Many of us have powerful marketing skills and would love to find a great way to put them to use online. We are natural salespeople, have a great feel for finding and delivering customers, and are able to craft great marketing strategies.

Even though we have a great deal of potential sizzle at our disposal, we don't have a steak to go with it. We need products to sell. That's where affiliate marketing comes in to bridge the gap between product production and product sales.

It is a simple process. You sign up as an affiliate to a product producer. You deliver customers and collect a commission on every sale recorded. To make matters even more attractive, commissions are often set at percentage marks that would make traditional brick and mortar sales people stare in disbelief. Commissions in excess of 50% are not uncommon.

Your job as an affiliate is to find customers, pre-sell them and deliver them to a sales page where they can make their purchase. The program is set up in a way that every sale is instantly recorded. Commissions can be paid in a variety of intervals depending upon the affiliate program in question.

Being an affiliate marketer requires an ability to seek out and find sellable products and to use any number of potential techniques to find buyers. Those with a track record in affiliate marketing will often develop a huge list of prequalified past buyers they can access readily when they have discovered a great new product to promote.

The income possibilities are nearly limitless. There are so many different products out there and the commissions are so generous that one can experience massive financial success. Successful affiliate marketers are among some of the net's most well-paid entrepreneurs.

Is it easy? Not necessarily. There is always competition and there is always more to learn about sales and marketing. But it is rewarding and it gives those who have a seemingly natural feel for sales and promotion a great way to be their own bosses.

One could decide to operate a cradle-to-grave operation instead of becoming an affiliate. They could design and perfect a product all on their own and sell it themselves, keeping all of the revenue. That might be a good solution for some, but many skilled internet marketers have found that the constantly-improving assortment of products and service to promote, combined with a fair commission structure, allows them a superior opportunity to make a healthy income without having to deal with the hassles of initial market research, product creation and other tasks.

If you want to sell, affiliate marketing is the way to go. It allows you to generate profits while selling products you weren't forced to create. It's a business without an income cap that allows skilled salespeople and marketers a chance at online business success.