If you aren't familiar with affiliate marketing it really just means you are using a third-party individual or company’s product(s) to create potential customers for your website. The marketer, who is also referred to as an affiliate, is given product links that they put on their site. When visitors click that link and buy the product that is on the site, the affiliate then receives a commission for the sale. In this way, the website promotes a product and earns a passive income. The trouble is far too many people indicate that affiliate marketing is a way to get rich quickly. The truth is affiliate marketing is certainly a way to create an income stream but in no way is a fast path to becoming wealthy easily.

There are all kinds of myths floating around out there about affiliate marketing. There are many marketers claiming to have made tens of thousands of dollars a month with virtually no work. The truth is these claims are simply false. One common method is that affiliate links will perform extremely well on pages that you dedicate to doing nothing but selling affiliate products. The fact is just like any normal ads, a website has to offer value to its readers in order for any affiliate campaign to be successful. You should think of affiliate marketing as a way to enhance a site that's already successful, and increase your income rather than being the principal focus for that website.

The most common misunderstanding or should we say myth, is that everyone can make money overnight with affiliate marketing. Sadly, this is far from the truth. Affiliate links need to be seen if they are going to generate any income, which means that visitors need to arrive at the website. That means you need to have significant traffic if you plan to have significant income. In other words, you can't put up a site one day add a few affiliate link, and think that money is going to roll out of your computer the next day. Affiliate marketing is not a gold mine, but it is a highly successful way of creating an income revenue stream if you choose to do the work.

Right now affiliate marketing might not seem so appealing; however, the idea isn't to turn you off of affiliate marketing but to give you a realistic expectation of how to go about creating an income stream that will allow you to have the lifestyle you dream in the future, once you have done the work and created successful solid affiliate marketing income stream.