So you are interested in making money online working as an affiliate marketer, but you do not have a big bankroll.  If you are willing to put in the time and effort you can actually do very well without ever spending a dime of your own money.  When I first started out in Internet Marketing, all of my focuses were spent doing Bum Marketing.  All of my efforts were split between two different sites.  I was either making blogs on Blogger or I was making lenses with Squidoo.  Depending on what you are looking for in your efforts, both places have their ups and downs.  If you are looking to do a blog, definitely go with Blogger.  If you are looking for a more static website that you can go in and change periodically, I would suggest Squidoo.  But as far as ease of use, page rank, and functionality, here is what you will find.

Blogger.com is where I first started out with Internet Marketing.  Just starting out, Blogger is great because it is virtually foolproof.  It is really easy to use.  Point, click, drag-and-drop, and you are done.  Blogger is owned by Google, so it has a lot of built in features that you use that are incorporated into it.  In terms of pagerank, Blogger boasts a seven (on a scale of zero to ten, a seven is pretty strong).  So, if you build a nicely optimized blog with nicely researched keywords, chances are that you will be able to get your blog ranked fairly easily.  If you would like, you can set up Google Adsense on your blog, and you will be able to make the full amount from using it.  You are allowed to have affiliate links which is also a plus!

When it comes to Squidoo.com, you are looking at a totally different picture.  Like I already said, Squido lenses are more like static websites (alot of people wil even call it an article submission site on steroids).  Here, ou have a sense of community.  People vote on the popularity of your site, so it has a rank in the community.  You can mak a little money here and there witout ever setting up any affiliate links.  This is possible because every site already has ads, adsense, and other things like this built in.  THe only thing different here is that Squidoo keeps a portion of money made from these ads, and the rest is split up amongst all members (the more high ranked lenses you have, the more you make).  Just like Blogger, you can still have affiliate links. There are also hundreds of things that you can incorporate into your site to make it look more professional.

When it comes to the free sites, there are benefits and shortfalls with all of them.  These two were personal favorite of mine, and  have personally done pretty good with both.  If you are looking for more information on using these sites and monetizing them nicely, I have a couple of resources for you.  For more about Bum Marketing, I would suggest you check out the free resources that Travis Sago has put together at The Bum Marketing Method.  If you are looking for a great resource to start making money within a few weeks and you have a few dollars available to purchase a book, I would definitely check out PotPieGirl’s One Week Marketing.  Both of these resources have made me a lot of money, and they continue to do so each and every day!

I hope that this has been helpful for you!  I look forward to your questions and comments below!

Go Hard or Go Home!

Chris Jensen