Who would have dreamed a day would come when you could select from millions of existing products or services and sell them for up to 75% of the profits. This is now possible with affiliate programs that allow you to sell other peoples' products and take a big piece of the action. Basically they do all the hard work of creating a product, stocking it, shipping it and handling annoying customers while you simply do the marketing.

Affiliate programs are basically a business relationship between a merchant or service provider and affiliate partners who work together to promote a product or service. The merchant pays the affiliate a commission for generating leads, clicks or sales for its product or service. I strongly suggest that before starting a business from scratch you look into finding an affiliate program of an existing company that already produces what you want to sell. Let's look what makes these affiliate programs so appetizing.

1. Free to join: Most affiliate programs are free to join so you don't have much risk in getting set up. You can test market for many different affiliate programs at once for no charge to see which ones work for you.

2. Virtually no overhead: The only thing you'll have to pay for and that's marketing materials. Many merchants have great products, but a terrible marketing presence. This is where you can step in where they dropped the ball and market their amazing product better than they can. This is the beauty of affiliate marketing. They benefit from your marketing knowledge and you benefit from having their great product to sell. Don't underestimate the importance of a great website and marketing collateral. Bsleek ( http://www.bsleek.com ) is a great company that can help you design your site, logo, collateral, etc.

3. No factory, stocking or shipping: Let the merchant handle all of this backbreaking work while you simply exercise your talents a stupendous marketer.

4. No customers to deal with: This is probably the best part of affiliate programs. You don't have to deal with aggravating customers. You'll never have to worry about all of that "customer is always right" nonsense again.

So now that you have a little introduction to the world of affiliate marketing, get out there and make it happen. Select programs that you know something about or have a background in. If you are already a good marketing or sales person the task of selling shouldn't be monumental. Don't get discouraged if you don't see success overnight. Keep at it and you'll experience the rewards of affiliate marketing for yourself.