Actually, you probably wouldn't want to join all same programs. Many of these affiliate links lead to sites and products that you wouldn't want to buy yourself. Do you want to risk your business reputation by offering them to your site's visitors?

Don't forget that same offer is made to thousands of people every day, each of them looking for same magic bullet - quick and easy business opportunity. That means that there are copies of 'your' site all over web, and more coming online everyday. So much for being unique.

Not having a niche has another disadvantage. How many surfers will find your flea market affiliate link site when they are searching for 'handheld computer' or 'treadmills'? Approximately none. Niche sites get ranked by search engines while flea markets don't get found.

All in all, these 'opportunities' are a waste of time and money, and benefit only scheme's originator.

Real affiliate marketing opportunities abound, and many have excellent potential for earning serious income. Thousands of affiliate marketers enjoy very large incomes by promoting merchant programs and products.

While they avoid hassles of carrying inventory, order processing and customer service - super affiliates do not avoid effort.

They know that success comes from investing time, effort and forging of one's own path.

In other words, do work, reap rewards.

So let's take your interest in sports a step further and define it as particular interest in spectator sports; baseball, football, soccer and hockey.

How about sports trading cards? They're small to store as inventory and inexpensive to ship, which makes them a good mail order product.

A quick peek at Overture reveals that searches in April 2003 for 'baseball cards' exceeded 42,000, 'sport cards' had 10,338 queries and 'sports memorabilia' was searched for 10,649 times.

Come up with a list of highly targeted keywords and you'll soon reach that lofty number of 800,000 .... but all of whom have a specific focus, and a PROVEN interest in your product.

Set yourself apart even further.

Rather than competing directly with ten or twenty advertisers at Overture who also sell trading cards, you could write a report or small ebook called "Collectors Secrets Revealed: How to Make a Fortune with Sports Trading Cards". Not only would you sell report from your own site, you could also joint venture with some of those other advertisers and have them promote your report on their sites. Everybody wins!

After ball is rolling on your sports card trading site, it's time to build another niche site in a non-competing topic. And then another. The key to success for small online businesses is to build a number of highly targeted sites across a diverse array of topics. Therefore, if one topic experiences a seasonal or market-induced drop in traffic, others will continue to generate income.

Yes, niche marketing method requires somewhat more effort than building one site with a hundred banners, but it's also method that makes a profit. Either way takes work - you might as well make your work profitable.