How Any One Can Easily Use Affiliate Marketing to Earn Money from Home

by Shawn Chaney

Many of us dream of quitting our jobs and relaxing in the comfort of our homes making money for ourselves. Instead of busting our behinds to make it for some one else with little in return or lack of appreciation. Many of us are frightened of doing what we most desire. The fear of leaving that secure source of income stops most, those who get past that fear don't have the capital to get a business up and running.
A home business does take money if it is run as a sole proprietorship. However, starting up in the affiliate marketing business is completely different. Affiliate marketing is relatively an easy way to earn money from home. And if you do it right, it takes very little investment.

If you are creative, motivated and driven then possibly consider becoming an affiliate. By becoming an affiliate can get you started on the road to independence with little or no risk to you. People who enjoy independence and flexibility in their work make good affiliates. Those that desire or need flexible working hours can gain the most from being an affiliate. You are paid according to how well you perform, not on how many hours you work. You can schedule your work around other things such as families or other commitments. If you're independent and a self starter then a career as an affiliate marketer is perfect for you. You can start putting your skills and creativity to work for you instead of someone else.

As an affiliate marketer you sell or get leads for someone else's service or product. When a company needs some help making sales, they allow people to sign up as affiliates, and they are willing to pay a commission or a flat rate per lead or sale. Depending on the company, this percentage or flat rate will vary.

Affiliate marketing can be used to earn money from home by utilizing several different methods. You can use a website, a blog, newsletter, email, ads, or just plain articles. I believe that starting with a blog or lens is the best choice. If you are just beginning in internet marketing, you are going to find that starting a blog or lens is very easy to do. Search engines love blogs, and are always pretty fast to index them. Anyone can sign up for a free blog or lens at either Blogger.com or Squidoo.com, and then proceed to market basically anything that they want to. Because a blog and lens are free to have and make, they make this type of marketing even better. Where as if you have a website, and are wanting to market things that way, you would have to pay for your domain, pay for your hosting of the domain, and then know some HTML or hire a website designer.

An easy way to receive free traffic to your blog is by article writing. You can write articles relating to your blog and submit them to article directories. It is very simple to do, and once you do it a few times, it takes very little of your time. The articles you write contain a link to your blog. After reading your articles, the reader has a choice to click on the link and visit your blog. Having them on the free content sites also makes your articles available to other webmasters who may wish to publish that article on their site. And by doing this you can easily increase your traffic and sales free.

Now don't get me wrong. Affiliate marketing is not the sort of thing that you just start to earn money from home with over night. You need to be able to build up and keep adding to your blogs daily or weekly, and keep it going. Any one can do it, and you can see generous profits if you just stick to it.