Once you sign up as an affiliate you are usually given an affiliate website but one has to question whether this is sufficient to start and build a successful affiliate marketing business on the internet.

Due to the fact that you cannot make any changes to an affiliate website in order to optimize it for the search engines to gain organic traffic, you are more likely to achieve success in affiliate marketing on the internet by starting your own website.

There are so many advantages to having your own website such as being able to pre-sell the products on your website by showcasing them with your own reviews, which is a highly effective way of selling. There are several ways that are open to you if you want to do affiliate marketing without your own website if building and running a website does not appeal to you. Here are some ideas.

Email marketing is something you can do without having an affiliate website of your own. If you choose this method you would direct your leads straight to your affiliate sales page from your affiliate links in the email message.

Another way is to set up an auto-responder with a series of prewritten messages about the product you are promoting, purchase leads and import them directly into your auto-responder and promote your auto-responder email address.

A link in your signature in the online forums, starting a blog and posting it there or using article marketing are some ways to promote your auto-responder email address.

If you are feeling creative you can write an e-book. Choose a specific theme and provide useful information and include your affiliate links throughout the e-book to generate sales. You want to write an e-book that is going to be read so stay focused on your theme and provide 20 - 30 pages of attention-grabbing reading as opposed to writing many pages of boring filler.

Before joining forums make sure you read the guidelines, as some of them do not allow you to place affiliate links in your forum signature. However, they do allow you to place a link to a blog or website. You could always start a free blog at Blogger.com if you do not want to run your own website.

You could then write a review of the product detailing the product features and benefits and post it on your blog along with an image of the product and your affiliate link. You could also provide a sign-up form for your auto-responder. Then participate in relevant forums and provide the web address to your blog post in your forum signature.

Another very effective way to do affiliate marketing is article marketing, where you can add a link to your affiliate page or your blog post in the resource box. Again be sure to check the article submission guidelines as some directories do not allow affiliate links. An interesting and informative article will encourage readers to click through the links in your resource box to either your blog post or affiliate link.

Although there are various ways to do affiliate marketing on the internet without a website the best way is to start an online affiliate home business with your own website. However, if that is not something you feel comfortable with then you can promote your affiliate links in the ways suggested above.