One of the fastest ways to begin a home based internet business is with affiliate marketing. Becoming an affiliate is fast it's free and you can begin earning within a very short time. What does an affiliate marketer do? Well, they promote people products and or services in exchange for a commission. Let me give you an example. Say John Doe writes an ebook called 'Best gardening tips,' he would have his own website and he would be selling the book via Clickbank. In order to generate more sales John Doe would use his website to advertise for affiliates. Along comes Carol King and sees the ad for affiliates on John's site. Carol already has a Clickbank account so she decides to become an affiliate. Carol signs up and is give a special link that she will use to promote John's Gardening Tips ebook. The link that is given to Carol contains her nickname. Carol chooses the nickname when she registers her account at Clickbank.

Carol now goes away, armed with her affiliate link and advertises it in as many different places as possible. How does Carol make money? By generating sales. Carol is advertising the link given to her by John, now whenever someone sees Carol ads and purchases a copy of John's book, the sale is registered to Carol through her nickname and she earns a commission.

Simple? Well it can be if you know how to go about it. It is possible to earning a good living as an affiliate, but you must arm yourself with the correct information before you begin. Unfortunately there are many mistakes made by affiliates that prevent them from ever getting paid. Here are some of the more common ones.

Falling For The Hype
There are many so called 'get rich quick' schemes out there and they tend to do a very good job of convincing people that they can get rich by doing nothing. If you do nothing, you will receive nothing. Period. As an affiliate marketer you do not have to own a product, you do not necessarily have to own a website, you do not have to deal with the hassles of shipping stuff to people or worry about handling payments, but you do have to actively, continually and consistently promote the product. Which means having a working knowledge of marketing. So yes, you do have to do some work if you want to make money.

An Unfocused Attack
Pay-per-click, traffic exchanges, forums, article writing, blogging and classified ads. There are many different advertising mediums out there and if used correctly they can be extremely effective. The trap that many beginners fall into is thinking that they have to do all of them at one time and master them as well. If you are currently trying to use or master all of these methods you are going to find that you will never sleep, you will probably max out your credit cards and you will not have any profits to show from it. Focus, plan your attack and then execute it. Decide before you start what your goals are, decide how you are going to go about your marketing and decide what results your looking for. Knowing what you want to achieve, how you are going to get there and what your results should be, will force you to focus on the task at hand and you are far more likely to get the desired results.

Getting Left Behind
Affiliate marketing is an ever-changing game and if you want to remain successful you must roll with the changes. I beg you do not sit back and relax just because you are seeing some profit, you must keep moving forward, take time to learn about new and developing trends actively seek out new strategies so that you will not get left behind.

Promoting The Wrong Product
Choosing the wrong product to promote can mean instant failure for any affiliate. The decision you make is a critical one. If you are choosing a Clickbank product here are a couple of things to bear in mind. Do not choose the most popular product there; the competition will be far too great for a beginner. Do not choose a product that is offering less that 50% commission, after all you do want to make some money. Do not go for products with commission rates over 80%, this usually means that the product is not selling well and the owner is desperately trying to attract affiliates in order to get some sales. Do some research; find out if the product is in high demand, there is no sense in promoting a book about Dog Training if most people are searching for a book about Potty Training.

Lack Of Creativity
Most likely the affiliate program you are promoting has given you some of the tools you need to get started. Just because you may be told what to do, step-by-step that does not mean that those are the only steps you can take. As I mentioned before there are many types of advertising out there, be innovative be a leader, take your time and try out various methods of advertising, find out what works for you. Don't just take what is handed to you. Learn, apply, earn.

If you can avoid these costly mistakes, you will make it as an affiliate, be patient success will come, but not overnight.