Type in make money online in any search engine and you will literally see millions of search results. Many of these web sites claim that you can start a home based internet business with no start up capital required. If you do have a computer and access to the internet the truth is you can start an online business with no start up cash. However it will take a significant amount of time before you see any real results. This is because the most commonly promoted work from home business idea is affiliate marketing.

Affiliate marketing is where you send traffic to a specific web site and are paid a commission if the traffic you send purchases a product or performs a certain action such as signing up for a list or trial. The traffic you send is tracked by what is known as an affiliate link. In theory this sounds simple and is often referred to as “automated money making”. Starting and affiliate marketing business requires you to firstly find a product or service to promote online. It is possible to find products and web sites to promote through online affiliate retailers such as Clickbank and Commission Junction. Once you have found a product to promote you need to find ways of sending traffic to these sites to generate sales commissions. It's possible to generate traffic in a number of ways:

- Pay per click advertising (This costs money)
- Email Marketing (This costs money)
- Article Marketing (This is free)
- Forum Marketing (This is free)

As you can see above there are two “no start up cash” methods of making money online. Article marketing involves the process of writing an article about a particular web site or product with affiliate links and submitting to a number of different article directories. Forum marketing is simply chatting in forums and referring people to different web sites through your own affiliate link. Both article and forum marketing are great ways to start making money online with no start up cash, but the reality is the majority of income made through affiliate marketing is through pay per click advertising and email marketing as these methods generate far more reliable traffic.

Promoting a product online can become very complicated if you attempt to use the different types of traffic generating marketing at the commencement of a marketing campaign. Personally I found that it's always best to focus your energy on one type of marketing at a time before you attempt the next type of marketing. For example when I promote a product online I also start with pay per click advertising and then once I am satisfied I have covered all areas of pay per click advertising I commence an email campaign. This is then followed by article marketing and forum marketing.

In conclusion it is possible to make money online with no start up cash, however you must be aware that article marketing and forum marketing both take time and will not always guarantee you long-term success.