But the thought of setting up your own web-based business organization can be a huge bother. You have to have a web designer, a product and then you have to sell it, ship it and handle buyers. A much easier way to work from home and run a web-based business is named affiliate marketing.

Setting up a site that works as an affiliate marketing site isn't really that hard. There are many different site building programs out there that walk you through every step of the formula.

Once you have a operational web site, you need to come up with a list of companies that will pay you to link to them. Many major websites like Amazon have an affiliate program that you can join and then get paid for merely linking to their website.

But if you really want to cash in, you don't want a webpage with just a list of links on it. This may earn you a dollar or two, but when most web surfers lurch upon these kinds of pages after a Google search, they incline to get frustrated and leave. The best path for you to go is to provide interesting web content that touches on the company you're linking to.

If you can't write interesting web content yourself, there are many companies that will do it for you for a very fair price. Once you've got your content, you can weave your links throughout it. People will discover your web page on search engines like Google, Yahoo and Ask.com and when they see the well-written content, they will hang around and read what's on your site. They will, in most cases, click on the links provided and you'll be counting the cash in no time flat.

While there is no guarantee that affiliate marketing will turn into a cash cow, with enough hard work, the odds are very much in your favor. When you meld a cool site design with quality content and a good mix of interesting links, you are sure to get a good number of hits that will quickly translate into dollars for you. Give it a try, you might be pleasantly surprised!