The easiest way to make money is to promote other people's products online. Whether you do this online or offline, the principle is pretty much the same, although there are some key differences.

In the offline world, this means becoming a salesperson for a company to sell their product for a commission. In the online world, this means joining a website's affiliate program and posting ads for their product in exchange for a commission.

The main differences are the amount of work involved and the percentage of commissions.

As an offline salesperson, you generally have to make appointments with prospects, make presentations, fill out paperwork, and answer a lot of questions about the company and their product. When you make a sale, you generally get a commission of about 10% to 20% of the price.

As an online affiliate, there are no appointments to make or keep, no presentations to make, and no paperwork to fill out. And commissions are usually much higher, 50% and more being common!

Since most of us would much rather do as little work as possible and make as much money as possible, it's really hard to turn down the opportunity to become an online affiliate.

To work as an affiliate, you don't need a website, just the ability to post announcements on forums, through email, or on newsgroups.

There are many people earning a ton of money doing nothing more than promoting affiliate products. In fact, a full one-third of my income comes from the promotion of other people's products.

One particular example of someone who's getting rich as an affiliate is Rosalind Gardner. Rosalind started part-time as an affiliate in 1997 promoting dating services online. In 2000, she left her job as an air-traffic controller to live comfortably from her affiliate commissions.

By 2003, Rosalind was making $30,000 to $50,000 A MONTH from her affiliate promotions. At that time she hadn't even produced her own product and I dare say, was in the enviable position of being able to retire for life.

There are a few guidelines that will insure your success as an affiliate.

1. PROMOTE QUALITY PRODUCTS This almost goes without saying, but we have to address it anyways. Every reputable website offers a money-back guarantee, and if the product isn't worth the asking price, you'll lose any commissions you may earn before your commission check is cut.

2. AFFILIATE YOURSELF WITH A WEBSITE THAT SELLS Even if a product is good, the website may not be written clearly enough for people to understand the benefits of owning the product. I've promoted many products that failed to sell, simply because the website was poorly written or poorly structured.

3. PROMOTE IN AS MANY PLACES AS POSSIBLE In essence, you only earn a commission after someone clicks on your affiliate link and reads the website you're promoting. It follows logically that you want as many people as possible to click on your affiliate link.

In practice, this means posting your affiliate link on forums, in newsgroups, in your email signature, in ezines (you can buy ads or submit articles), and posting on webpages (your own or on other people's sites). The only caveat here is NEVER, NEVER SPAM!!

Do not send out emails to people you don't know and haven't requested to be on your mailing list. Do not submit an ad to anyone who sends out spam. Do not post announcements to forums that do not allow announcements.

In short, follow the rules, but get your affiliate link in front of as many people as legitimately possible.

4. ESTABLISH YOURSELF AS AN EXPERT While it is possible to earn commissions doing nothing more than posting your affiliate links around the Internet, you'll be able to make much more money when you have an audience that values your opinion and follows your recommendations.

Statistics show that an expert who recommends a product will earn approximately 12 times more commissions than an affiliate who simply posts a link. When you are the expert, you can post a recommendation to a product and expect to attract a lot more attention.

Becoming an expert really isn't that difficult. You don't have to know everything there is to know about a subject to be an expert in it. With most subjects, the average person knows next to nothing, so if you read a few books on the subject and follow the trends, most people will consider you an expert since you know a lot more than they do.

Demonstrating your expertise is usually done in 2 ways. Either by answering questions in forums, or by posting articles that you've written.

There are many resources available to teach you how to write a good quality article, and most articles take only an hour or so to write. This article, for example, only took me about 1 & 1/2 hours to write. Writing the Keys To Power Prosperity book only took 2 weeks. Writing isn't difficult once you know the system that makes it easy.

For the absolute best resource on writing articles, check out Jim Edward's book "Turn Words Into Traffic". In his book, Jim shows you exactly how to choose a subject to write about, how to develop an idea, how to get it written, how to edit it to a professional standard, and how to turn it into a cash-cow. Invest a few dollars now and reap the rewards over the rest of your life. http://www.keystopowerprosperity.com/Link/WordsIntoTraffic.php

And if you want to go further than writing articles, you can write a whole book and make even more money. Not just from the sale of the book, which you could easily do, but also from the recommendation of quality products that relate to a central subject (much like Keys To Power Prosperity does).

Again, Jim Edwards has the best resource to teach you how to write a book. This one he co-authored with Joe Vitale, who is known as the most prolific author online, as well as the first 'hypnotic writer'. With this resource, you'll learn how to write a whole book in as little as 7 days. Check it out at http://www.keystopowerprosperity.com/Link/7DayEbook.php

5. USE THE POWER OF VIRAL MARKETING The basic principle of viral marketing is that you combine good information that is likely to get passed around with a short marketing message that offers your affiliate link to the reader for consideration. As your information gets passed around the Internet, so does the attached ad that promotes your affiliate link.

Successful affiliates use articles to accomplish the viral marketing effect. By giving ezine editors and publishers reprint rights to your articles, you allow them to provide quality information to their readers. And by publishing your articles, they are giving your affiliate links exposure to perhaps 1000's of readers, sometimes as many as 100,000 readers at a time!

This is something that I'm just now starting to take advantage of. If you've been on my Effortless Power mailing list for a while, you may have noticed that I'm starting to include a section informing ezine editors and website owners that they have the option to publish my articles as long as they retain my resource box intact. This puts the power of viral marketing to use in my business.

When you do the same thing, you immediately increase the profits that you earn from each and every promotion you create for your affiliate promotions.

6. CONTINUE TO LEARN AND GROW YOUR PROSPERITY I've only touched upon the incredible diversity that exists in affiliate marketing. For the most part, earning money as an affiliate is tied directly to marketing the products that you represent, but without the responsibility of creating a product or running a website.

Rosalind Gardner has gotten rich with affiliate programs, and has written a book on how she does it. Her book, "How I Made $436,797 Last Year Selling Other People's Stuff Online" is the encyclopedia of affiliate marketing.

Rosalind's book details everything, from choosing an affiliate program, to setting yourself up as a business, to writing effective promotional materials, to creating a website to leverage your efforts. Grab a copy of her book now and discover how you too can earn HALF A MILLION DOLLARS A YEAR! http://www.keystopowerprosperity.com/Link/Rosalind.php

KEYS TO POWER AFFILIATE PROGRAM This article just wouldn't be complete if I didn't mention the Keys To Power Affiliate Program. You can earn a full 60% commission on the Keys To Power Mastery System (sold at $49 and $79 depending on support options). That results in commissions of either $26.60 or $43.25 per sale!

Returns on this product are very low (less than 5%), and the website sells extremely well (over 2%). With numbers like these, you can easily make money even when buying advertising!

As an affiliate, you will have access to many pre-written articles and a viral ebook (the Effortless Power mini-course) encoded with your special affiliate link. All you have to do is post the articles to various places online and share the ebook with as many people as possible.

To sign up for the Keys To Power Affiliate Program, just visit http://www.KeysToPower.com/Affiliates.html and follow the steps outlined there. Once signed up, send me an email asking for your specially encoded viral ebook and I'll create it and email it right to you so you can get started earning commissions right away.

And if you haven't already purchased the Keys To Power Mastery System, you can use your affiliate link yourself, and earn a commission on your own copy! Not many affiliate program allow this, and makes the Keys To Power Affiliate Program that much more valuable. I do this because I know that affiliates who understand the Keys To Power system will outperform all other affiilates by a large margin, so I truly encourage you to use your affiliate link to purchase your own copy.

============================================================ Alan Tutt is the creator of the world-famous Keys To Power Mastery System available at http://www.KeysToPower.com. Alan has recently created a new Resale Rights product called "Keys To Power Prosperity" in which he shares all that he's learned to attract windfall prosperity in any situation. Find out more by visiting http://www.KeysToPowerProsperity.com today. ============================================================

About Author :
Alan Tutt is the creator of the world-famous Keys To Power Mastery System available at http://www.KeysToPower.com. Alan has recently created a new Resale Rights product called "Keys To Power Prosperity" in which he shares all that he's learned to attract windfall prosperity in any situation. Find out more by visiting http://www.KeysToPowerProsperity.com today.