Affiliate Programs

Affiliate programs are an alternative to the standard MLM Home Business Opportunity. Basically, create a website about your favourite hobby - something you like and know about. Find an affiliate program related to your hobby, place the link on your site, start advertising, and you can be off and earning!

These are some of the most well-regarded affiliate program guides:

ROSALIND GARDNER

Read the amazing true story of how one woman, with no previous business experience, earns 400,000+ per year ... selling other people's stuff online!
In her down-to-earth, sincere and often humorous style, Rosalind Gardner guides you through the entire process of building an affiliate marketing business on the 'Net. In 270+ pages, and more than 73,000 words, you'll learn how to pick the best programs, negotiate a commission raise and save time, money and effort on everything from affiliate software to web hosting. To learn exactly how she does it, Click Here

PHIL WILEY

The Easy Way to create a stream of fast, low-cost, mini sites that create an incredible cash flow 24-Hours a Day, Non-Stop! The Mini Site Profits home study course is like no other marketing and promotion product on the web. You'll learn stuff you'll not read anywhere else, and you'll discover low-cost methods that really, really work - and that work fast. It's very definitely possible, using the techniques in the course, to start bringing in sales from your mini sites within a week of finishing reading. Click here to learn how he does it.

JAMES MARTELL
"James Martell’s AFFILIATE MARKETERS HANDBOOK" - The 8-Steps you MUST take to succeed with Affiliate Programs on the Net! ...Finally – a bona-fide expert with Internet affiliate programs shares insider secrets that have propelled him to the top of the major search engines in three competitive industries: Credit Cards, Cell Phones and Satellite TV. This is a complete training program in a downloadable PDF format, written in plain English and spelled out in a step-by-step system that virtually GUARANTEES users will be making money on the Internet at the completion of Step-8. You get 40,037 words of easy to understand text, 107 helpful illustrations and 257 pages to guide you through the EXACT process of building high-traffic websites as an affiliate marketer for some MAJOR companies. If you've dreamed of working from home and making money using your computer then THIS is the only manual you need!
James also has an audio broadcast twice a month here




SITESELL
No discussion of affiliate programs would be complete without mentioning SiteSell.
Site Build It! combines site-building, site-hosting, and site-marketing... and that makes it easy for you to build a professional, popular, and profitable business...
Sites built using SBI! consistently get high traffic, as a recent Alexa.com survey shows.
51% of SBI! sites fall within the top 6% most popular sites on the Internet
SiteSell has so many splash pages, I just have to include my favourites here. And you can even be a free member and promote these. It's worth it to get the free Affiliate Masters Handbook.
SiteSell Value Exchange page - find quality sites to exchange links with
Small Business page - for small businesses
Traffic Test - take the Alexa traffic test
Results page - successful SBI sites
Webmaster Directory page - directory of webmasters
Hard-product sellers - for product-based small businesses
CTPM page - why SiteSell works
Spamcheck page - free spamcheck scan



If you want to take a sneak peak at an example of an affiliate site by Rosalind, click here
And for my first attempt at one here

My comments on the above guides and programs: Rosalind is good for a fast start using PPCs. Phil is good for multiple mini sites tips. James is good for long term low-cost strategy. SiteSell is good for non-tech small business people with stuff to sell.

You will need to join one of the free affiliate manager programs to handle the tracking and payment of your commissions, and to actually find some affiliate programs. These include:
Commission Monster
Commission Junction
LinkShare
ClickBank

Most affiliate programs will want you to have your own domain name. GoDaddy is usually the place I buy from. Be canny, and choose one that can be used many times through the use of subdomains. For example, I bought the domain Best-Australian.com from Godaddy, and am now busily creating subdomains such as Christmas.Best-Australian.com and Work-From-Home.Best-Australian.com without the need to buy more domain names. Every cent helps.