July 2008, and the 137th Open Golf Championship tees off at Royal Birkdale in the north of England, near Liverpool.

Golf is a huge market, both online and offline, and you can use The Open to take your slice of the pie…

The Open was first played in 1860, and it’s *the* tournament to win, so much so that the name The Open is enough to tell any golf fan what he’s talking about.

Americans tend to call it The British Open, but Americans call Superbowl winners ‘world champions,’ so we can leave them to their quirks.

However, what we must not do is leave the profits available on the table.

Golf is big business for two main reasons: people love to watch, and consequently they love to find out about their stars.

If you can provide information about golf, you will attract the attention of targeted traffic. What you can do then is access golf’s main moneymaker: equipment.

All golfers want to play better, that’s why the game is so addictive, so it’s no surprise that equipment manufacturers are constantly looking to improve the science, to make it easier to hit longer and/or more consistent shots . That’s why the best players make a fortune from endorsements, because those endorsements bring in millions to team companies.

These companies are also astute in the business world, and the online affiliate model hasn’t bypassed them. With this model, you send web traffic to your site and the software tracks it as you send it. You have to sign up to do this, but it’s free to do. So if someone buys, you get paid a commission, maybe 10%.

That may not sound like much, but when you consider that a box of 12 balls can cost $120 in some cases, that 10% can soon add up to a lot of money.

Aside from the team, there are memories. This is always popular in sports, from posters to books. Most top golfers write books at some point, and then you get the used gear market and signed golf caps etc.

All of these will have the affiliate model available. For example, many people don’t know that eBay has an affiliate program, so you can direct people to souvenir items and earn if they continue to shop.

So you can see that golf is great for earning potential, and hosting The Open in 2008 is as good an opportunity as any.