Recently, a new work from home business, rebate processing, has come about. There are a number of websites and companies offering training to those interested in becoming certified rebate processors. You are paid $15 per transaction and all that is required is that you fill in some simple forms. You can work part time or full time.

Well, I took it upon myself to spend the $39 on rebate-processor.com for the sake of research and this is what I found...

The first step is to create an account with an affiliate service called ClickBank. This is a third party service that primarily manages the affiliate accounts for several thousands of informational products.

Rebate Processor .com provides step by step instructions guiding you through the sign up process with ClickBank. They also guide you through retrieving your "hoplink" or affiliate ID with products of your choice.

Your next step is to begin selecting companies and products that you would like to work with and process rebates for. Ironically, their suggestion is to select other work from home opportunities and home based business informational products, such as Ebooks and online courses.

The third step provides the following list of options: - create a blog, - place ads on free classified, - send opt in emails - place ads on pay per click - article marketing

A blog is defined as: a contraction of the term "Web log" is a Web site, usually maintained by an individual, with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order.

Many blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject while others function as more personal online diaries

The primary direction provided by rebate processor .com is to use Blogger.com, which in my opinion is bad advice. You see, Blogger.com is owned by Google therefor you do not own your domain name or blog, Google does.

Google is very stringent in enforcing its policies on Blogger and are known to shut down blogs for days at a time while they research its legitimacy, I have experienced this myself. So, I would suggest that you avoid using Blogger.com for anything more than blogging for fun.

Placing ads on free classified sites is very time consuming and yields very poor results, again, I know this because I have tested it. Search engines like Google, Yahoo and Internet Explorer do not display these ads. Someone must purposely seek out a free classified ad website and do a search on your product of choice in order to find your ad.

When a person seeks out a free classified website, they are doing so to find a used car, a antique winchester rifle or a puppy, not a work from home digital informational product.

To purchase a decent mailing with qualified prospects that are seeking the information that you are promoting will cost you about a dollar to two dollars per email. The average number of emails vs to average number of people who open and purchase through this email is 100 to 1.

If you are making $15 off of that one sale, that means you are spending at least $100 to make $15. That is not a wise business decision.

Many internet marketing gurus have written Ebooks on the science that is Pay Per Click advertising. For those of you who may not know, search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN have their own form of paid advertising, just like TV, magazines and newspapers. This is called Pay Per Click and it is just like it sounds. When a person clicks on your ad, you pay a fee.

Some ads are as little as $.05 a click but many ads are well over $5.00 and up. Not only is there the cost of pay per click but there is learning how to properly set up an effective ad campaign. Google is the master of pay per click and if you do not set up your ads properly they will raise your prices or shut you down completely. Enough said.

Finally is article marketing. At this very moment, you are witnessing an example of article marketing. This is one of the better pieces of advice that rebate processor .com provides its customers. But, again, this is skill that takes some time to learn and perform effectively.

Many article directory websites have policies that do not allow you to use affiliate links in your articles and the content of your article needs to be of a certain level in order to be published.