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[casimiro]

If you are not familiar with affiliate marketing, you may think that you have to "hard sell" products. You may have a picture in your mind of "Tupperware parties" or door to door knife salesmen. This is not the case. Affiliate Marketing simply means that you earn commissions when you recommend a buyer to a merchant.

For example: If you were comparing two products and you provided links to the websites of those manufacturers, would your readers be interested in clicking on those links and maybe purchasing one? This happens all the time. The merchant is happy to get the sale and you are rewarded with a commission.

Affiliate marketing is a perfect way to create passive income.

There are many ways to make money on the side but most of them involve you having to be physically present. An affiliate marketer has the freedom to pick and choose when and where to work. That's the beauty of this "business model": you can set exactly how much time you want to spend. Once you've done your work, it never stops working for you.

Let's say you have a blog and you write about skin care. As an affiliate marketer, you would continue to review and compare products, write about trends, styles, health tips etc. The only difference is that as an affiliate, those blog posts would have the potential of not only generating income when you first write them but since they remain on your blog or website, they continue to earn income over time.

To quote one very successful affiliate marketer: "...we make money without having to “trade” time for it. We invest our time upfront, rather than spend it. We work hard now to continually reap the benefits later."

There are countless ways to make money on the side but most of them involve you having to be physically present. You could take a side job or you could even start your own small business. But there are many reasons why running a small business is a risk and as an affiliate marketer, you do not have to worry about any of them! You don't have to manufacture the product. You don't have to keep inventory and you don't have to provide customer service. Your obligation is to provide good content to your readers and to make honest referrals. The best affiliate marketers are those who provide interesting and useful content for their community.

Who wouldn't trade dimes for quarters?

Assuming you have a dime to trade, this is a great deal. It's a good analogy for affiliate marketing: as an affiliate, you are working towards a percentage of the sale. The reward may come incrementally but it can really add up over time. It can be hard at first if you are just starting out and your fan base is small or if you just aren't getting enough traffic to your site. But having an added financial reward can introduce a new set of goals and skills as you learn more about marketing.

Affiliate marketing requires patience and determination and you need to be realistic about what you would like to get out of it. Here is a scale of expectations using real life expenses. Let's assume that #1 means that you are making a couple of dollars every day. By #3 you have a steady flow of income and by #5 you have mastered the "art".

• Pay for a cup of coffee.
  
• Pay for my bus fare or gas.
  
• Pay my car payments.
  
• Have a part-time income.
  
• Leave my job.

All of these goals are achievable and there are plenty of success stories out there. A dramatic example can be seen here. It's important to keep in mind that there are no magic bullets and instead of being disappointed by setting too high goals think about what expenses or obligation you would be happy to get rid of. Start small and end big!