Affiliate marketing is one of the easiest ways to make money in Internet marketing. As an affiliate, you’re basically earning a commission from promoting other people products so you don’t need to create or source for your own product.

There’s no inventory to carry, no need to handle payment, no shipping involved and no customer support required. This means you won’t need to invest a lot of money or effort in affiliate marketing. Just wait for your visitor to make a purchase and a percentage of the sales price goes automatically to you.

To start in affiliate marketing, look for an affiliate program or referral program offered by a merchant. These merchants can be selling products or services and they rely on affiliates to do their promotion for them so they don’t have to spend a huge amount of money trying to reach everyone on the Internet. As an affiliate, you’ll earn a commission every time you make a sale for the merchant.

A quick way to find affiliate programs is to look for them in affiliate marketing networks like ClickBank and Commission Junction. These sites offer thousands of affiliate products under various categories from which you can choose the ones that can make money for you.

So how do you go about choosing a good affiliate program?

Here are some tips to start you off on your lucrative affiliate marketing journey:

1. Pick an affiliate program that pays you a higher commission. Anything more than 25% fits the bill. Here’s a tip: Usually those who are selling software, e-books, audio or video products can offer higher commissions.

2. Choose a product that sells. Because there’s no point in earning a higher commission if no one buys the product itself. And the way you can find out is on the statistics pages that list the

number of click-throughs, sales, and earnings.

3. Check if the merchant offers ready resources for affiliates to take advantage off. These can include pre-written emails, text links, banners and graphics. That way, you won’t have to start from scratch coming up with promotional materials on your own.

Another way to gauge if they’re affiliate-friendly is the support they can provide you. If you don’t hear from them when you request for help, that ought to be a red flag for you.

4. See if you’re comfortable with their payment schedule. Some programs pay monthly, some quarterly and some when certain sales figures are met. Which program you go with depends on how often you’d like to be paid.

Affiliate marketing is an easy and profitable way to make money online. Of course, the first step to building a lucrative online business in this area is to choose an affiliate program that works for you. Choose the right program and you’re on your way to being a successful Internet marketer.