For many website owners who do not have a product or service of their own to sell, it can be hard to make money online. Sure, you could sell advertising space, but unless you attract a large amount of traffic to your site, nobody will pay you a pretty penny to have you advertise their site. So, you don't have any product or service to sell and advertising wont bring in an income worth celebrating over. What do you do now? The solution is simple: Affiliate Marketing.

Affiliate marketing is a simple concept and millions of websites rely on affiliate marketing to bring in the bulk of their sales. Basically, you try and sell other people's products for a commission. Commission can be anywhere from 5 to 75 percent of the price of the product. Generally speaking, your software, information products, and services provide the highest rate of commission. It's easy finding products in those categories that provide 50 to 75 percent commission!

The most effective way to convert your traffic to sales is to make sure that the products and services you are advertising on your website target your visitors. If your site deals with automobiles, trying to market someone else's cook book will fail and if I could take a bet, generate zero income.

Another helpful tip is to make sure your advertisement doesn't look like an advertisement. People do not visit your site to pay any attention to the banner ads placed everywhere. They visit your site for information on what you provide. If your site deals with online dating, write several reviews on different online dating services out there on the Internet with links to the services.

So exactly how does this work? How do these people know that you are the one responsible for the sales lead and not somebody else? When you sign up as an affiliate for different products and services, you are given a special link to place on your website. When one of your visitors clicks your link, the website you are referring visitors to knows that the visitor came from your site. Then, if the visitor purchases that website's product or service, you are credited for the sale and earn the commission.

When looking for a product to market as an affiliate, visit some websites selling products or services that relate to your website's information. Many of these sites will have affiliate programs and have a link placed on their site with information on how you can sign up to be an affiliate with them. Many of these sites use commission services like Commission Junction and Clickbank to take care of all the commissions, so it might be a good idea to go ahead and sign up with these services. Once signed up with them, you will find many other products and services to promote relating to your website's content.

Affiliate marketing along with selling advertising on your website (check out Google Adsense) is an amazing and very profitable way of generating income for your site. It cost nothing and there is no inventory to keep. It's all pure profit. What could be better?