By Denise Hall (C) 2003

Have you ever wondered how "the big guys" earn so much money on internet? Sure, some of them have huge advertising budgets, which puts small business owners at a disadvantage.

But some of biggest names today started out just like you and me. They had low advertising budgets and fumbled their way around internet trying to get visitors to their websites and sell their products.

Even though they had terrific products, they couldn't sell them if no one knew about them. They put on their thinking caps to find easiest and least expensive way to get visitors and make sales.

They finally came up with a plan that would benefit not only them, but others as well. If they could get other people to promote their products and websites, they could earn more money.

And so, Affiliate Programs were born! What a concept! A better way to get visitors to a website and sell more products!

They offer their visitors opportunity to "partner" with them, often for free, to help sell their products. And many of them offer two-tier affiliate programs.

So if I sign up as an affiliate I can get others to sign up under me as my sub-affiliates. I earn a commission for sales I make directly to my customers. But I also earn a smaller commission for sales that my sub-affiliates make.

It's a winning situation for everyone! The "big guy" made money because he sold his product. However, he might not have made that sale if it wasn't for my advertisement. And I made money because I advertised his products.

The concept of affiliate programs is really not so new. It's similar to selling cosmetics or other products for many well-known companies.

Assuming I'm right, then you've probably covered some basic steps, such as narrowing in on a specific target market and deciding what your unique selling proposition is. Perhaps you want to turn your hobby into a full time income. Whatever case, you'll need to have a number of things in place in order to do business online. The most obvious is a website.

Unfortunately, this is where much of information you'll see online starts to get fuzzy. What you typically see are comments about how easy it is to create a website "so just go ahead and do it." Often these sites will tell you to go buy a book on HTML, because "it's so easy to learn, you'll have your website created in a weekend."

To an extent I agree. However, mastering HTML isn't something that can be done in a weekend. More importantly, mastering it at a level that will allow you to create a website that projects a polished and professional image takes much more time than most entrepreneurs have.

This might not be case if all you had to worry about was creating your web presence. However, as someone who is diligently working to launch (or expand) a small business, you've typically got to do everything yourself. What follows is only a partial list of things you'll need to be working on, in no particular order.

1. Domain name 2. Hosting Service Provider 3. Sourcing products or creating your own 4. Creating marketing material (Whether digital or printed) 5. Researching potential partners 6. Creating a newsletter or ezine 7. Driving targeted traffic to your website 8. Deciding how you'll accept payments online 9. Creating a terms of use statement for your site 10. Creating a privacy statement for your site 11. Setting up one or more autoresponders

Anyway, you get idea.

Now, if your "day job" is webmaster for Thingamabobs Inc. then creating a website for your new enterprise WILL be easy. But, if your "day job" is as Doorman at Thingamabobs Inc., you probably don't know your H-T-M-L from your X-M-L from your A-S-P from your M-O-U-S-E.

I can't argue against value of learning HTML. I've spent years learning to program in many different languages and scripting technologies. Having this knowledge is what allows me to provide for my family.

However, for human beings that don't have a background in ways-of-the-web there's a hugely overlooked resource available to anyone willing to invest some time and effort.