You may wonder how sites such as FaceBook and other mega sites make money when it appears they offer their services for free. The answer? Affiliate marketing.

People all over are making millions—and sometimes billions—of dollars simply by allowing large companies to place ads on their websites. How does an ordinary person get into the action?

It’s actually pretty easy to get your foot into the door. But it’s a bit more difficult to make really good money solely through affiliate marketing. Here’s why. Large companies love advertising online because they can find a targeted audience and it’s far less expensive than traditional advertising. You see, many times they only pay the website owner when someone actually clicks on their ad to get more information. High traffic sites can base their advertising rates on the number of visitors their sites get. In other words, if you charge a $1 per 1,000 page views per month, you would receive $2,000 for an ad if 200,000 people visited your site.

For either scenario, the big problem for the little guy is getting enough traffic to your website to generate advertising revenue. Most websites start off by receiving pay-per-click revenues. Google’s AdSense, for example, will place ads on your website automatically and you receive money when someone clicks on that ad.

Sounds easy—and it is. The real work is driving traffic to your website, because without thousands of page views or hits, you’re not going to be driving that Mercedes any time soon. That’s why affiliate marketing often takes patience and determination. If you truly believe your website would do well if more people knew about it, you must market like crazy.

You’re going to have to write articles related to your website’s topic, issue press releases, use social networking, create Youtube videos. This is an ongoing job, and why large companies hire entire departments to handle their online marketing needs.

However, if you keep working, you will see results and will see an increase in traffic to your site—and an increase in your affiliate marketing revenues.