From Wikipedia "Affiliate marketing is an Internet-based marketing practice in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer"

In a nutshell affiliate marketing allows you to promote the goods and services of others and receive comissions from sales or leads that you generate. There are affiliate programs for just about any product you can imagine - from diamonds and Fararris, to real estate and insurance, to cell phone service and products, to informational products (How to Train Your Dog, How to Build Solar Panels, etc). Almost every company from AT&T to the car dealer down the street has an affiliate program that you can tap into.

Obviously the best and only way that I know of to make money online or offline is to have a product or service to sell. Affiliate marketing is a great alternative for those of us who don't have an actual product of our own. Also, we don't have the usual worries of businesses such as product development, inventory, warehousing, etc.. Our only job is to direct interested people to the company with the product they are enterested in through our "Affiliate Links". These links are just small pieces if code (you don't need to be a programmer - this is easy) that we place in our advertisements. When someone reaches a website through our affiliate link and makes a purchase we get a commission. Note: You do not need a website or any technical computer skills. Just a willingness to learn. Anyone can do this.