People have two views of learning affiliate marketing and it depends who you've been listening to. It's either a piece of cake and will make you a million in a fortnight (yea, right) or it's tough, tough, tough, it's saturated, nobody makes any money any more and you'll lose your shirt (boo, hoo).

A simple answer would be to say that the truth lies somewhere between the two, but that's taking the easy way out.

The truth is it depends not on how many people are doing it or how many people are buying stuff or the latest web statistics or the latest super-product. The truth is it depends on you.

More internet millionaires were made this year than ever before. More will be made next year. The internet is not saturated. You haven't missed the opportunity to make money online. It's not rocket science or brain surgery, it's just another way of doing business.

Some people will make nothing. Some will make lots. Business was ever thus, the internet hasn't changed anything...

...except the entry level.

There has never been an easier way to set-up a business than doing it online. Learning affiliate marketing is an extremely low-cost way to start working from home and, eventually, making a living on the internet. If you've got as far as this article you have all the tools and ability you need to make money with affiliate marketing.

You have access to a computer and you can read. That's it. Everything else you can earn along the way, if you're prepared to put in a little effort.

Which is fair enough. Nobody starts out knowing it all and nobody is going to just give you fistfuls of cash. We all learn. If you're prepared to do that, and put some action in afterwards, you'll do fine. Actually you'll do better than fine.

Trawling the major search engines will provide you with huge amounts of affiliate marketing information and affiliate marketing courses. You need to be on your toes, of course. As with anything else online, there's a lot of junk mixed in with the valuable information.

You need to sift through, study, become a student of affiliate marketing. Before making big leaps, take small steps. See what information you can get for free. Invest a few dollars in one or two e-books. Use what I call the Pizza Principle. If you think an e-book can teach you something, and it costs less than the price of a family pizza, you can probably afford it.

A $97 dollar course, however attractive it might look, is not pizza money. You probably want to be making some money online first and pay for that kind of thing out of profits.

One successful entry strategy for learning affiliate marketing is via article writing or a combination of article marketing and blogging. It's cheap and can be extremely effective. People are making six figure incomes using this alone.

The search engine marketing, SEO, is the strongest grower of all means of online business opportunity marketing in the Internet.

No wonder, when you think the great benefits it offers to every modern website both in the short and long term and especially as to the targeted traffic.

High search engine ranking of your online home business has one hidden benefit. It means that your online business opportunity website has the power to rank high, i.e. it is seen more successful than the others. This is pretty cool for your brand image.

Google is a huge potential for online business opportunities, because its algorithm is quite clear and because about two thirds of your online business opportunity site visitors, especially the first time visitors, come through a search engine query.

There is two reasons for this. You create content always for your site visitors, because they are the only group, who buy products from your legitimate online business site.

Search engines do not buy anything, but they carry your website in front of the targeted visitors, if you will do the SEO correctly.

Both the search engines and your online income business site visitors evaluate fresh, personal content, which will offer useful material for people in a nice, exciting manner.

Your online home business opportunity site can have the most sexiest flash images or banners, but visitors are not after those and the search engine do not evaluate them at all.

They can even be harmful to them. You could see your online business opportunity from a more productive angle.

How useful tools, resources and information you can offer, which will help your visitors with their own online business opportunities. The visual elements can make your site nicer to look at or to lift some of the important elements in front of the visitor.

When you write content for your online business opportunity website, you actually build a bridge between the business idea of your site and the target group. You have also decided, what you want your site visitor to do during the visit and what kind of the visitor is.

It is productive to cover a narrow niche and to dominate that by building a strong brand image. The narrower your online home business opportunity message is, the better you will do.

The question is about your brand, the trust between you and your target group.

One important thing is to write a very sexy title, including keyphrase, or promise for your online business opportunity website, because that will help visitors to understand your offer in one second.

The search engines evaluate backlinks very much, beause they see them like votes from other websites and that means that your online business opportunity site is popular and the search engines favor popular sites and increase their search engine rankings. Simple!

A good start to build backlinks is the article writing. By distributing them to huge number of directories, they will bring backlinks and direct site visitors both short and long term. And what is best, this engine works day and night and the traffic is extremely targeted.

As every Internet marketer knows, there are two parts to SEO. The first part is easy… you optimise your website content with relevant targeted keywords. However, the second part is a bit more difficult and a lot more time consuming as it involves developing your websites link popularity.

Simply defined, link popularity is the development of links from external websites that link to a page on your site. The total number of links recognised by search engines is a major a factor that is used to determine your overall position in the search engine results.

Now, before the days of Web 2.0, link popularity could only be achieved through link exchanges, online advertising or the hope that another webmaster would see value in promoting your site. However, due to the huge growth and popularity of social networking websites, developing your link popularity can be as simple as joining a social bookmarking network.

Basically, tags (links) are created via a social book markings submission page. These tags point to the websites you are promoting. If your site is interesting, other members within the network will add them to their own personal list of social book markings. In addition, they may give the tags a high rating, which gives them even more exposure.

Every time a website is bookmarked, a one way link is created to your site. Most social bookmarking websites have high page rank scores and are considered to be authority sites in the eyes of the search engines. This results in your bookmarks being indexed very quickly and the relevant back link will be added to your overall link count.

However, for these links to be successful you will need to make sure that your social book markings submissions contain relevant, targeted keywords within the anchor text You should also be careful not to spam. Since you are only given around 100 or so words to describe your site, you should only include your keyword one time. If you do it any more than that, other members within the social bookmarking network may flag your submission. And if this happens too often, you put your account at risk of being suspended or even worse… deleted. So, just avoid the temptation all together.

In conclusion, social bookmarking offers a unique way of improving the link popularity for your website. Of course, it will never take the place of old-fashioned methods, but if you want a quick boost in traffic, it can be highly effective. Plus, unlike other SEO options, social bookmarking doesn't cost a penny to implement. On top of that, it works immediately. You won't have to wait months or even days to see traffic rushing into your website. Basically, after you submit your tags, everything is ready to go.

Who doesn't want inexpensive internet marketing tools? In this day and age when advertising your business online is the way to go, it's a must that you avail of internet marketing tools at the lowest cost possible. How can you avail of them? How can you make the most out of these low cost internet marketing tools?

These low cost internet marketing tools aim to better your website and promote them thoroughly. Read on to know more about them:

1. Software

There is software specializing in internet marketing. These programs are affordable internet marketing tools. They attract traffic, communicate your site to anyone online, harness and trim down your keywords, track your site visitors and create links to other sites. Of course, the phrase "low cost" emphasizes that you must not spend exorbitantly. Watch out for internet marketing tools that do nothing but suck your budget.

2. Website packages

Take note of low cost internet marketing tools that do the following: hosting and designing your site, getting your domain, offering technical help, configure and upload your files, campaigning for your traffic. These are available in website packages that you can avail of anytime. Choose a package caters to your site's needs.

3. Mailing lists

Notice that when you visit the Bulk Mail folder of your email, you read nothing but website promotions. That's email marketing? It boosts your business like no other. Don't worry about spamming. There's such a thing as "safe lists" that make your mails spam-free. This is so easy to obtain. Look for mailing lists for sale and let the fun of emailing begin.

4. Data Submitters

This is a money-saving internet marketing tool that works like magic. Have a data submitter of your own and amass tremendously huge hits!

5. E-books

Integrate an e-book in your site for people to download. At such a cheap price, you keep people clamoring for more and visiting your site in the process. That's one affordable internet marketing tool for you.

6. SEO tools

Internet marketing is not complete without the standard SEO tools. Search engines remain as the major powerhouse in marketing so never leave this part out. Generate traffic through this effective low cost internet marketing tool!

Here's a reminder: when you see the low cost internet marketing tool banners online, never get persuaded easily. Study the package deals; analyze the contents and benefits before deciding if you want one.

Blog naming is a big topic. A lot of people obsess over naming their blog. No doubt about it, blog names are very important. What you call your blog matters.

A great blog name can help with positioning, branding, making you or your company memorable, and much more.

A bad blog name? Well, it can position you poorly, seem unprofessional, be hard to remember, even be offensive to your target market and readers, and perhaps worse, you may hate it.

These five tips should help you choose an appropriate blog name.

1) Give your blog a reasonable name. Avant-garde names are very popular now, for example, Boing Boing and icanhascheezburger are extremely popular blogs, but do you want a "strange" name for your blog long term? Blogs are becoming mainstream, and most blogs, for example professional and business blogs, should have mainstream names.

2) Consider a descriptive name. "Blogging for Business" is a descriptive name; My Blogging for Business blog is quite simply about "blogging for business."

"Schneier on Security" is another descriptive name. It's about security and written by well known security author and thought leader Bruce Schneier. Oh, you hadn't heard of Bruce Schneier before? It doesn't matter as his target audience certainly has.

Ask the Atheist, CorporatePR, and Java Programming Blog are other examples of blogs with descriptive names.

3) Don't use the term "blog" in your blog name

First of all blog isn't the prettiest name. Some readers may be biased against the term blog. Also it will certainly sound anachronistic, old fashioned, someday, as the term blog will go away eventually.

4) Get a domain name to match your blog name if you can. You don't want a URL like myblog.typepad.com or myblog.blogspot.com. For example, Seth Godin, the New York Times best selling author, blogs at sethgodin.typepad.com and when I asked himif there was one thing he could do differently if he started blogging today, he had to think a bit, but he said he probably should have used his own domain and put his blog under sethgodin.com.

One good exception is if you use company domain name or a subdomain for your blog.

5) Your blog doesn't even NEED its own name.

You could just use your own name on the blog. This is a very valid approach when it's you that you're branding and promoting though the blog, as opposed to a product, company, or idea, etc. For example I could start a blog that just said "Ted Demopoulos" in the header, perhaps together with a picture or some graphic.

6) There is no such thing as a "perfect" name for a blog, and if it were perfect today, it probably wouldn't be perfect tomorrow. It's best to pick a great blog name, knowing that there will most likely be compromises in naming your blog, and just get on with it.

7) Relax as you can always change your blog name. Hyper popular blogger Guy Kawasaki has changed his blog name several times with no adverse efforts.

Blog names are important for sure, but don't let choosing a name slow you down. These tips should help you choose a good blog name and get started blogging. You can't have a successful blog unless you start, so just do it.

About the Author:

And for over 100 tips on successful blogging, I invite you to grab your free copy of my ebook "Secrets of Successful Blogging" at http://www.secretsofsuccessfulblogging.com

By Ted Demopoulos, author of "Blogging for Business" and "What No One Ever Tells You About Blogging and Podcasting"

One of the best ways to make money online is to work as an affiliate marketer. There are various tactics you will use in order to make money. You will be able to earn a lot if you can use all these tactics effectively.

There are some marketers who will try to promote the affiliate products by posting the affiliate links on places such as online forum. However, it will be a lot better if you can create your own affiliate website.

So, the question here is how you should create and design the affiliate site. As a matter of fact, you do not just create a site without any plan. You will need to consider the following issues when you are designing the site.

#1 Search for affiliate Programs with similar products

You will need to first of all search for some affiliate programs. If it is possible, you should search for a few programs which will provide products in the same niche. To this end you can try to see if networks such as Commission Junction and Azoogle to see if there are such products.

#2 Identify the niche

Then, you will need to make sure that the topic of your website is relevant to the products you have found from the affiliate programs. You need to identify the niche so that you can promote the products effectively.

#3 Contents should be related to the niche

The contents of you website should be related to your niche. If you are creating a site on wedding, you will need to make sure that the articles you post on your site are relevant to this topic.

#4 Easy to read and easy to navigate

You do not need to make the design of your site very fancy. However, you will need to make the articles easy to read. It is extremely important to make the site easy to navigate.

#5 Hire a ghost writer to help

You may consider hire a ghost writer to help if you are not really good at content creation. However, you will need to tell the writer clearly the tone and style of the articles you would like to have.

#6 Do not join too many affiliate programs

One last point is that, you will need to make sure that you do not join too many programs. In most cases, you will need to create one website for each program. And you may not have the time to promote so many programs.

If you have been making purchases regularly online, you would know how convenient online transactions can be. With a valid credit card, you can buy all kinds of stuff online. From physical goods such as furniture and T-shirts to electronic goods such as e-books or domain names.

To make an online purchase, you need a credit card or an electronic account that holds a positive balance. An example is a Paypal account. Paypal is one of the most popular payment solution available on the Internet. It is used by millions of people worldwide. With an active Paypal account, you can make purchases online just by logging in with your Paypal details. There is no need to enter lengthy credit card numbers or other personal information. That makes online purchases a lot more convenient.

The reason why you don't need a valid credit card is because you would have already entered your credit card information into your Paypal account. Paypal does require you to verify the credit card information that you entered. Today, you can even verify a Paypal account with a virtual credit card (VCC).

A VCC is an electronic version of a credit card. There are no physical cards issued. Each VCC can be used for only one transaction. All unused credits are not refundable. So it's important that all credits are used when making a purchase.

Here is how you can verify Paypal with VCC:

Step 1: Go to the official Paypal website and create an account. Note that there are phishing websites that look almost exactly like the official sites. These sites are built for illegal purposes. So make sure that the website you are visiting is the official one.

Step 2: You will receive an email requiring you to confirm your Paypal account. Check the email account that you used when you sign up for an account, and you should find the email.

Step 3: You may then login to your account. As soon as you login, check that your account is still "Unverified".

Step 4: Click on the "Unverified" link and you will be asked to enter your credit card details. Instead of using a physical credit card, enter your VCC details.

Step 5: Click on "Get Number" at the bottom of the page to retrieve the 4 digit verification code.

Step 6: You will receive an online statement within the next minute or so with the verification code. Use this code to verify your Paypal account.

Step 7: Your account should be verified once you enter the correct verification code. You can check the status from your account. The texts "Verified" should now appear under your name.

You can use a VCC to verify your Paypal account because a VCC has information that is similar to a real credit card. You have a 16 digit credit card number, a 3 digit CVV2/CVC2 Code Number and an expiry date. Note that a VCC expires within 24 hours if unused (for security reasons). So make sure you verify your Paypal account with your VCC before it expires.