A brief report describing exactly what affiliate marketing is. This report discusses the advantages of affiliate marketing over being a content creator.

1. Affiliate Marketing - Just What Is It Anyway?

2. Affiliate marketing is a method of producing sales where the seller does not own the product that's being sold. The product is created by someone else and then offers a commission to others to market and sell the product.

3. When done properly affiliate marketing can be one of the best ways to make money on the Internet. The reason why I say this is because creating a digital product for an amateur or inexperienced person can be a very difficult task. Initially the idea of creating a digital product may seem very simple however if you want to produce a quality product it does require a great deal of research.

4. In my own experience attempting to create a product to sell online was one that ended up costing me more time than I could have ever imagined. When you look at the number of products that are being produced by others and if you want your own product to have its own unique spin or unique approach, the time that is involved to create your unique approach can be very expensive in terms of time.

5. You may think on the onset that you can produce a product in a few hours. However once you have gotten into the depths of creating a quality product, you will find that many hours perhaps days or even weeks have gone by and you still don't have a unique product.

6. This is where affiliate marketing can be a win-win for you. Because someone else has the headache of creating the product and you can focus your energies on the marketing aspect of it? For reputable producers of digital products the actual mechanism for selling the product is already in place.

7. Therefore you don't need to have any kind of merchant system set up in order to make the sale. Since the selling mechanism is in place, your entire focus would be that of marketing the product.

8. When you first start out as an affiliate marketer you may find that it is a little bit awkward. But as time goes on and you will gain experience and things will become a lot easier. Once you learn of the different ways by which you can place ads, post blog entries, post in forums, you will quickly become an expert in marketing online products.

9. Because there are so many different types of digital products you can market online, it is easy for anyone to see that earning a significant income as an affiliate marketer is in fact within reach of most individuals.

10. That is why in my opinion affiliate marketing can be one of the best ways to make money online.