Generally, it was necessary to use a cloaked link, such as you can get at tinyurl, but it could be done. There were better ways of linking, but they required a website.

Overheads of less than $100 a year

But now you need to bite bullet and get a website. There is no need to spend more than $7 a month for web hosting, and the domain name, which is the name of your website, costs about $10 a year. Not much of an overhead for a business is it? Just under $100 a year, compared with over $10,000 as a minimum for a tiny offline business.

To he fair, you really need an autoresponder, which costs $180-$360 a year, and if you want your website to be designed for you, you could spend $300 a year for hosting instead of $84. That could be good value. Even so, you would spend less than $700 all in.

Keep the website simple

What sort of website do you need? For affiliate website marketing you need a simple website, with the minimum of graphics. The only graphic you need is a header graphic, about 600 x 100 pixels to 750 x 100 pixels. The rest can be done by text. You can get a header logo done for about $25 online, or you can get some graphics software are make your own. It is probably best to buy one.

Get a memorable domain name

First, though, you need to select your domain name. This will need to be unique, so the obvious terms are no longer available, and haven't been for years. A good solution is to combine your name with affiliate or affiliate dump or affiliates treasure or something like that. Remember that you are building a brand, so whizzbangaffiliate or harrysmith-affiliatenews is better than toptips-affiliatemarketing, which is rather easily forgotten.

With the domain name registered at namecheap or another top-line registrar, you can get the graphics done. After that you just need to write some articles about the products you are marketing. Reviews of products do well. You also need a few articles about the topic itself. Even if you do not know much about the subject you can easily find out by reading three or four pages in Google.

Overall, ten pages is enough, but this needs to include an 'about us' page and a 'privacy policy' page. The privacy policy page just needs to say that you hate spam and that you will not divulge email addresses to anyone else. Don't forget the privacy page. You don't need an 'about us' page, but it helps build credibility.

What about layout? Avoid sidebars in bright colours, and make sure that the main text is black on a white background. The whole idea is to draw the surfer to the text and to keep him or her reading. Remember that, learn a bit of copywriting and you will be well away.