To earn commissions on affiliate products, all you need to do is promote them, make the sales and earn the commissions.

You don't need to have a fantastic knowledge of internet marketing to create your own products. You don't have to do a ton of research to develop some amazing ebook or software product. The owner of the affiliate products has already done that, all you have to do is sell the products.

Easy right?

It is easy, and it's a great way to earn some quick money. It's a great way to earn long term money, but the problem with promoting affiliate products long term is that you are constantly doing the work promoting the product to get the sales.

Ultimately to make your home business runs smoother and with less effort on your part it would be good to have a residual income. A residual income is when you have a constant income stream coming in on its own. Having set up a certain aspect of your business to keep bringing in a stream of income.

There are a couple of strategies you can use to be able to create residual income with affiliate products.

The first strategy is to have a lead capture page so you can start building a marketing list of targeted prospects.

You can do this by offering them a free report or free ebook in exchange for them giving you their name and email address. Then you can set up your autoresponder with follow up messages. You can set up as many messages as you like and once set up they will automatically be sent out to your list on the days that you have it set up for.

By doing this your autoresponder continues to send emails to all your new customers that sign up through your lead page. With just a little bit of effort to set up your page and your autoresponder messages at the beginning, can be a low effort income maker for a long time to come.

You can promote not just one, but a number of different affiliate products to your email list over a period of time.

The best approach with an email list is to be personal, let your email customers get to know you without pushing new products down their throat with every email you send to them. Be gentle in your selling approach and earn their trust, then they will be more willing to buy from you.

Another way you can set up a residual income stream with affiliate products is to promote affiliate products that continue to pay a monthly commission.

These may be membership sites that if you refer people to join you will receive a monthly commission for as long as that person remains a member.

You can also use affiliate programs such as web hosting companies and autoresponder programs, some of which will also pay you a monthly commission for as long as your referral remains a member.

These types of affiliate programs are an amazing way to maximize your income by giving you a recurring income as opposed to a one-time sales commission.

Having a recurring income from a membership site is more reassuring for you also, as you will be reasonably sure of that income on a monthly basis, rather than being unsure as to whether you will make many one-time sales commissions.

Creating yourself a residual income is definitely worth doing to earn money long term without having to put in the constant effort for the long term.