Making money through commissions is one of the most rewarding work from home businesses one could ever have.

What’s easy about affiliate marketing is that average folks can get involved with very little effort by using some smart shortcuts for success.

Affiliate marketing is the only easily mastered method of achieving steady part time or full time income. In fact, you can start with just your computer and an Internet connection. And, with affiliate marketing, you can have the added advantage of making extra money from home with the freedom and control of being your own boss.

It should be mentioned that there are also many people who fail at Clickbank because they did not take the time to gain knowledge of how it works and the proper tactics to use. Like any business, affiliate marketing requires to learn the ropes before you try to climb the mountain. However, If you are a looking for an easy make-money-from-home business, affiliate marketing is an excellent way to go.

What will you sell?

First, let's define selling in terms of affiliate marketing.

With affiliate marketing:

.... You will NOT be selling face-to-face.

.... You will NOT be writing sales copy.

.... You will NOT provide any customer service. The product owner does that.

.... You will NOT guarantee the products. The owner does that too.

.... The buyer does NOT even have to know who you are.

To find the hot selling products for you to market, Clickbank is an ideal place to start. You can find one of the largest affiliate marketing programs in the industry. You just need to visit their site, www.clickbank.com and get your personal clickbank ID. This is the easiest part.

Now, go from Clickbank’s home page to their "Marketplace" and investigate the products and services that are top sellers. These products are always ranked according to their popularity but your can search using other parameters.

Avoid choosing products that you personally think would be good sellers and go only with proven top sellers regardless of your personal likes or dislikes. After all, the idea is to make money. Clickbank provides the data to determine the popularity and commission for each product in each category so you have many to choose from.

Clickbank is the web's leading affiliate network because it serves as a 3rd party between the web merchants, that is the product owners, and the associated affiliates, which would be you. Clickbank is responsible for providing the technology to deliver the merchant’s offers and campaigns to you and to your customers. Clickbank also does the job of collecting fees from the merchant and giving commissions to the affiliates who are involved in the program, folks just like you. It's all automated. You don't have to know anything technical.

Clickbank provides a huge and updated database of publishers and products to tap into. To be more specific, their database features more than 27,000 products. The reason why more and more affiliates are joining Clickbank is obvious – the process of making sales and earning commissions is handled professionally. In fact, Clickbank is the strongest when it comes to protecting customers by insisting that product owners give at least a 56 day money back guarantee. This protects you too. Any product you sell will be backed by Clickbank.

What if you have a product of your own to sell?

Joining Clickbank as a merchant is also easy. You just need to sign up and get set up for them to handle sales your products and payments of commissions to your affiliates. They provide tutorials to do this for free.

You will need a promotional web site, that could be a simple sales page, that gives your potential customers detailed information about your product or services and your guarantee terms. This will be the site your affiliates will send prospects to. When they buy, you make money and your affiliate gets paid out of your cut.

Clickbank requires that you provide comprehensive technical support for your product as well. In return, Clickbank will promote and sell your product, give customer service for your product, allow their affiliates to pass on traffic to your web site, enable you to assist your affiliates in advertsing your product or service, furnish real-time sales data for you and your affiliates, and send you and all affiliates a paycheck twice a month based upon sales volume.

If you’re a work-from-home mom or dad, college student, or just someone who needs extra money, you will find it easy to be a highly paid Clickbank affiliate.

To get paid you will need an affiliate link for the product you want to sell and a way to promote your affiliate link. You will have to place your affiliate link where potential buyers will see it. There are many free and paid ways to do this that are beyond the scope of this article but let me mention a few free ways.

You can create free pages on Blogger.com, Wordpress.com, Squidoo, FaceBook, MySpace, and Twitter. These are all free and allow you to promote anything you like.

You need to complete the Clickbank affiliate form and create your own account to get a username. The username is inserted in your affiliate link to the product. When people click it and buy, you earn your commission. With your Clickbank username, you are free to choose whatever marketing tools you want to use to attract more clicks and generate more sales.

What if you want to earn serious full time income?

Being a Clickbank super affiliate takes some serious effort on your part. The reward could be thousands of dollars in monthly commissions. It means you need to learn search engine optimization, email marketing, newsletter marketing, reciprocal linkage, link exchanges and other methods of promoting your merchant’s goods and services. Now, don't feel overwhelmed. There are products that will teach you the skills.

Among the best ways to become successful in affiliate marketing is to come up with good content filled website and put your affiliate links in all your content. Your main purpose here is to give your visitors good quality information about the things they are interested in for free. Set aside the job of selling. It must be done by the product sales letter or product web site you are sending them to when they click your link.

It's not a good idea to promote multiple affiliate programs unless your website is focused on one niche you are targeting. At the same time, don’t promote every product Clickbank has to offer for your niche. Just choose a few high paying affiliate products or services that fit your site and focus on those. The last thing you want is too many choices for visitors. It is confusing and will cause them to click away without buying anything.

You will stay ahead of the game and make more money by devoting time to reading, learning and keeping up with the changes in marketplace. This way, you’ll remain on top of the newest, hot selling, products and can act quickly to make money from them before the crowd jumps in. If you are knowledgeable with online marketing, I know you understand how important it is to stay on top of the marketing trends. What worked and what was accepted few months ago in affiliate marketing tactics may not work as well today. You need to stay current to be a super affiliate.

Remember: Minimum knowledge can get you a nice second income from Clickbank but maximum knowledge can help you become a Clickbank super affiliate!