Many people think that the only way to make money online is to have a product to sell. When I tell people I make money on the Internet, 9 out of 10 of them assume I am selling something on Ebay or on a website and physically shipping it out myself. I did used to sell things on Ebay and after about 1000 packages I decided I had had enough. There must be an easier way to make money.

The myth that you must have products to sell is a natural one if you think about it. The majority of sites you go to do sell physical things and that is where a lot of our shopping is done nowadays. Amazon is among the most popular and you can buy almost anything there and have it shipped to you the next day. There are undoubtedly millions of websites that want your business and have a product ready to be sent out to you.

So, do you need to have a big garage or warehouse piled high with your inventory of items to be able to make money from home on your computer or is there another way?

Affiliate Marketing Is The Easier Option

There are probably thousands of ways to make money on your computer. Anyone who has researched how to start an online home business or just tried to find some simple things they can do to bring in a secondary income knows how overwhelming it can be. The Internet is a huge sandbox where you can build almost anything you can imagine and there are people at every turn who want to sell you their secret system.

The average man or woman on the street knows nothing about affiliate marketing and most, even in 2010, have never heard of it. They have no idea that every link they click on their computer screen could be making someone money. They really don’t have a clue that the things they do online, especially when they buy something, could be making someone else a commission.

What Is Affiliate Marketing?

Simply put, affiliate marketing is when you make a small commission for bringing someone to a website and they buy something. In some cases they don’t have to even buy anything for you to get a finders fee. It is like you are standing outside a real store on the sidewalk and you get paid for convincing people to come in to the store and buy. If they do buy you make a small percentage of the sale and depending on the deal you have made with the store, you might get paid something even if they don’t make a purchase.

It makes sense when you think about it as most businesses want more customers and they have advertising budgets to try to get those customers. Affiliate marketers are those people that make money online by trying to get people to go to other websites that they have agreements with and hope they buy. The more people that you can get to a website, the more money you stand to make.

It Is All Done Through The Links

Links can have all sorts of hidden code in them and that is how everything is tracked. When someone goes to an affiliate marketers blog or website and clicks on a link, they are taken to another website and through the use of cookies and code, the gods of the Internet know where that person came from. If they then buy a product, a commission is generated for the person who sent them there.

Every link you see when you surf the Internet can potentially be an affiliate link. Every click you make may be being tracked in case you buy. For the everyday net surfer all this happens without them having any idea of all the things that are going on. But for the affiliate marketer, this can be the way they are earning their living or at least making some extra money.

Can You Do It?

Affiliate marketing is great because you don’t have to spend much money to get involved. I started out with just one website and it can even be done on a free Blogger blog so you can technically start with zero out of pocket costs. It is not something that you can succeed at overnight though, as you need to learn a lot of things and really understand how to get targeted visitors to your website once you have one. There are over a billion websites on the Internet and you have to learn how to get people to find yours as they will just not magically come.

One of the best resources to learn exactly what affiliate marketing is and how you can get started is Rosalind Gardner’s Super Affiliate Handbook. She has made an impressive home business that is based on affiliate marketing and selling other people’s products. She carries no inventory and does not have to deal with shipping of any kind and neither will you. It will take time and effort and only you can determine whether you have what it takes but the rewards are definitely there.  

If you are looking for work from home jobs, you might consider learning something that can become your own business rather than just a job. When you have a job you can always be fired, laid off, or let go. With an affiliate marketing home business your sales may be down in tough times but you can never get fired. Putting together a network of websites is something that is exciting and you can see that you are building something of value. When the whole picture comes together for you and you start making a little money, the light bulb will go off in your head. You will start to see that the more you build, the more money you will make.

With the new Obama health care bill you are going to be required by law to get health insurance. Who is going to enforce this new regulation? The IRS is and they are going to need more than 16,000 new employees to investigate and perform audits.

This is great news for anyone looking for an auditing job with the IRS! Like I have written about before, if you want one of those cushy government jobs complete with all the benefits that the private sector doesn’t give, now is your time in the sun.

Real companies are still laying off workers but the government is hiring like there is no tomorrow. Don’t complain about there being a lack of jobs: just go out there and claim that new government job. That is what everyone is doing. Before we know it we will all be working for the government pushing paper back and forth living in poverty but won’t it be great? Yeah!

Expanding the IRS is just what every clear headed American wants isn’t it? They will have access to more and more of your records and one way or another, they are going to try to stick it to you.

Now you are going to need to figure out ways to make money from home just to pay for that government mandated health care even if you are young and don’t need it. All you young people who voted for the first time in your life because you loved Obama and wanted change: well you got it! Your vote just cost you some serious money. I hope you have some cash set aside for that healthcare insurance and if you don’t, you better start saving your dollars because the IRS is coming for you.

It is especially hard on the boomer generation as this article details because employers are less likely to hire older workers than they are younger workers. Many older workers are now out of work, near or at retirement age, and they haven’t bothered to save any money. To all you baby boomers that never saved anything…..that was pretty stupid of you wasn’t it?

One of the places you can always find work is on the Internet. However, you have to know how to type and you have to learn how to log on before you can do anything meaningful on it. The older you are though, it seems the less likely you are to embrace new technology. While that is not a hard and fast rule, it does appear that older people are much slower to use things like cell phones, iPods, and the Internet. That is, if they ever get around to using them at all.

So, we now have a generation of people that comprises a huge segment of our population who are going to be relying on everyone else as they have not adequately prepared. They are finding themselves in debt, out of work, and stupidly thinking they can rely on Social Security to get them through to the end. It just isn’t going to happen and now their problem is our problem.

Many of them could actually use the Internet to make money at home and at least bring in some sort of a second income. That is if they knew how the Internet works. Too many of them have failed to adapt to the new technology and now find themselves with little hope of catching up. From the ones I have talked to, they don’t even want to catch up either. This may be a misrepresentation of the baby boomers but I think enough of them are lagging behind that it is a problem.

Many of them can use the job search websites but that isn’t too productive for them right now as the jobs just aren’t out there. They need to be able to be creative and make their own jobs online. That is easier said than done but it is darn near impossible if you hate the Internet and don’t want to learn about it. At this rate, the baby boomer generation is not only going to be left behind but it is going to drag us down with it.