Affiliate marketing is an 6.
5 billion dollar industry and you might be surprised to realise that the ones making the money are average folks like you and me with regular websites based around various topics like:

• Pets
• Cars
• Computers
• Vision Care
• Teeth whitening
• GPS Devices
• Shoes
• Clothing
• Gardening
• Art
• Allergies
• Finance
• Cell Phones
• Quilting
• Sports
• Fitness
• Health
• Games
• Software and more.
  

People who are not familiar with the term affiliate marketing usually are very sceptical about it as a viable online business, I too was the same when I started doing it 6 years ago, yet I was astonished to find how normal it really is and how through working at it I was able to make a full time income from doing it.
Affiliate marketing is just another form of advertising used by companies to promote their products and services, just like:

• Newspaper Ads
• TV
• Radio
• Press Releases
• Billboards
• Flyers
• Mail outs etc.
  

The nice part about it all is you get to work with fortune 500 companies all the way through to small mom and pop stores online who are looking to gain more sales, but need help.
So who are these large and small companies? Well here are just a few of the thousands that are out there.

• AT&T
• Verizon
• Sprint
• Yahoo
• Google
• MSN
• Dell
• HP
• Toshiba
• Nokia
• T-mobile
• Expedia
• LetsTalk.
  com
• 1800 Contacts
• Sears
• Walgreens
• Newegg
• Sony
• Home Depot
• Amazon
• Barnes and Noble
• Chapters
• Apple Store
• Eharmony.
  com and many more...
  

Them and many more are looking to have you help them and they are willing to pay you a commission for each sale/click you produce for them.
Here is how affiliate marketing works in 3 steps: Step 1 - A customer arrives at your affiliate website, searching for information, products or a service.
Step 2 - You direct them to an online merchants/sellers website.
Step 3 - The online merchant/seller pays you for each sale, lead and/or click you have generated according to the arrangement between yourself and them.
Essentially, all your doing is matching up buyers with sellers.
you simply refer them to a product or a service just like you would tell someone to see a good movie.
Difference being though, is you get paid to do it! The key is to know how to build a site which converts like crazy, that gains traffic from multiple sources and turns the curious into buyers.