trying to make it to their first $300.

Each choice we make today affects the direction we are heading in and choices we will make later. Learning to choose wisely may be the hardest obstacle to overcome in building a viable business. In conclusion, this is your business and you have to take all things into consideration before embarking into this business. When you do decide to do Affiliate Marketing, here is my best wishes to you and if not I compliment you for having consider all and to do something you are more capable of.