I've been very thankful for affiliate programs that have created a nice source of "residual" income for me. Remember, one part of the definition of residual income is "do the work ONCE, and get paid for it FOREVER." Besides earning income, affiliate programs subtly trained and prepared me for a more powerful way to build a sales channel in the market place today. Think of affiliate programs as network marketing "lite". Most affiliate programs only pay 1 or 2 levels deep and more often than not relied more on my personal efforts. What they were missing was "leverage". You know, OPE (other people's efforts) and OPM (other people's money). As I understood this better, it was natural for me to graduate to Network Marketing.