If you are anything like I was when I started out you've probably seen the hundreds of ads claiming quick riches for little or no work. One thing you should know up front: no matter what the program, or what its ad copy promises, you will need to do some work in order to generate profits.

Online marketing could be defined as promoting, selling, and delivering goods or services online. The good news is, they don't have to be your goods or services, and you don't have to have your own website in order to profit from this relatively new income vehicle.

What you will need though, is a web address (URL) ? but more about that later.

So, where do you begin?

One of the easiest ways to profit online is through affiliate programs. Affiliate programs are set up by vendors in order to increase their sales. They are basically employing an online sales force. Affiliates sign up for the vendors? program and are paid for referring people to the vendors? web site. The affiliate may get paid per click, per sale, or per lead, depending on the affiliate program. The most common though is to be paid per sale.

To accomplish this you, as an affiliate marketer, only need to get prospects to go to the vendor's website, once there, it is the job of that website to finish the sale. For this reason it is important that you choose wisely before blindly diving into any affiliate program. First, you need to decide if the vendor's website would entice you to make a purchase. If the answer is no, chances are it is not going to be a profitable affiliate site.

To find a good affiliate program check out one of the following: Clickbank (specializes in downloadable products), Commission Junction, and Share It (just add the .com). These sites offer thousands of affiliate programs between them and with a little research you should be able to find a good one.

Getting your own domain name

Once you've found an affiliate program you'd like to represent, head over to GoDaddy.com and buy yourself a domain name. You need a domain name for several reasons, but the most important are: it will give you a good advertising image; You'll be able to track visitors; and it will give you the ability to switch landing pages.

You can get a domain name at GoDaddy.com for about $9.00 ? very cheap. In fact, for every affiliate program you intend to promote you should get yourself a domain name.

You should choose your domain names carefully. Pick something that represents what you are marketing. For instance, if you are an affiliate for a company that sells car seat covers, choose a name like car-seat-covers4U.com. This will help your image even further, and if you decide to develop a website at some point you'll have a great URL in place and ready to go.

Masking your domain

Once you have the domain name, go to your GoDaddy back office and choose Manage Domains. Next click on your new URL. Then click on Forwarding. Now you'll see a link that states, ?Domain is not forwarded. Click here to see details or to modify?. Click on that link then do the following:

In the Forward To box, type in your affiliate URL.

Check the Mask Domain box.

Click Save Changes.

Once this is done it will take about 24 hrs for the changes to take place. After that start promoting your new URL and it will automatically take prospects to your affiliate website.

Marketing your affiliate sites

Now you are ready to start your marketing campaign. There are just too many ways you can market the site to cover here, but I will go over a few of the best and perhaps easiest:

Put your masked affiliate URL in the signature box of your emails. This is one of the most overlooked yet easiest ways to market an affiliate program.

Join two or three online forums that are somehow connected to what you are marketing. If you're promoting skate boards, go to Google and type in ?skate board? +forums, or go to their Forums link and type in Skate Boards. Once you've found a couple of online forums, visit regularly and offer opinions and advice, or answer or ask questions. Make sure to put your new affiliate URL and a few lines of copy in your signature box at the end of each post. One word of warning though. Don't under any circumstances promote your affiliate products in your posts. Doing so will quickly get you kicked out of the forums.

Write an e-book or manual about the topic of your affiliate program. In the e-manual or book include your masked link. Sell it on EBay for 0.99cents. Doing this you are effectively giving the book away, but because it has your affiliate links in it there's every possibility that readers will click the links and go on to purchase something you will get paid a commission on.

Write articles and submit them to ezines such as EzineArticle.com. You'll have a resource box to put your affiliate links in at the end of each article. The articles will be picked up by webmasters and used in other ezines, on web pages etc. and you'll get a lot of exposure. Study this article to see how I'm doing just that. I've used ezine articles on various ezine sites to make thousands of dollars promoting my main business. You could easily do the same, just study this article to see how I do it.

There are many other ways you can promote affiliate sites, I've barely scratched the surface, but with just the techniques I've outlined here you could soon be making a good living online.