The economy is really getting to most people now. This is not an American problem anymore. It is affecting the entire world. Yesterday, Lehman Brothers closed their doors and as I watched the news, I saw executives with boxes of personal stuff coming through the doors for the last time. Some say, when interviewed, that they did not see this coming.

Once the housing market started going down, it was a certainty that this too would follow. So people are frantically looking for a means to replace their income and the Internet is the driving force. But what do you do when you have relied on a weekly income by a company to now rely on something so much more uncertain.

If you are new to the Internet, you will have to know that there are Internet Marketers that have already secured their place in the market. However, that does not mean that you cannot find your own niche. In fact, that is how you will be successful online and finding your own niche is the key.

Your next step is to become an affiliate, which means that you are going to sell somebody else’s product. You have no time to create your own especially if you are at the point of desperation.

However, there are 5 simple questions that you must ask yourself before you begin to tread on this holy ground:

1. What kind of value does the product have?

You want to sell a product that you can put your reputation on. You don’t want to sell something that you cannot stand on. So do your research and find out if the product owner has a valid refund policy and how many average monthly refunds have been received.

2. Is this an automated program?

You want to be involved with an affiliate program that you don’t have to provide any type of customer support. You also want to have good marketing resources from the product owner. You want to market a digital product that customers can easily download upon purchase. You want to get paid automatically and be rewarded for the sales that you make.

3. Is it possible to earn residual income?

I do market other programs that are not residual, but I find that these are only one time purchases. You may not see that customer again. However, residual income, which is also called passive income, is better because once you get that customer and the customer is satisfied with the product or service, this will be your customer for as long as they stay subscribed and you get commissions from what they pay monthly over and over again. It is quite similar to an insurance salesman. Once he or she sells that policy, they gain residual income for the lifetime of the customer. The Internet also has affiliate programs with residual income opportunities.

Life Time Commissions is an affiliate directory that lists a variety of different residual income. You can search for the name online.

4. Is the product something that I would enjoy selling or believe in?

If you have knowledge about something, you are more apt to want to present it to someone. It is like watching a movie and loving the movie so much that you tell everyone you know about the movie and you are not even getting paid to do that. Can you imagine getting the word out for something that you really enjoy or like? This is how you should choose your affiliate product because it will make you want to stay committed and focused in your marketing efforts.

5. Is there any assistance or support provided?

A lot of affiliate product owners do not provide email support, but they provide a log in website that you can go to find marketing materials as well as post a support ticket with any questions or comments. Not all of them do this. So if you are the kind of person that wants to be hand-held, you may want to look into other means of support such as specific niche forums. You can actually go to forums and post your questions and there are always people who are willing to answer them. You will also learn a lot from the forum and get great marketing tips and advice in your online business.

So if you are a newbie affiliate and want to enter the Internet marketplace for the first time, you don’t have to be afraid. There are a lot of willing marketers that want to give back because they have been where you are at right now. The search engine is a good tool for you to search for whatever you need. Explore the horizons of the Internet. It may be that the door that was just closed end up to be a blessing. Sometimes, we get too comfortable in our JOBS and doors have to be closed for us to take chances and grab other opportunities for growth. This might be one of them.

If you would like more information about how to become a successful Affiliate Marketer, Download the Newbie Affiliate Earning Guide here.

Are you a mere beginner in the field of online marketing?  Do you lack the resources to capture the interest of established joint venture partners?  Lacking the budget required by PPC campaigns?

Don’t fret just yet!

Read up as I discuss five free but highly effective methods you can use to market your business in the World Wide Web.

1. Marketing with articles.  Write an article relevant to the subject matter of your online business. Ensure that this article delivers something noteworthy.  Submit the article to the main article banks in the World Wide Web, particularly www.ezinearticles.com, www.goarticles.com and www.isnare.com.  Don’t forget to attach a resource box, which should mention informative facts about yourself or your venture, as well as the link to your website.  Do this at least 3x every week.  In due time, you will get direct traffic consisting of the people who got interested about your articles, as well as indirect traffic courtesy of a higher search engine position achieved with thek help of the countless back links you are sure to get per article.
2. Exchanging links.  This is much akin to you scratching a partner’s back, and him scratching yours.  Other internet marketers are also searching for exposure for their ventures.  Partner up with them by ensuring to include their link on your web pages if they will reciprocate your kind deed.
3. Distributing press releases.  Several offline and virtual world entities are always on the lookout for noteworthy items to republish.  They monitor newswires for such works.  You can write an objective, noteworthy news item about your online undertaking.  You may announce the launch of your business, minus the hype, naturally.  You may announce the publication of your web pages.  You may announce the launch of a new product, without the slightest tinge of a sales pitch.  Prepare a press release, and enroll the same to online newswires like www.prweb.com, and in just a few hours, offline and online entities will be picking it up, driving a humongous volume of visitors to your web pages.
4. Exploit the power of user-driven web tools.  The beauty of Web 2.0 websites is that the online denizens themselves are empowered to dictate what’s hot and what’s not.  You can use this to your advantage by specifically targeting social news networks (Digg.com, Reddit.com, Propeller.com), social networking websites (MySpace.com,. FaceBook.com), and social bookmarking services (StumbleUpon.com) and making them a part of your marketing adventures.  Yes, Web 2.0 websites are free to use and abuse.
5. SEO.  80% of the traffic that you will be able to win for your website will be referred by the search engines.  And search engine traffic won’t cost you a single cent, if you can prepare your web pages to attract the attention of those search engine spiders.