Blinded by the promises of Internet marketers offering an infallible way to make money passively without having to do any real work, many people venture into online affiliate marketing for the first time only to walk away with a sense of disillusionment and lighter pockets. As their efforts to attract or convert prospects fail, these wannabe affiliates conclude that affiliate marketing is not for them or just something cooked up by people selling guides on affiliate marketing.

As well as failing to make a profit, what they fail to realize is that it takes as much work to be successful at affiliate marketing as it does in any other field. There are the small percentage who, even with little preparation or direction, will be fortunate and stumble into success. For the vast majority, success is something to be achieved through focussed, diligent effort.

It's not that a passive income can't be generated online, but those who are drawn to the dream of working from home whenever it suits their lifestyle are often convinced that it takes little effort to turn prospects into sales on a consistent basis and it's this train of thought that often leads to failure. Just as blindly buying shares on the stock market without first researching the market or the company is patently foolish, jumping into affiliate marketing without carrying out any real research is going to lead to disappointment and most likely financial loss.

Before even getting started on the road to generating a passive income with affiliate marketing, people have to realize that they can't expect large gains without an amount of intelligent effort. This doesn't mean that an affiliate has to spend endless hours developing or implementing their strategy. It means there should be a well considered, scalable approach that can be executed with some degree of automation.

This is an important aspect because only through automation can earning thresholds be lifted way above that of even a well paid 9-to-5 job. Unlike jobs where an employee is effectively paid for their time doing something (often repeatedly), when an effective affiliate marketing campaign is in place, the revenue it generates isn't limited to the amount of time the affiliate has available. What's more is that multiple sales don't necessarily mean having to repeat the work carried out. There are few jobs in which you get paid many times for doing something just once.

A truly passive system will keep working whether the affiliate is actively working on it or otherwise doing something completely different. It's also a scalable system that will allow growth in terms of being able to deal with more prospects and allow the affiliate to present additional offers that lead to more sales.

Care must be taken when developing and using such a system in that the affiliate must ensure they have proper controls in place and have some degree of contingency should things not go according to plan. Placing too much dependence upon third parties can create weak points in a system. One common example of a weak point is relying on third party systems to provide redirected links. With little or no control over these third party systems, any system that relies upon them can quickly be rendered useless through failure of their systems.

With good planning, time and effort spent cultivating an affiliate marketing business can be very rewarding from both a sense of achievement as well as the financial rewards that follow.