If you're looking to travel for an extended period, and you don't have a lot of money behind you, then the chances are that you will have to earn a little money while you're on your travels. This article tells you how to make money from the web while you're away, through something known as affiliate marketing.

In a nutshell, affiliate marketing involves putting links and banner adverts on your site for commercial websites, that pay you commission on every sale they make as a result of a user navigating away from your site.

While it takes time and effort to build up traffic for a website to the extent that you can earn from affiliate marketing, there is the potential to make pretty good money if you make a success of it. There are thousands of pages worth of information about how to do this already on the internet, but here are a few pointers to get you started:

Pick a subject for your website that you are interested in, and that you think others will be too.

Learn how to design and code a website using HTML or software such as Dreamweaver or Frontpage. You can get books out of the library that will help you to do this.

Get yourself a web domain. It's better to pay for these as it gives you more freedom over the visual and advertising content of your site, as many ?free? domain providers require you to include their banner adverts and links, as these can put off potential users and advertisers.

Once your site is up and running, try to get some traffic for it by posting links on forums, setting up reciprocal links with other websites, and communicating with bloggers.

Once you have a lot of users, it's time to start adding affiliate links and start earning some cash from it. It's also a good idea to find out about how Google's Adsense works, and apply it to your site, as this can provide an additional income stream.