Affiliate marketing on the Internet is simply the latest application of a normal business practice of earning a commission for a referral.
Lawyers, real estate agents and many other professions have sent customers to colleagues and received a piece of any generated business for years. Affiliate marketing is just the same principle but applied on a much grander scale.
In order to survive, all businesses must attract new customers, however the process of acquiring new customers can be both difficult and expensive.

Can Anyone Do Affiliate Marketing?
Almost anyone with some basic knowledge of computers and the internet can do affiliate marketing. It’s becoming a very popular way for baby boomers to supplement their retirement income.
In the online world, there are affiliate programs for practically any product or service you can imagine.
The process is straightforward. Send a potential client to the seller’s web page and, if they buy something, then you will receive a commission.
If you have a high traffic web site, affiliate marketing can be very profitable. It’s all a matter of conversion.

What is Conversion?
Conversion is expressed as a percentage and is the number of people that purchase compared to the number of people you send to the seller’s page. It is also the number of people that click your affiliate link compared to the number that visit your site.
You can get a very rough idea of your potential sales by using a conversion rate of 1%. Some conversion rates can be as high as 10% or more but 1% is a reasonable place to start.
Let’s assume you have a web site that gets 10,000 visitors per week. If 1% click on your affiliate link, that means you will send 100 visitors on to your seller’s landing page. If they also have a 1% conversion rate, then one of the leads you send will make a purchase and you’ll receive a commission for the sale. If you are selling, for example, a $ 50 ebook with a $ 30 commission, you can expect to make $ 120 a month from this page.

How Do I Make Real Money?
It all depends on the numbers. Bring more people to your web page and increase your conversion and you will make more money. Start by carefully choosing the product you wish to sell. A lot of people start their affiliate marketing business by promoting Clickbank products.
Clickbank.com is a company that acts as the go-between for people selling digital products - software, ebooks, videos, etc. - anything that can be downloaded directly to the customer’s computer. All sales go through them and you can rely on them to pay your commission. The list of available products will show you the conversion rate of the page you will be sending your leads to.
Not it is up to you to presell the customer and get the highest possible conversion rate for your affiliate link and your seller’s landing page.
Let’s try that exampe again using a 10% conversion rate. With a 10% conversion rate 10,000 visitors to your web page will result in 1,000 click-throughs. If the landing page also has a 10% conversion rate, you will make 100 sales for the week or 100 x $ 30 = $ 3,000 or $ 12,000 for the month.
Now, let’s assume that you have several web pages that are all getting a similar amount of traffic. That’s affiliate marketing.