Affiliate marketing gives the opportunity to earn an income online to both the experienced as well as the newbie internet entrepreneur. It benefits both the merchant and the affiliate. The merchant can advertise his products at a much lower cost and the affiliate can earn commissions by promoting such products. The affiliates are not required to have their own products to sell. They can earn handsome commissions by promoting the merchant’s products. Signing up with affiliate programs are easy and in most of the cases free. However, there is one question: whether a website is necessary or not for success in affiliate marketing. Though a website is recommended for promoting affiliate products, it is not essential. The following are the different ways to promote affiliate products without having your own website:

1. E-Mail Marketing: E-Mail marketing is the most popular way to promote affiliate products without a website. The essential of E Mail marketing is to maintain a list of prospective customers and to send them periodical E Mails containing various information and articles which are relevant to the products and services which you are promoting. In your E Mails you may add small text ads which link to your merchant site. Try to build a relationship with your customers by sending them good content and not spammy ads.

2. Pay Per Click advertising: Pay Per Click or PPC is also another popular method of promoting affiliate products without a website. You have to join some PPC network such as Google Adwords or Yahoo Publisher Network and purchase some ads which link to your merchant website. These ads are then shown on different webpages within the network. When somebody clicks on these ads, they are directly taken to the merchant website and if they purchase anything from there, you get a commission.

3. Writing and distributing free E Books: You may write your own E Book on any topic relevant to the products which you are promoting. Give good and useful information which may help others in your niche. You may put the banners and text ads related to the affiliate products which you are promoting, at the end of the book.

4. Online discussion boards and forums: You may use various online discussion forums, message boards, chat.. to promote your products. But the message boards/forums.. should have topics relevant to the products which you are promoting.

5. Offline promotion: The products may also be promoted by using different offline mediums such as, classified ads, brochures, flyers etc.

The money is in the list. To be successful in affiliate marketing you must have your own opt-in-list or mailing list. It helps you to have a readymade customer group, whom you can offer your products and services. Research has shown that it requires several times of contact before people trust and purchase from you. So, it is essential to have your own opt-in-list. For example, you have 2000 members in your mailing list and you send             them an offer to promote a $50 product. If only 1% of your members buy the product, you make an income of $1000. A list helps you to build relationship with your present your potential customers. The following are the different ways to build your opt-in-list:

1. The sign up form should be placed at the top of every page that receives good traffic. The form should be placed in such a way that it is clearly visible to your visitors.

2. It is better to create a separate lead capture page with only the sign up form in it. The benefits of signing up to the list should be clearly mentioned.

3. The lead capture page can be very effectively advertised on traffic exchanges.

4. In exchange of their names and addresses, you must offer your visitors something of value, such as, an e book, newsletter or an e course, which are relevant to your niche.

5. A small pop up ad can be used to attract attention of your visitors. A pop up ad asking for the names and e mail addresses of the visitors has been found to be very effective.

6. Audio and video components can be used to attract the attention of your visitors to the opt-in-form. Research has shown that the use of audio can increase the opt-in-rate by about 30%.

7. The language of your opt-in-form should be powerful enough to convince the visitors to leave their names and e mails.

8. Make sure to publish your ‘Privacy Statement’. Assure your visitors that you are not going to send them spam or sell their e mail addresses and that they can unsubscribe from your list any time.

The success of an internet business depends upon the ability to generate targeted traffic. Squidoo can be used successfully to generate massive traffic to your website. Squidoo is actually a social networking website like Myspace or Facebook. It is among the top 700 websites in the world. A page created on Squidoo gets easily listed in the search engines and the traffic received can be easily redirected to your website.

A page created on Squidoo is called a lens and it works like a blog. A Squidoo lens is integrated with different web 2.0 features such as, RSS, Tag, Ping etc. and other social networking features like Delicious, StumbleUpon, Digg etc. Registration to Squidoo is free. After registration, go to the profile page and add a few lines about yourself with a link to your website. For creating a lens, you have to add a module first. There are different modules for a lens. You can use the ‘Write Module’ which allows to write                articles on your lens. These articles can be rearranged according to your preference and they should link back to your website. Your lens should contain good and useful information which can help other people in your niche.

Before creating a lens, keyword research is essential as these keywords will help your lens to rank high in the search engines. Put your main keyword in the lens title and in the URL. Use different long tail keywords as tags which may attract visitors from the search engines. A Squidoo lens should be updated several times a week. If you can not add new content each time, just go for some small changes and click ‘publish’. You can create any number of lenses in any niche.

Squidoo has it’s own ranking system and each lens is ranked according to it’s popularity. You may improve your rank by generating star ratings from other members and lens masters. There are different lens groups. You may join relevant lens groups in your niche and engage in the discussions. There is also a forum which you may join and do some forum marketing to increase traffic to your lens. All these techniques will help your lens to get into the top 100 lenses in Squidoo and thereby receive massive traffic which can be diverted to your website.

As affiliate marketing is beneficial to both the merchant as well as the affiliate, this business model has become the most popular way to earn money online. There are different types of affiliate programs available and each of them has it’s own advantages and disadvantages. The main types of affiliate programs are — pay per sale, pay per lead and pay per click. They can be either flat fee or commission based. There are also single tier or multi-tier programs. The following is a discussion about the different types of affiliate programs:

 (i) Pay Per Click:  (PPC) programs are the most popular affiliate programs available. Here, the affiliate is paid when some visitor clicks on any of the merchant’s ads shown on the affiliate’s website. The payment is made even though the visitor does not buy anything from the merchant website. The payment from PPC programs are usually low and ranges from a few cents to a Dollar. Some major PPC programs are Google Adsense, Yahoo Publisher Network, Chitika etc.

 (ii) Pay Per Sale: (PPS) programs are the most lucrative affiliate programs. Here, the affiliate is paid a fixed commission (generally a percentage of the sale price) each time a visitor referred by the affiliate, purchases something from the merchant website. The commission can be as high as 75%.

 (iii) Pay Per Lead: (PPL) programs are also very profitable. Here, the affiliate is paid when a visitor referred by him fills up an application, completes a survey, signs up for a mailing list or does some similar action for the merchant. These programs are mainly used by finance and insurance companies. The affiliate is generally paid a flat fee per lead.

 (iv) Single tier and multi tier: In single tier programs, the affiliate is paid only for the sales generated by him whereas in multi tier programs, the affiliate is also paid for recruiting new members. Here, the affiliate is paid a percentage of the sales generated by members recruited by him.

 (v) Residual income programs: In residual income programs, the affiliate is paid each time a visitor referred by him, returns to the merchant website and purchases something. The payment is generally made as a flat fee or on commission basis.