Affiliate marketing can truly set you free. I honestly believe that if ANYONE puts in some time, effort and perseverance they will see results and they can quit their day job.

So where do you start? Firstly you need to know exactly what affiliate marketing is. It is when you are a middle man between a merchant and a customer. A prospect may come across your website where you are subtly promoting a product. You send the customer to the merchant website through an affiliate link and if the customer buys a product, you receive a commission.

You can also get paid per click or per lead, it depends on the deal you have with the merchant. There are companies which gather many merchants into one place for affiliate to choose from. Commission Junction and Shareasale are two of the biggest affiliate management networks and are a great place for beginners to start.

To be successful affiliate marketing you need to be able to plan, build and market your website.

Planning is the most important aspect of the whole process as you need to work out WHAT you are going to promote and HOW you will promote it.

After that comes building the site. This can be outsourced if you are not yet comfortable with building sites. Alternatively you can simple use a site like Blogger.com which generates a site for you which you can easily update.

Marketing your site is an ongoing process and probably the most difficult. You will need to learn how to increase website traffic. You need to consider search engine optimization, pay per click, keywords, articles, autoresponders, article submission etc etc. The list goes on and it’s a good idea to outsource some of your web marketing tasks.

Although this might sound like hard work, don’t be afraid to get stuck into it. You’d be surprised how just 30 minutes per day of work builds up over time and leads you to owning a well established affiliate website which is hopefully earning you some nice extra income.

There are truly limitless opportunities when it comes to making money online. That can be the problem for many people – knowing where to start!

It is important not to get caught up in simply reading about making money rather than doing it.

The most important aspect of making money on the internet is taking action. Without action the money will not come to you (unfortunately!).

Here I am going to list several internet business opportunities. These could apply to a part time business online or a full time work from home business. The time you put into it is totally up to you.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing involves making websites which contain affiliate links and banners. These sites can be product review sites or simply informational sites which link to products that you think your viewer would be interested in. You then receive a percentage of the profits from the merchant. Some good places to find affiliate programs are Commission Junction and Shareasale.

Providing a Service

Are you good at web design, graphic design, writing or something else? There is high demand for good skills online so if you can offer these skills, consider signing up somewhere like Rentacoder.com or Elance.com where you can hire yourself out. This is a fantastic way to make money whilst working at home as there are literally thousands of people online looking for people to hire.

Pay Per Click

You can set up websites, pay for advertisements and then earn money from your visitors. This does require some practice and skill and at first, you are likely to lose money. I suggest learning the basics of affiliate marketing BEFORE you delve into PPC. I just wanted to mention it as it can be VERY lucrative once you know what you’re doing.

These are just a few internet money making opportunities to get you started in your online business.

Adsense optimization involves placing Adsense in the best possible position on your site and using the most effective color scheme so as to generate the most number of clicks from your visitors.

Adsense optimization however goes far beyond simply slapping some ad blocks on your page. It is also very much about your website content. If your content provides absolutely everything that visitor needs, is he or she likely to click an ad? In most cases the answer would be no.

This by no means tells you that the best way to write content is to leave gaping holes in it. Your visitors will not like this and may not return. However it can be worthwhile to not give your visitors EVERYTHING about a particular topic. If you leave them wanting more then they are likely to click Adsense ads to find further information. There is nothing unethical about this and in all reality, it is impossible for one person to cover all aspects of a topic in a single article anyway.

Adsense optimization needs to be tested through the use of channels. Channels can be set in your Adsense account and allow you to track every single ad unit separately. This is vital if you have multiple ad units on a site, which most people do.

By optimizing your Adsense placement, format and colors, you will no doubt increase the CTR and hence your Adsense earnings.

Adsense and blogging is the perfect way for a beginner to get started with earning money from Adsense. Blogs are extremely simple to set up and maintain, with the only other ingredient being quality, unique and sincere content. I say sincere because you want your readers to return. If your readers get the gist that you are blogging simple for money, they will quickly turn the other way. So evidently it is logical your blog should be based on a topic or niche that you are knowledgeable and passionate about. Blog for passion and the money will follow. Yes it’s that easy to make money – now to the logistics!

Types of blog software

When it comes to blogs, WordPress is the word that most often comes up. WordPress is, in my opinion, the easiest and most productive blog software you can use. In most cases, it will require your own web host and domain (this is inherently better than using a free blog service, although that has its benefits which I will get to in a moment). WordPress is free, and is also bundled with web hosting providers who use Fantastico – meaning you can install WordPress with just a few mouse clicks.

Moveable Type is another fully fledged blogging platform however it comes at a cost of $49.95 for one year of use.

When it comes to free services, Google’s Blogger is the monopoly. WordPress also offer their own blog hosting, however personally I prefer the Blogger interface and the fact that Blogger blogs seem to be favored by Google. The upside to using a free blogging platform is obviously, the cost, or lack thereof. It’s nice to have everything for free, don’t you agree? As is often the case with freebies, there are downsides. That being the fact that Blogger or WordPress etc can at any time, simple delete your blog. This is a common occurrence, so don’t make the mistake of not backing up your blog posts, do it regularly and religiously!

Adsense blog plugins

My favorite WordPress Adsense plugin is Adsense Deluxe. The official description of this plugin is “Embed Adsense in your blog posts and make global changes to ad styles from an intuitive (options) control panel. Includes Adsense Preview tool to see what ads would display on a page.”

Quite simply, every WordPress blogger should be using Adsense Deluxe.

Integrating Adsense in to your blogs is not something that should be done carelessly or without thought. Will advertisements add value to your blog? If so, go ahead and insert one or two Adsense blocks. Test, track and experiment with the various positions and types of Adsense ad units in your blogs and you will surely see some revenue trickle in. If you already have a popular blog, there is no doubt that on topic Adsense advertisements will yield clicks, especially when placed at the end of an interesting post – you will be surprised at just how well a tightly targeted ad can perform.

Good luck bloggers and I wish you all the best with your blogging endeavours!

Many internet marketers believe that article marketing is the single best way to generate traffic, and therefore revenue, for your website. If you can write articles then you can make money online…period.

Articles allow you to put your “footprints” literally all over the internet. They are a great form of promotion and one of the best internet marketing tactics.

After you’ve done your market research, you should have a good idea of what you should be writing about to gain the interest of those within your niche.

Submitting an article to a directory allows people to pick up those free articles (complete with your name and website link) and use it on their website. This means more backlinks for you and hopefully more visitors once people follow your resource box to your website.

Almost all online marketing strategies involve using articles to generate traffic. Viral marketing also consists of distributing articles to websites within your niche. Most webmasters will be happy to use your articles as it means they are getting free content for their site. Just make sure they leave your resource box intact!

The best article directory to submit to is by far ezinearticles.com. It has grown to be the biggest and best directory and if you only submit to one, make it that one.

Writing articles is actually not as difficult as you may think. Once you have written a few you will get the hang of it. Failing that you can always outsource the articles to someone at Elance or Rentacoder.

Publishing articles is simply the most beneficial way to grow your business online.