Have you been looking for a way to earn significant monthly income working from home? So have I. I‘ve actually spent hours searching for a reputable home-based business opportunity that is simple to implement and doesn‘t cost an arm and a leg. And amidst dizzying array of possibilities, I finally found what I was looking for. I listed some specific criteria a business had to meet before I would consider joining it and promoting it. This eliminated most home business plans, and all of those that are scams. I came up with “six core principles” I was unwilling to compromise.

1. The business had to have a good reputation with a proven track record of success. 2. The earnings plan had to be simple and uncomplicated. 3. My investment had to be less than $20. 4. I had to be confident I could earn at least $4000 a month within 6 months. 5. I was not willing to sell a product or process orders for a product. 6. I had to feel very confident I could eventually earn a lot more through residual (ongoing) income while spending no more than 2-3 hours a day at my computer. 7. I had to know I would not be taking advantage of other people by pushing an idea on them for sole sake of getting something for myself. I know who I am. I cannot feel good about myself unless what I do helps other people in some way, in this case helping them solve their own financial problems.

A website is a lot like a business on corner. Your advertising methods might be a little different but you still have expenses, and you need to plan for growth. The expenses for a website are usually hosting, domain registration, and some form of advertising.

I don't want you to even think for a moment that being an affiliate isn't a reason to be your own webmaster. There is a reason that 95% of affiliates never make a sale. The reason is they aren't doing what 5% making money are doing. It's about time you treated your affiliations like a real business.

A real business plans for everything, before spending first cent.

Step one: Don't register a domain name, don't get hosting, don't do anything yet. Let's think about what we want to accomplish with our plan. For our example we want to promote a service site for webmasters. (It makes sense to sell shovels to coal miners.) We are going to set things up to generate recurring traffic and high page rankings.

Step two: Choose your affiliations wisely. Many affiliate programs don't pay, or won't be here in 6 months. When your planning your website, don't make it dependent on one affiliate program. I like to review products that I personally use. For my example here I am going to use Xarawebstyle4 as our affiliate product. The reason is that it is an established company, I love products, and I use them daily. What better to promote than something I believe in and USE?

Step three: Set up your target market. In may case I want webmasters that want to make their own graphics and website templates, but don't want to purchase an expensive solution like Photoshop with a high learning curve.

Step four: Research your keywords. There are tons of places to research keywords, and you can spend up to 400 bucks for this type of software. Let's start slow though O.K.? Here is a growing collection of webmaster tools: http://stmadeveloper.com/tools.php . I don't recommend going for broad reaching keywords. Micro-targeting your keywords will get you a better result than going for term that is already ranked for 10 billion websites.