You must have been exposed to online hype, and fact is starting an online business is a great way to make an extra income. There are many ways to make money online, one of them, is joining online affiliate programs...

Here are six great reasons (only) why this could be exactly what you are looking for. I respect your time, so I’ll keep each point brief. Here we go...

1. Your Products

Many people don’t have their own products to market online, and even if they do, they would have to handle shipment of products to every corner of world, or they would narrow their market to specific areas only.

Online affiliate programs provide a wide variety of quality products, which meet every customer’s needs, and you can market those products world wide without worrying about their shipment. All you need is to refer people to your affiliate websites. Any orders taken from that website are automatically handled by company on your behalf.

2. Your Income Potential

Besides commission you can earn from direct products selling, there’s another powerful way to make a great income online - residual income, and this is by referring other people to join opportunity. This way you can build a network of people where you make a commission for each sale they make...

Some companies limit you to one level of sponsored affiliates, which mean, you only get commission for sales of first level of people you refer, however, MANY other great companies do NOT limit your income potential, actually, it’s infinite deep network where you can enjoy passive income.

3. Your Investment

The great news is – you are NOT required to put any money down in order to join an online affiliate opportunity, you can join for FREE! Some of them might claim that you must buy their products (you should avoid those...), even though I believe in concept of buying from your own store, real opportunities should not force you to perform nor limit your potential, so it is all up to you.

Of course, any kind of business requires some kind of investment, generally speaking it’s a trade off between time and money, more you are willing to invest, less time you need to build a solid business, and vise-versa. So it is all up to you.

I have seen affiliate "handles" that have made me stop everything just for a good laugh! Only last week I saw "spankme" and "angeleyes." Well, one of them is a bit better than other. I'll leave it to you to decide which :)

I suggest that when you are given choice to pick your own affiliate name that you choose something a little more professional. Use a variation of your last name or even your first name with another word added on. Like "mynamebiz" or something similar.

Ideally, your affiliate link should not even be seen by newsletter ad or website readers. There are several disadvantages to letting your affiliate link be seen:

* The affiliate link is usually very long. If you advertise in an ezine, affiliate link may not fit within 60 characters allowed for line length. The newsletter publisher may not want to publish an ad for that reason, and normally will have guidelines allowing him to delete ad.

* For some reason, when a reader realizes that link is an affiliate link, they won't click on it. He will just select first part of link (http://affiliatesite.com) and leave off your affiliate ID. Result? No commission.

* When a savvy website visitor wishes to purchase your affiliate product, she will substitute her own affiliate ID in place of yours. Here result is that SHE receives YOUR commission - and purchases product at a discount!

Your best bet is to "hide" your affiliate link using one of following methods:

1. Create your own redirect pages. To do this, create a new blank page using your web page editor of choice. If program is "what you see is what you get," you'll need to switch to code view. Delete any code that appears and cut and paste following into your page:

One moment please while we redirect you...