You Don’t Need a Dime to Make Money Online!

Just the other day I told a friend of mine that he could start making money with affiliate marketing and it would not cost him a dime.  He was rather surprised, and maybe you are too.

I am not talking hype here.  When I started in affiliate marketing I used only free methods of making money online and I did rather well, even as a beginner.

You don’t have any money?  No problem.  Here is how you can start earning some extra money on the internet even if you don’t have a PENNY to your name.

Step 1: Sign up for a free account with one or all the affiliate programs below.

• Commission Junction
• Amazon Affiliate Program
• Ebay Partner Network
• ClickBank

Step 2: Find a product on one of these programs that you are interested in promoting.

And you are just promoting it, not really selling it, since you will never have to ship or even see the product you are promoting.  With the programs mentioned above, especially Ebay Partner Network, you can find millions of products to talk about.  Find a niche that interests you and run with it.

Step 3: Write an article about that product and submit it to the websites below (yes, all for free)

• Squidoo
• Ezine Articles
• Go Articles
• Article Base
• Your Blog

Step 4: Put a Link to the product in the resource box of your article

This is how you generate your cash flow so make sure you have something catchy written in there.  You can say something like “To get a great deal on “whatever your product is” check out this site” or offer some other kind of incentive.  This may sound like a no-brainer but make sure your product link relates to your article as well.  Otherwise you won’t be seeing any sales, only confused readers.  After all, why write an article about horses, only to put a link in there that takes them to a site selling sun tan lotion.

You will get this link from the above mentioned affiliate programs.  If you are using clickbank you simply find the product you want and click on “create hoplink”.  This will give you the link you need so that you get credit if the reader ends up buying the product.  Be sure to put in a tracking ID so you can keep tract of the results as well and see if you need to make some changes.

Step 5: Promote Like Crazy

Article sites like Ezine articles get a ton of traffic but you can give your articles a bigger boost by building back links to them.  A back link is simply a link from another site pointing to your article page.  You can build backlinks using the following methods:

• Social Bookmarking. i.e. Digg, StumbleUpon, Del.icio.us, Reddit, etc..
• Social Networking Sites i.e. Facebook, Myspace, More Squidoo Pages, Hubpages, Zimbio..and MANY more.
• USFreeAds.  This is a free classified service you can use that will generate a little traffic too.
• Make a Youtube video about your product and put a link in the description to the article.
• Forums.  Put a link the the article in your signature, so every time you post you build a backlink.
• Oh and who can forget Leaving comments on blogs. I actually forgot to mention this before, but it is a very easy way to get a quick backlink, just make sure your comments actually contribute something.

I could go on all day.  There are thousands of other free methods of promotion but I just wanted you to get the idea.  You don’t have to SPEND money to make money on the internet.  There are plenty of free methods.  It will just take some elbow grease.  Ya know, good ole fashioned hard work.

What is the best free method of making money online that you have discovered?  Let us know with a comment below.