How do you want a little extra money per month? Or even replace your income, less work for more money … Think it’s a utopia? Well, think again.

Most people know that there are millions of dollars spent every day to purchase products and services online. But did you know that a% of each sale by simply referring and recommending the products you want people earn.

It is one of the best ways to get to make money online – you do not have a website, you do not need a blog, you do not even need any money to get started, although these things can help you you really start without them. By helping consumers research and choose products they already want to buy, which can be as simple as writing a 500 word article (like this) you could earn a nice little second income.

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Or if you want to take a little more seriously, you can earn a full income, even more than most “real world” jobs to pay.

I personally make a living full time in affiliate marketing, and have been doing it for about 5 years. Working from home, choose the hours to my lifestyle changes, and making a lot more than I ever made working 60 hours per week in a job I hated.

But if you really want success with affiliate marketing you need a plan that will give you the level of income that you want. A lot of people I speak also love the “idea” of making money online, usually they ask me a million questions, and tell me how serious they are, how they are going to go home and get stuck in, I recommend reading all the stuff and get started as soon as possible.

But most of them never to follow through on this one. Then 6 months later I see them again, some will completely avoid the subject, while others tell me again how serious they are, and they are really going to do “this time”.

It’s pretty ammusing for me, watching people make up excuses why they havnt done anything.

I personally do not really care if they do it or not, it does not affect me at all. While it would be nice to have more friends who arent working all week to play golf with and take the boat. But other than that, it makes no difference to me.

I do not really understand it all, I believe its the perfect business, think you as much money as you want, your income is a direct result of the amount of effort you put in. You can work whatever hours you want. (This is very little when you have been doing it for a few years) Plus you can do from anywhere you can plug into a laptop. So if you like to vacation or travel around the world, the perfect business.

But how do you get involved?

The best place to start is by going to a website that a wide range of affiliate products houses. This keeps everything together in one easy to install and gives you access to plenty to explore. You can also get an idea of what specific areas you wish to concentrate.The worst thing you can do in affiliate marketing is the use of the brush.

This is when you try and promote a wide range of products that are not connected, all connected by a single website. In essence is not aimed at anyone – and you make less turnover.

Instead, do some research and come up with a certain group of people who work for a wide range of products available. Or search for a specific problem that people online to look for solutions and to solve them. Not only are you a much better chance of making a sale, but people will actually thank you for helping them find a solution, and more than happy that you’ve paid to help them.

But if you do not have a website, how can you promote your products?

There are several ways to do this. One of the best article directories to use as EzineArticles.com or Web 2.0 sites like Squidoo.com, you build web pages for free on virtually any subject you want. Once these are indexed by Google and do a little promotion for them, then you start getting a steady stream of traffic – if you’ve chosen the right topics and keywords to target.

At the beginning I stressed the need for a plan to the level of income you have to achieve. Not many stores actually do and it is one of the main reasons why more people have not got much to do with affiliate marketing. It is certainly not because the potential is not there – it’s because they do not intend to profit from it the right way.

You should always look at how much you get as a commission for each product. Obviously, the less the commission, the more units you need to sell to achieve your desired income. You will find this course to achieve a balance of products, but it is worth bearing in mind.

You should also think about the kind of people you are marketing.What sort of income they bring in? How much are they likely to want to spend on the products you will offer? If you do not do well against these two aspects will be a real struggle to make sales.

It is also helpful in the short, medium and long term goals to help set things in perspective. A short term goal might be to sell five items every week continuously, for example. A long-term goal could be to make $ 100,000 a year from affiliate marketing. Goals will help you decide where you want to go with your fledgling affiliate marketing business.

Another important point to be aware of is that it is wise to protect your income, where you can. What I mean is that affiliate links can be quite obvious at times, and some people actually remove your link and go to the site and buy something, while denying the Commission.

The easy way to prevent this is simply buy a domain for each product you are promoting, and referring to the affiliate to offer.There are plenty of free tools that do this for you online, and it’s really the safest way to protect your interests. It also changes a long ugly link in a pretty short one – much nicer for the article directories!

Affiliate marketing is like any other company, once you start generating an income, then you can start to return to invest a portion of that money in your company to ensure you enjoy continued growth.

In short, start slowly and keep visions of a huge income to start in perspective. You’ll quickly access your way around the farm to learn about and with each new experience you can build your knowledge and earn even more in the coming months and years.

When I first started out, I learned the basics by purchasing a few books and e-books on the subject, but usually was left to trial and error. I had many mistakes for a few good ideas that worked and made money available.

Fortunately these days there are some really good resources available for people looking to learn this business. So if you’re serious about becoming an affiliate marketer, check out some of the resources on this page.

The most important thing to pretend, is to just start doing something now, then follow with something else tomorrow … Try and do something every day towards your goal, do not for a few days, and before you know it, you have a nice steady flow of profits coming in.

Too many of the people I speak, put things off until they have more time, but then they forget, and never end at all started. So commit to yourself, take action and get started today.