Many newcomers to online marketing like to compare affiliate marketing with other strategies for making money. The draw of affiliate marketing is strong, especially if you are new and have no product or service of your own to sell. You can just go to one of the many affiliate networks (like Clickbank, Commission Junction, Amazon, or any of the CPA networks, just to name a few), sign up for the product you want to promote, and get started. There is no investment necessary, and your salespage is already prepared for you. Also, many merchants offer support for their affiliates.

Another big advantage of affiliate marketing is that you don't need to keep inventory. And if you use Clickbank as your affiliate network, there really is no inventory to store anyway because its products are mainly digital. This is also something to keep in mind for if and when you do want to create your own digital product.

Perhaps one of the biggest appeals of affiliate marketing is that the sky is the limit in terms of how much you can earn. The more you sell, the more you earn, and no one or nothing can cap your earnings, unless, of course, you do something that is unethical or illegal.

You are your own boss when you become a full-time affiliate marketer. You have no one to answer to but yourself. And you can team up with other like-minded individuals in order to pump up your sales and knowledge. When you compare affiliate marketing to a nine-to-five job, the biggest feature that sticks out is that you can work from anywhere, anytime. All you need is a high speed internet connection.

So these are some of the reasons that so many people want to at least try affiliate marketing. However, if you have dreams of making millions, or even thousands, or even hundreds of dollars overnight, then you need a reality check right now. Being successful at affiliate marketing requires quite a bit of learning. While there is no investment needed to start promoting affiliate products, you will need to invest in some sort of training and tools to help you in your endeavor. Also, while you will find lots of ads that promote affiliate marketing as a job that you only need to do a couple of hours a day, or even a couple of hours a week, this is not how it works in the beginning. While you can definitely start your affiliate marketing career training on a part-time basis, you will need to put in just as much, if not more, time and effort "on the job" as you would in a traditional company.

When you compare affiliate marketing with other jobs, you will also see that the field is very competitive. If you put in the training, time and effort to succeed in this business, you will have a very lucrative future.