Affiliate marketing on the Internet is just the latest application of a regular business practice of receiving a commission for a recommendation.
Lawyer, real estate agents and other professionals have referred customers to colleagues, and received a commission on any business generated, for years. Affiliate marketing is just the same principle but applied on a much grander scale.
Every business needs to acquire new customers in order to survive, but the process of getting those customers can be very expensive.

Who Can 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 very simple. Just send a potential customer to the sellers web page and if they buy, you get a commission.
If you have a popular web site, affiliate marketing can be very successful. It’s all a matter of conversion.

What is Conversion?
Conversion is stated as a percentage and is the number of people that complete a purchase compared to the number of people sent to the sales page. It can also be expressed as the number of people that click on your affiliate link as compared to the number that visit your web site.
You can get a very rough idea of your potential sales by using a conversion rate of 1%. Your actual conversion rates could be as much as 10% or more but 1% is a good starting point.
Let’s say you have a web page that gets 10,000 visitors a week. If 1% click on your affiliate link you will send 100 visitors to your seller’s page. If they have a 1% conversion rate as well, then one of the prospects you send will purchase the product and you will make a commission on the sale. If you are selling, for instance, a $ 50 software program with a $ 30 commission, you can expect to earn $ 120 a month from this page.

How Do I Make Real Money?
It all depends on the numbers. Guide more people to your web site, increase your conversion and you will earn more money. Get started by carefully selecting the product you want 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 purchaser’s computer. All sales go through them and you can be certain they will pay you the commissions you have earned. 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 imagine you have several web pages all getting a similar amount of traffic. That’s affiliate marketing.