According to the data released by the U.S Census Bureau News roughly $65 billion of retail sales were carried out through internet commerce, accounting for 5.8% of the total U.S retail sales in the second quarter of the year 2013. The online business is expected to rise further in the future. There is a huge market on the internet, where all you need is a computer and internet connection to make money. Affiliate marketing has become one of the most cost effective ways that you can make money from home in your spare time, or it can even be made into a full time venture.
An affiliate marketer can easily make money through a website by inviting visitors to shop for goods or services that a customer would buy, making commission from each sale, without having to buy or stock any products. You can also earn money or commissions by referring visitors to the sites of merchants with whom you are affiliated.
First step to affiliate marketing
Just like when you are opening up a store in your neighborhood, you need to check what products will naturally sell the best, or which products will sell with minimum efforts. You need to find a niche which would allow you to spend the minimum amount of time, but gaining maximum results. Therefore, before you build an online presence, carefully choose your audience and products that you would want to sell. The first step to affiliate marketing is to choose the right type of product and the right type of website for your audience.
Choosing the website
You have to carefully choose the type of affiliate you want to become and create a website that best suits your purpose. Below are a few types of websites, with a short explanation of each:
1. Blog sites
Blogs are the easiest type of websites that you can create. You can easily create a blog site without having to spend a whole lot of money, or putting in a whole lot of effort. You could write your blogs as informal or creative as you wish. Blogs are also a great way to connect and interact with your audience. Make sure to keep the blog contents fresh, and write about things that you know well. You should really be passionate about what you write in order to be successful. Your contents should also be original and relevant to your readers.
2. Review sites
With review sites, you need to provide up-to-date and reliable information to your visitors in order to gain popularity. The content should be appealing and useful to your audience so that they keep coming back. Some websites that you can use for building an online presence are 
Twitter, Facebook, yelp.com, Google+, and local.com. There are also dozens of other sites such as MerchantCircle.com, and TripAdvisor.com, where businesses get reviews either by site owners or users.
3. Coupons sites
Just like review sites, coupon site visitors will also expect up-to-date deals and bargains. Many bargain hunters are looking for deals and coupons online, which will earn you a good commission.
4. Download sites
These sites are the most popular sites among bargain hunters and among visitors who want to try a product before buying the full version. If you can become an affiliate with a large number of companies who have downloadable trial version products such as software, movies, demo version games and such, you can benefit from a download site.
Finding a product to promote
You can find many companies who connect merchants with affiliate sites. Some of the sites are listed below.
1. Clickbank, PayDotCom and E-junkie
These sites connect the software and eBook, downloadable software 
creators with affiliates.
2. Commission Junction, LinkShare, ShareaSale, Clickbank, Amazon
These are popular sites for finding more traditional goods and services to sell.
3 Google AdSense,
You can get money through Google AdSense each time your link gets clicked, and the clicks don’t have to result in sales; Google will however pay you much less than other affiliate programs, where your clicks must result in sales.
No matter which program or affiliate method you choose, there are ways you could be making money, but you need to have patience and build your experience at the affiliate business to become successful. Make sure to do a thorough research, and find tutorials and resources such as Affiliate Marketing Tutorial or Google AdSense Tutorial. These methods can easily generate a steady second income source for a residual passive income.
P.S: – Hope you get on the fast track of making money. Please don’t hesitate to put down a few words in the comment box below to let us know how you are doing, or should you have any questions or comments. Good Luck!
Source: Balanced Life Team
