Of course if you have ever tried affiliate marketing, you know that picking a product and collecting commission are the easy parts. The hard part is marketing the product. One of the decisions on marketing as an affiliate is: "should I have a website to market from?"

As an affiliate, you are reluctant to utilize a website. Websites can be complicated to set up. Websites take a lot of time to design and the links have to be set up and if you need to change the content you have to know HTML and FTP or you need to pay someone to do it. If you wish to sell another product you need another website.

Today's internet environment has lead to new ways to get an online prescence. Blogs are a tool you can use that is perfect for affiliate marketing. They are easy to set up, you don't need to be a programmer to do it and they come pre configured to do exactly what you need it too. The designs can be changed at the click of a mouse, so you can make it look however you like.

You can easily market any kind of affiliate product with a blog. It can be used with downloadable information products or with hard products or can also be used with affiliate programs like Amazon.

On your blog, post a review or a few words about the affiliate product, include your link and give them the opportunity to buy. You can make another post about the same product the next day or you can post another product. You can categorize the products so readers can quickly find the exact information they are looking for.

The great thing about using blogs is that new posts can be automatically posted to directories and search engines by having the blog notify them after each post. This is called pinging and it is built into most blogs.

Another advantage to using blogs is the ability to use RSS feeds. RSS feeds send new posts directly to RSS subcribers that sign up. They would get your message delivered right to their desktop.

Blogs also offer you the ability to add preconfigued plug-ins that can help you customize your site with all kinds of extra tools. There are a number of add-ons that can help optimize your blog for the search engines. Some can optimize your title tags. Some can even create a Google friendly site map.

Blogs enable you to optimize and enhance your affiliate marketing while giving you your own online presence. You can market any kind of affiliate poduct and any number of affiliate products on a customizable website that is easy to use and change. Your affiliate blog can be listed in the search engines and you can optimize it for those search engines.

Blogs are so well adapted to affiliate marketing, you will think they were developed specifially for that purpose. Using a blog can be an easy and inexpensive way to increase your success as an affiliate.