Affiliate programs make it so easy for you to start an affiliate marketing sales business.  All you need to do is complete an application in order to begin.  Some are even free to join, however usually have more benefits if you upgrade and pay a small monthly fee.

As soon as your application is processed, you receive a ready-made web page with your own affiliate ID embedded. Often they will also provide banners and other graphics to help you promote your business, and some documentation to help you get started with marketing.

The affiliate program will also handle your sales transactions and any customer service associated with your sales. They will account for your commissions and send you a payment.  This leaves you free to do your part, which is promoting your business.

All you need to do to get affiliate marketing sales is market and advertise your web page, banners and affiliate ID aggressively and consistently over time.  Just like real life - work for money.

However this appears to be the sticking point for some. Some feel that just by virtue of becoming a member of a program and having a web page that they are now entitled to become automatically wealthy, ideally within a week.

They want to believe that people are making money hand over fist by a magical process that happens on the Internet.  Hence, unfortunately they do not take the action necessary or at least do not take enough action to succeed in making affiliate marketing sales.

If and when they do realize that they need to do some work, they will make a half-hearted attempt now and then, however when they don't see any results from this, they will often throw up their hands and quit.  They would rather just fail than give it more effort to see what might happen.  Often they will also pronounce the program does not work or even that it is a scam.

This is really one of those 'you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink' stories.  It's really kind of a sad story at that.  What a waste.  With some realistic and logical thinking, a dash of discipline and motivation and learning a few marketing skills, no telling how successful this same person in this same exact program may have become.