Affiliate marketing is a very hot topic on the web right now. Not surprising when you consider the fact that a vast majority of successful online entrepreneurs make their money from affiliate programs. Since the early days when Amazon was being set up and founder, Jeff Bezos was establishing affiliates as key marketing tools for any online enterprise, affiliates and affiliate marketing has come of age.

The amounts of income being made have clearly transformed affiliate marketing into a very serious business. There are more and more affiliates comfortably raking in hundreds of thousands of dollars every month.

The first important affiliate marketing secret to bear in mind is the reason why affiliate marketing remains the most effective way of marketing any online enterprise. It is all about the power of the referral. It is rather awkward when a website is trying to promote itself directly to prospects. Actually very different from the situation where somebody else refers the business to others, including people they do not know personally.

This works out superbly for several reasons. Firstly the affiliate as a consumer themselves is able to quickly identify the strong attractive points of the business that will best attract others like them.

The other little known affiliate marketing secret is that most of the top-earning affiliates have their own websites and blogs. Having their own websites gives these affiliates a tremendous edge over others. The sites are usually very closely related to the affiliate program that they are promoting. By having their own site, they are able to harvest the email addresses of the traffic to their sites.

Usually, most people you send to your affiliate site will not end up purchasing anything. However when you have their email addresses in your opt-in email list, you can continuously market to them and the affiliate will automatically end up with a much higher conversion rate from the traffic they generate as opposed to an affiliate without a website who just sends traffic to their affiliate website.

This is the affiliate marketing secret that makes a difference between affiliates struggling to pull in a good income and those comfortably making hundreds of thousands of dollars. The power of the list.

Search Engine Optimization is a process that involves the following: 

• Choosing highly targeted keyword phrases that are related to your site and your target audience.
• Fine tuning the content on your website along with your code to correlate with your keyword phrases.
• Establishing links to your site from high power relevant sources related to your keyword phrases (i.e. If I sell widget, I want to have other sites that have a high rank link back to be.  They could be blogs or forums related to widgets).
• Having a sitemap file and a robot file on your website to give out the pertinent information to the major search engines. 

The most popular search engines are Google, Yahoo, and MSN. Search engines keep their methods and ranking algorithms secret, to get credit for finding the most valuable search-results and to deter spam pages from clogging those results. A search engine may use hundreds of factors while ranking the listings where the factors themselves and the weight each carries may change continually. Algorithms can differ so widely that a webpage that ranks #1 in a particular search engine could rank #200 in another search engine. New sites need not be “submitted” to search engines to be listed. A simple link from a well established site will get the search engines to visit the new site and begin to spider its contents. It can take a few days to even weeks from the referring of a link from such an established site for all the main search engine spiders to commence visiting and indexing the new site.

If you are unable to research and choose keywords and work on your own search engine ranking, you may want to hire someone to work with you on these issues.

Search engine marketing and promotion companies, will look at the plan for your site and make recommendations to increase your search engine ranking and website traffic. If you wish, they will also provide ongoing consultation and reporting to monitor your website and make recommendations for editing and improvements to keep your site traffic flow and your search engine ranking high. Normally your search engine optimization experts work with your web designer to build an integrated plan right away so that all aspects of design are considered at the same time.

1. Give Testimonials
When you purchase a product or service and it exceeds your expectations e-mail the business a testimonial. Tell them in the testimonial the benefits you got from the product or service. Give them permission to publish the testimonial on the web site if they include your sig file at the end.

2. Leave A Message
When you visit a web site with a discussion board leave a message. You could post a question, interesting content or a compliment about their web site. Include your signature file at the end of the message. Some discussion boards let you post your banner ad or text link.

3. Sign Guest Books
When you visit a well designed web site leave a compliment on their guest book. You could give them a compliment on their content, ease of navigation, graphics etc. When you post your compliment include your sig file so other people will see it when they sign the guest book.

4. Write A Review
When you visit a web site you enjoyed a lot write a review for the web site Write about the benefits you gain from the site, the web site design, interesting online services it offers etc. E-mail the review to the web site. Tell them they can publish it on their web site if they include your resource box at the end.

5. Send An E-mail To The Editor
When you read a good article or enjoy a certain e-zine, e-mail a compliment to the editor. Give the editor permission to publish the compliment in their e-zine if they include your signature file at the end. The editor may post it on his or her web site.

Not all startup home based businesses have to cost you thousands of dollars. Many of them can be free to set up but yield the same range of profits. You just have to be extra resourceful, hardworking, and creative! Here are three options you have to work from home and make money online.

Digital Scrapbook Business

Unlike with actual scrapbooks, you don’t need to invest in materials and supplies to design a digital scrapbook. Everything you need is possible depending on your artistic skills, your expertise in using designing and editing software, and of course, your creativity.

With digital scrapbooks, you need only to wield your mouse in order to create works of art. Backgrounds are abundant in and free to download from the Internet. Image editing software will allow you to make simple digital photos into outstanding renditions of a person’s very best memories.

To start up a digital scrapbook home based business, you’ll only need to create your own website – this, too, can be done for free! – upload samples of your work then start working on online marketing.

Freelance Writing Business

If you’re great with words then it’s easy to capitalize on it with a free startup home based business.

Choose a niche first. There are many ways for a freelance writer to make money online, but having a specialization will make it easier for you to build your reputation and consequently demand for higher rates.

There are a lot of job opportunities available if you’re interested in feature writing; you can even have a steady source of income working as a part-time or full-time columnist for blogs, websites, and e-zines.

Technical writing, although more demanding, certainly pays more. You can help students polish their essays and theses. You can help business owners polish their business plans and reports to increase their chances of getting a loan. In relation to that, technical writers are also often employed online to edit, revise, and proofread technical documents.

Starting up this kind of business is easy. Again, you’ll need your own website. Next, you need to establish your credentials as well as upload samples of your works. Thirdly, you need to advertise diligently. It wouldn’t hurt to contribute your articles for free at the start. This is simply to gain more exposure for you as a writer. You can also publish a blog so that people will be more familiar with your writing. In time, you’ll be well-known and you won’t have to look for clients because they’ll be the ones to look for you instead.

Affiliate Marketing Business

You won’t have to pay for membership or any other fee for that matter if you wish to join an affiliate marketing program. You do, however, have to meet certain requirements before you’ll be accepted.

For one thing, all affiliate market programs require their marketers to have their own website and blog. Furthermore, the main topic for the said site must be relevant, if not directly related, to the products or services offered by the merchant.

As an affiliate marketer, it is your job to consistently upload website content that would encourage your readers to perform the desired action. This can be something as simple as visiting the merchant website, subscribing to their newsletter, or purchasing a product. In return, you earn commissions from each and every resulting action.

These three are naturally not the only ways for you to startup your own home based business for free. Browse the Internet and you’re sure to find more ways to make money online.