Now is a good time to make money with affiliate marketing. With the economy in the tank and jobs getting harder and harder to find lots of people are turning to working for themselves. The Internet has opened the door for many entrepreneurs to start online businesses and affiliate marketing is a good jump in point. More and more people everyday are joining the affiliate marketing bandwagon.

So why does this way of starting an online business look so attractive to so many people? For one thing it can be started with little or no overhead. You can actually start this business without having your own website so you don’t have to pay for web hosting or domain registry. You can use FREE web 2.0 properties like Squidoo or Weebly to start building your online presence.

Another thing is you don’t have to stock merchandise to make money with affiliate marketing. As an affiliate you merrily showcase products from the company you are an affiliate for and when you sell a product that company will do the shipping. You never have to see or handle the merchandise at all. Isn’t that a nice way to earn some money?

For those who are unfamiliar with what affiliate marketing is, let me briefly explain. It is when you join an online merchants affiliate program and receive an affiliate ID. You can then use that ID to sell that merchants products and receive a commission when you make a sell.

Generally this happens when a visitor to your online property clicks a link containing your affiliate ID leading to the merchants site and buys a product.

As you can see this is a fairly easy process, but like with all businesses you have to put in some hard work. You have to choose the right products to sell, you have to create and promote your web properties in order to get people to them and you have to pay attention to what works and what don’t work.

However, one of the best things about this business model is if the hard work is put in right at the beginning the less work you will have to do later on because your properties will do the work for you.

All in all you don’t have to be a computer genius to make money with affiliate marketing, you just have to put in the work and you will find affiliate marketing success.