The old ways are not always the best ways.

The traditional model of making money from affiliate products was simple. Create an interesting website geared to a specific theme, slap up some banners for affiliate products that were related to your theme, and sit back, hoping that some of the audience your website drew would click on those banners, giving you some sales. If you really wanted to get creative you might have done some email campaigns for specific products on the side.

But email campaigns are mostly ineffective (and God-forbid you should spam anyone). And banner advertisements dont generally work. And websites take a long time to build, and promote. And even longer to get good ranking in the search engines.

So it was a slow steady process. There were no quick routes to affiliate gold.

Until now.

Hang on to your hats, ladies & gentlemen, because pay-per-click advertising is here!

Pay-per-click search engines like Google AdWords and Overture offer an exciting way to quickly bring highly-targeted, highly-motivated people who want to buy straight to your affiliate products and services. You dont even have to have a website.

All you have to do is write a cleverly worded ad describing your affiliate product and put it up. When searchers click on your ad, they are whisked right to the affiliate product, and given the opportunity to purchase. Wham, youve just made money. It really is that simple.

To demonstrate how quick and powerful pay-per-click advertising can be, Ill offer myself as an example. I came into the lets make money on the Internet game late, and when I started I didnt even have a website, and I barely knew what an affiliate was.

The first month I cleared $1500 in profits, even though I barely knew what I was doing. For every one dollar I spent on pay-per-click, I got three dollars back in profits. And I was a total newbie, a marketing virgin. I didnt have a website, I didnt know how to conduct an email campaign, and I barely knew what a tracking URL was. Does that wake anybody up to the power of pay-per-click advertising?

However, dont think its all wine and roses in the pay-per-click field. The fact is, almost everyone who tries it fails, at least initially. I failed myself, by the way. The first two days I netted over $50 in losses. And I still maintain those were the most valuable two days of my entire pay-per-click experience, in terms of how much I learned, and how quickly I adapted to the learning curve.

So dont go into it with false expectations. Pay-per-click has a learning curve. But if youre willing to demonstrate a little stick-to-it-ness, pay-per-click can be wildly profitable, and kick-start your affiliate sales business.