So, you are interested in using your computer to make money on the internet. Congratulations! It's a fascinating area, and it can be unbelievably rewarding. However, it can also be unbelievably confusing. Even some of the words you encounter can make you think you're reading a foreign language. Here's a quick summary of the basic vocabulary you will need to know.

As you know, thousands of products are sold on the internet. Some of those products are sold directly by the people who created the product. For example, if you order a computer from Dell, you are buying directly from the manufacturer.

Other products are sold by "middlemen." On the internet, these middlemen are called affiliates. It's sort of like wholesale and retail in the "real" stores. If you want to buy a pair of Levis, you don't go to the Levi Strauss manufacturer in San Francisco. You go to the Gap, or Sears, or wherever you buy Levis. Levi Strauss sells their brand new Levis to, let's say the Gap, plus a lot of other stores. The Gap and all those other stores then advertise to get you to come to their store and buy your Levis from them. In this example, Levi Strauss is the wholesaler, the Gap is the retailer, and the customer is you.

It works the same in internet marketing, but with different terms. Here, we are focusing on selling information in the form of ebooks. What is an ebook? It's just an internet term for information that is delivered to you in electronic form instead of in a physical book.

The person who writes an ebook is called the "publisher," similar to Levi Strauss being the wholesaler. The publisher can sell this book directly to you. Another possibility is this: ebook authors ("publishers") can't reach every person who might want to buy their books (products). So the publishers have "middlemen" -- "retailers" like the Gap. In the internet world, these "middlemen" are called "affiliates."

Product affiliates choose ebooks that they would like to sell, and then they tell other people about those ebooks in various ways. (On the internet, "promote" means "advertise.")

When a customer buys an ebook advertised ("promoted") by an affiliate, the publisher (the ebook's author) shares the money from that sale with the affiliate (that money is the affiliate's commission).

Commissions on most ebooks are between 50% and 75% of the cost of the ebook. Most ebooks cost from $20.00 to $100.00. So you can see, earning 50% to 75% of each sale you bring to the publisher can start to add up pretty quickly.

Sound interesting? Keep learning more about the many benefits that being an internet affiliate marketer can be bring into your life!