What would you say if I told you I had done all of the research and development, manufacturing, and branding work for a remarkable product and I was going to give you a license to market that product at no cost to you, and in fact I am going to pay you most of the profits generated from the sale of that product? You would probably jump at the opportunity. What if I told you these types of offers are legitimate, and are available on a wide scale, would you be interested? Of course you would!

At one point I'm sure we've all dreamt about creating our own website to sell an amazing new product of service we created. Who wouldn't want to be the owner of their own site generating constant passive income? Every day people have the same dream, and every day people realize that starting a fresh company to sell a new product or service is actually quite a lot of work and requires a ton of capital! Even if you managed to get your product manufactured, you would still have to put the time and money into building a marketing program from the ground up to drive traffic to your website and hopefully sell the products. Now let's say you've accomplished all of this and your marketing program is having some success. You're selling your new product at a price point of $20, and with all costs associated you're turning a profit of $5.00 per unit. Congratulations, you're successful. Kind-of.

Let's now take a step back and chat about what I brought up at the beginning of the article. Instead of starting your own business you read Rich Tank's article and decide to skip right to the marketing phase because you now realize other companies have done most of work for you. You find a company you like, one who's product you think you can effectively sell. You put in the same amount of effort you would have if you had built the company on your own, and you develop a successful marketing campaign that drives lots of quality traffic to their website. Their product is already branded through television commercials and subsequently your traffic is converting to sales at quite a high rate. Because of your success you negotiate a commission rate of $20 per sale. Congratulations, you're successful. Really successful.

Now that we've gone through two hypothetical situations and you now hopefully realize the opportunities available to you through marketing other company's products, I'll go into a bit of detail about how it all works and give you some places to get started.

The vehicle created for making this all work is called an affiliate program. Companies create these programs in the hopes of driving more traffic to their websites and in turn, selling more products or services. They are willing to pay high commissions because they don't have to do the foot work for the sale. It's very easy to sign up for affiliate programs. Many websites you visit which sell products or services contain links to their affiliate programs. Nearly 50% of major online affiliate programs are managed by Commission Junction. It's free to use for publishers, and quite easy to sign up. Once you're signed up as a publisher you will be able to search thousands of affiliate programs to find what fits you best. In most cases it's just a simple click to join the program, and Commission Junction even provides HTML code for you.

Once you've found the program that best fits your style, there are many methods for advertising the company's products and services. I wont go into too much detail about each method, as you can find other sources for that; but I will briefly speak about a few of them here.

Websites:
Whether you have a website of your own already or have the means to create one, this is the most popular method for generating your affiliate traffic. Simply place contextual or banner affiliate ads on your website in various places and with some strategy you'll have your users visiting your partner sites in no time.

Blogs:
A blog with a following can be a fantastic means of passive income through affiliate marketing. If you find products or services related to the subject matter of your blog, or that broadly appeals to your target audience, you can insert contextual or banner advertisements into your blog to generate very high quality traffic.

Email Campaigns:
If you own or can purchase a legitimate list of email addresses of people who have agreed to receive offers, you can create newsletters or direct advertisements that contain links to your affiliate programs. Conversion rates by email are generally low, but if you're sending 50,000 emails a week (automated of course), you're bound to make sales.

These are just three of many methods to generate commission sales through affiliate traffic.

If you are ready to seriously dedicate yourself to building a passive income stream, I truly believe there is no better way than through affiliate marketing. It can be done with little to no investment, and as you hone and expand your skills you can build marketing programs which will work for you around the clock.