website can be risky, expensive, or both. So many people prefer to create websites of their own and drive traffic to affiliate partners that way.

This method can be just as lucrative as the other, but it can take just as much time, effort, and money. In fact, I'd say it usually takes just as much . . . but doesn't seem to because it's drawn out over a longer period of time.

When building a website for whatever reason, you must first build the website. This alone takes a bit of time and work. Then you must add content to

Many new affiliate marketers have a common beginner question: Do I need a website to promote affiliate products or programs? The answer is both yes and no. And therein lies the problem. Because it can work both ways, new affiliates aren't sure which way to do it.

Both methods work, they just work differently for different people. Some affiliates find it much easier to have their own website to promote from. Others feel creating a website is too much work, and they find it much easier to simply advertise the affiliate product, and let the merchant's website do the selling.

So let's explore a few of the pros and cons of each and look at both methods in more detail.

If you promote affiliate products without a website, This can be the fastest way to start making money with affiliate programs, but it requires a bit of skill, persistence, patience, and money.

If you promote affiliate products without having your own website you'll have to paying for advertising. Most often a pay per click service such as Google AdWords is used to promote a specific affiliate product. Place your affiliate link in the ad so that whenever someone clicks, the affiliate is credited for sending the visitor. The person who clicked the ad ends up on the merchant's website. If they choose to buy the product, the affiliate who paid for the ad will be credited with the sale, and they'll earn a commission.

Affiliates who use these direct promotional methods spend their time researching keywords to place their ads under, and writing or refining their advertisements. Some affiliates spend a lot of money on this method, and many make a lot of money with this method as well. Usually in the beginning though, you spend much more money than you make.

It's normal to have multiple campaigns going at once. Some of these might make great money while others fail miserably. With experience and patience--not to mention funds--this often turns out to be a very lucrative way to make money. And it doesn't take much time or effort once you've gotten a bit of experience under your belt.

Promoting affiliate products without a website can be risky, expensive, or both. So many people prefer to create websites of their own and drive traffic to affiliate partners that way.

This method can be just as lucrative as the other, but it can take just as much time, effort, and money. In fact, I'd say it usually takes just as much . . . but doesn't seem to because it's drawn out over a longer period of time.

When building a website for whatever reason, you must first build the website. This alone takes a bit of time and work. Then you must add content to t

and let the merchant's website do the selling.

So let's explore a few of the pros and cons of each and look at both methods in more detail.

If you promote affiliate products without a website, This can be the fastest way to start making money with affiliate programs, but it requires a bit of skill, persistence, patience, and money.

If you promote affiliate products without having your own website you'll have to paying for advertising. Most often a pay per click service such as Google AdWords is used to promote a specific affiliate product. Place your affiliate link in the ad so that whenever someone clicks, the affiliate is credited for sending the visitor. The person who clicked the ad ends up on the merchant's website. If they choose to buy the product, the affiliate who paid for the ad will be credited with the sale, and they'll earn a commission.

Affiliates who use these direct promotional methods spend their time researching keywords to place their ads under, and writing or refining their advertisements. Some affiliates spend a lot of money on this method, and many make a lot of money with this method as well. Usually in the beginning though, you spend much more money than you make.

It's normal to have multiple campaigns going at once. Some of these might make great money while others fail miserably. With experience and patience--not to mention funds--this often turns out to be a very lucrative way to make money. And it doesn't take much time or effort once you've gotten a bit of experience under your belt.

Promoting affiliate products without a website can be risky, expensive, or both. So many people prefer to create websites of their own and drive traffic to affiliate partners that way.

This method can be just as lucrative as the other, but it can take just as much time, effort, and money. In fact, I'd say it usually takes just as much . . . but doesn't seem to because it's drawn out over a longer period of time.

When building a website for whatever reason, you must first build the website. This alone takes a bit of time and work. Then you must add content to

ecific affiliate product. Place your affiliate link in the ad so that whenever someone clicks, the affiliate is credited for sending the visitor. The person who clicked the ad ends up on the merchant's website. If they choose to buy the product, the affiliate who paid for the ad will be credited with the sale, and they'll earn a commission.

Affiliates who use these direct promotional methods spend their time researching keywords to place their ads under, and writing or refining their advertisements. Some affiliates spend a lot of money on this method, and many make a lot of money with this method as well. Usually in the beginning though, you spend much more money than you make.

It's normal to have multiple campaigns going at once. Some of these might make great money while others fail miserably. With experience and patience--not to mention funds--this often turns out to be a very lucrative way to make money. And it doesn't take much time or effort once you've gotten a bit of experience under your belt.

Promoting affiliate products without a website can be risky, expensive, or both. So many people prefer to create websites of their own and drive traffic to affiliate partners that way.

This method can be just as lucrative as the other, but it can take just as much time, effort, and money. In fact, I'd say it usually takes just as much . . . but doesn't seem to because it's drawn out over a longer period of time.

When building a website for whatever reason, you must first build the website. This alone takes a bit of time and work. Then you must add content to

of money on this method, and many make a lot of money with this method as well. Usually in the beginning though, you spend much more money than you make.

It's normal to have multiple campaigns going at once. Some of these might make great money while others fail miserably. With experience and patience--not to mention funds--this often turns out to be a very lucrative way to make money. And it doesn't take much time or effort once you've gotten a bit of experience under your belt.

Promoting affiliate products without a website can be risky, expensive, or both. So many people prefer to create websites of their own and drive traffic to affiliate partners that way.

This method can be just as lucrative as the other, but it can take just as much time, effort, and money. In fact, I'd say it usually takes just as much . . . but doesn't seem to because it's drawn out over a longer period of time.

When building a website for whatever reason, you must first build the website. This alone takes a bit of time and work. Then you must add content to

website can be risky, expensive, or both. So many people prefer to create websites of their own and drive traffic to affiliate partners that way.

This method can be just as lucrative as the other, but it can take just as much time, effort, and money. In fact, I'd say it usually takes just as much . . . but doesn't seem to because it's drawn out over a longer period of time.

When building a website for whatever reason, you must first build the website. This alone takes a bit of time and work. Then you must add content to that website... often you have to add content on a regular, frequent basis while it's becoming established.

In addition to those steps, you must also ensure your website is both visitor and search engine friendly. One of the main reasons affiliates decide to create their own websites in fact, is because they hope to eventually get lots of free traffic from organic search engine results. So optimizing the website is another important step to success with this method.

You can always of course, simply use paid advertising methods to generate traffic to your website, but many affiliates are purposely trying to avoid paying for traffic, and that's why they choose to create the website in the first place.

Over time however, if you've done a good job with your website and traffic generation, you should be able to do less work while seeing an increase in affiliate income. Some people can see things improving within a month or two, while others are still struggling to make their affiliate website work six months to a year later.

And that's why I say it can cost about the same as using direct advertising methods. When you build a website and do all the work yourself, it feels like it's all free. You don't have to actually fork over cash other than the initial domain name payment or website hosting, and those are cheap these days. You do however, have to spend hours, days, weeks and months - doing a lot of really hard work - to start seeing results. If you think of that time spent in terms of hourly pay, you might find you've been working for something like $1 an hour. You're investing time into the chance that you'll receive a big payoff in the future. And you might, if you invest enough time and effort.

If you use direct advertising methods you're investing more cash than you are time. And you can start seeing returns much sooner rather than later. Of course you can become bankrupt much sooner too, and this is why many people choose to approach affiliate marketing in different ways.

If you have a good solid source of extra funds, you might choose to become an expert in direct advertising m