Affiliate marketing has made it possible for me to pay all of my monthly expenses simply by promoting other people’s products and services. Even though I continue to build my own online business, affiliates account for almost half of my income. Many people are doing even better than I am with this, but I will tell you what is working for me.

I started making money from affiliate marketing before I had a website or a list. I was completely new to internet marketing, and just needed to make some money to pay for the expenses of having a shopping cart, hosting a blog, and getting some training.

Article writing and marketing looked like something I could do, so I found a product on training your Yorkshire terrier and decided to promote it. I have a Yorkie and other small dogs, so I knew I could come up with ideas on a regular basis that would be of interest to other small dog owners.

At the end of each article, in what is referred to as the resource box or author’s bio box, I would tell readers how they could find out more, and included my affiliate link. This link had been forwarded from a domain name I had purchased just for this purpose.

After writing and submitting several articles, people began to buy this digital product I was promoting. I was very excited, even though the amount of money I was making was small, because I saw that this method worked. I then decided to set up a blog on small dogs, and began to write posts that included my affiliate links for this product and others than were also for dogs.

After doing this for several months I took a look at what the results were. I saw that I could sell ten times as many products with articles than I could with blogging. This was because my blog was new and had very little traffic, while my articles were being read and distributed around the world 24 hours a day.

Affiliate marketing is a great way to get started on the internet while you are still learning. There is so much to know, it is nice to be able to make some money while you figure out what your niche will be and how your business will fit into your lifestyle. I encourage you to get started right away to begin making money with affiliate marketing.