You’ve seen the Adsense ads proclaiming “Affiliates: $537 per Day – Quit Your Job With ClickBank”.

Whoa, hold on there. If you thought that it would be great to go and quit your job to become an affiliate marketer I strongly recommend against it. Heres why:

• Affiliate marketing is volatile – You have no way of knowing where the market is going to go in six months, a year, or five years. Just because you managed to make $5,000 last month does not mean that its going to stay that way. Websites fluctuate in traffic, popularity, and relevance all the time- Ive had sites that were making $200 a day drop to less than $10 a day for seemingly no reason. It will take work, patience, persistence, and a bit of ingenuity to ensure that your income continues to grow. Until youve got $10,000 in a bank account and all of your expenses paid, do not quit your day job. Why throw away a solid income for hopes and dreams?
• Everybody is in Affiliate Marketing. This is a business that you won’t even be able to tell your family or friends the names of your websites for fear of competition. Mention of your business could accidentally lead to loss of income, especially if you are spending money to make money, Pay Per Click for example, it could really eat into your profits. Your job can only be done in your area but Affiliate Marketing can be done by anyone anywhere in the world. You may be competing with people on the other side of the world or in the other hemisphere. Anywhere there is internet connectivity. If you can’t compete in this arena then don’t quit your day job.
• You’ve never seen anything as fast moving as Affiliate Marketing. Once you click GO, traffic may start rolling in and you may be making money or not. You don’t have time to wait around, take a nap or kick back and loaf. This business runs 24 hours a day – good or bad!

After all that negativity, I need to confess that I do work full time as an Affiliate Marketer. Many of the reasons you may decide to become an Affiliate Marketer follow:

• 1. Affiliate marketing is lucrative – There is no other business where you can start up and make $500 that day. My first website made me over $10,000 in profit over the course of four months, and it was little more than eight pages of text and a few images. If you can find a way to get people to do what you want them to you’ll be able to make limitless amounts of cash.
• 2. Affiliate Marketing changes daily. It is a new game from day to day. The challenge of trying out new things and seeing what works or doesn’t means Affiliate Marketing can be an exciting business. Once you see how much sales methods and marketing techinques change on a day to day basis you may become hooked. And you could end up running away from the competition.
• 3. Affiliate Marketing is TONS of Fun. It is hard not to enjoy being able to get up when I want, run errands, get my hair cut, come home and set up new marketing programs, check my stats and grin at my bank account. The knowledge that I’m being paid to loaf really makes life interesting. Did I mention it is fun?

An offline job can provide a reliable and steady income. While making some money with Affiliate Marketing, just continue to use it as a supplement to your offline income until your online income grows. Someday it will come down to the point where you make more at Affiliate Marketing than your day job, but until then just keep going in to the office.

Advertising online is quickly rendering all other types of advertising redundant. This is because, in the times we live in, if someone wants something, they will go straight to the Internet. The Internet has become the main source for people to find any information, products or services they want, and it is becoming so for more and more people, therefore securing a clear presence on the web has never been more important for the future of your business.

Advertising online is the future of advertising, and as we watch the more traditional advertising methods slowly get pushed aside, online ads will become dominant as new generations of technologically minded people replace the traditionalist older generations. In order to be prepared for this, it is crucial to start thinking about online ad campaigns now.

The most popular methods of advertising online are Cost Per Impression, Cost Per Action (or Cost Per Acquisition) and Cost Per Click (or pay-per-click).

Cost per click / pay per click: With this method, advertisers pay a pre-set amount each time a user clicks on their listing and is taken to their site. The actual listing is free, they are only charged when the listing is clicked on. This method lets advertising specialists fine-tune searches and conduct market research.

Cost Per Action / Acquisition: This type of advertising is performance based and is common in the affiliate marketing areas of business. With this system, the publisher takes all the risk of posting the ad, and the advertiser only pays for the users who complete a transaction, like a purchase or sign-up.

Cost Per Impression (CPM): The third method of online advertising that is used above most others is cost per impression or CPM (the M represents the roman numeral for 1000) allows the advertiser to pay for their ad to be presented to a specific audience. CPM prices are charged per thousand impressions. However, not all impressions will be counted. Those that occur because of page reloading or internal user activity will not be counted.

One of the main advantages of advertising online is that, once an advertising agreement is made, the ad can be posted immediately regardless of geographical location, and then can be edited whenever its deemed appropriate based on customer requirements.