Research, curiosity and learning -- my strengths and my driving assets. My creation -- "My Affiliate Place", was born. It would be a place where an affiliate marketer or a want-to-be affiliate marketer could find information, articles, and free tools.

So, I say to you, if I can find my hidden passion, you can too.

Onward and upward --with my passion defined, I needed a web site.

Web site! Do I need one?

Many people say you can do affiliate marketing without a web site -- however, with a website you can promote more than one product and reach a greater number of people with same interests. And last but not least, marketing is act of connecting with people -- and on internet -- a web site is your vehicle.

Web Site Is Built. Now What!

Now that your web site is built, you will need to begin promotion process. There are many avenues in which you can venture. To name a few:

1. safelists 2. ezines 3. classified ads 4. writing articles 5. Off-line advertising -- brochures, flyers 6. Search engine optimization -- To get help in this area, go to my web site at: www.myaffiliateplace.biz/affiliate_info -- to begin your optimization process.

As you can see, advertising is only limited by your own imagination.

To conclude, affiliate marketing is a viable way to begin your journey on internet and to your own business. But as you know, with anything that is worth having, you must work diligiently and passionately, and continue to grow and learn -- if success is to be yours.

To your success.

Vickie J Scanlon has a BBA degree in Administrative Management and Marketing. She left the corporate world as an Reports Programmer, to begin her journey as an Internet marketer. Visit her site at: www.myaffiliateplace.biz for free tools, articles, ebooks, and how to info.

As they say, "No pain, no gain". Having your own store pays very well, but requires a substantial time investment from you.

On other hand, if you sign up for an affiliate program, all you need to do is set up a website to promote program. All ads, banners, marketing text etc will be provided to you by affiliate program. Your only responsibilities would be to get people to visit your website, and hopefully click on affiliate links to buy products that you are promoting.

3) CONVERSION

Whether you have your own business or are promoting an affiliate program, bottom line is conversion rate, or percentage of visitors that actually buy something from you. A number of factors influence this conversion rate. Factors as quality of product, quality of website, customer support are all important. However, I personally believe that most important factor is trust.

When a potential customer arrives at your website, he will need to trust your site enough for him to be willing to buy from you. After all, on internet you are just a faceless salesman. He doesn't know who is actually running site and whether he will actually get goods that he orders.

Having said that, one of key methods of garnering trust is by recommendation and referral. If a store is being referred to or recommended by another website, potential customer will feel that store is trustworthy. After all, if store is not trustworthy, why would other website recommend it?

This is where affiliate programs shine. When you refer a potential customer to store for which you are an affiliate, customer will feel more relieved, since store is being recommended by your site, a 3rd party. The customer will be more likely to buy from store, benefiting both store, and you as well.

There are both pros and cons to joining an affiliate program. You might earn less with an affiliate program compared to starting your own store, but I believe benefits of not having to be responsible for logistics makes affiliate programs are very viable "passive" source of income.

For more information on affiliate programs, do visit http://www.onlinebiz-help.com