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I recently spent three and a half months on short-term disability for stress related heart issues. I learned one thing while I was home, there is another way to live life. You do not need to deal with the corporate garbage you deal with. You do not need to sit in traffic every day. You do not need to worry about what your boss thinks of you. You can become your own boss and do it with very little risk.

When most people think of being self-employed they think they need to own a pizza place, used car lot, or any other small sized business. This may have been the case twenty years ago but it is no longer the case. The internet has opened up so many opportunities for people to become financially independent. Most of them are very little risk and require no money on your part whatsoever. Some of the opportunities do require a small investment if you are interested. By a small investment I mean less than $100. Then there is the business I would put into the no-brainer category and that is being an affiliate.

If you do not know what an affiliate is, it is someone that promotes products of companies and receives a commission based on any sales they generate. In order to become an affiliate you typically need a website of your own and you simply sign-up with the companies matching the theme of your site. You can build a site of your own for very little money. My site costs me $250 a year to run. There are dozens of programs out there that manage affiliate programs for companies:

Linkshare: They handle companies such as Wal-Mart and Target. https://ssl.linksynergy.com/php-bin/reg/sregister.shtml?offerid=7097&mid=560&siteid=uwXZf9PiG5I-k0ZATz

Commission Junction: http://www.cj.com/index.jsp - this is the most popular of the programs. They manage some of the biggest names in retail.

BeFree - https://affiliates.befree.com/Affiliates/index.jsp

Performics- http://www.connectcommerce.com/global/login.html

Shareasale- www.shareasale.com

There are many more than these, they are just the most popular and manage the most well-known companies. As you can see, from the companies they manage, being an affiliate has tremendous potential for making money. It costs nothing to join any of these sites or to join any particular merchant. In fact, from all the research I did before I entered into this endeavor, if you come across a company asking for money to join their affiliate program it is probably something you should avoid.

Like I said earlier, you will need a website of your own to promote these companies. If you are interested you should read three of my other articles to avoid some of the mistakes I made when I first began this process. They are: Starting Your Own Website http://www.best-internet-bargains.com/starting%20your%20own%20website.dwt, How to Pick Your Domain Name http://www.best-internet-bargains.com/article%20picking%20your%20domain%20name.html, and Picking the Right Web Hosting Company http://www.best-internet-bargains.com/article%20web%20hosting%20company.html.

It does take some time to get your site up and running, it is not going to be instant cash flow into your mailbox. I read that it will take up to 6-9 months for a steady and consistent stream of money to come in the door. When you compare it to a regular business like a pizza place for example, you are actually better off. Most people say they lose money the first year. Because you are investing so little into this business any money you bring in will basically be profit.

You can realize some profits much sooner by investing more money into SEO programs (explained more in the other articles) and advertising. I chose not to do that because I wanted to keep expenses down. The best part of the whole thing is, you are the boss now, you can decide if you want to spend the money or wait a couple more months for results and not spend the money.

If you do go with a website of your own there are other ways to generate revenue on top of the affiliate sites. You can put advertising on your site. You have two main options with this source of income. The most popular is Google Adsense. A less popular, but possibly a better choice is, Chitika. https://chitika.com/mm_overview.php?refid=sbianchi. I went with Chitika because I read some very good things about them and because they post pictures with their ads. The pictures help attract people's attention helping to increase click-throughs. Google's ads do not have pictures. In my opinion they just seem to blend into the background because most sites have them, you get used to seeing them.

If you want to go with an opportunity that provides the website and all the tools you need to get started you could go with TMI Wireless http://www.tmiwireless.com/affiliate/?aid=5361 The advantages to these sites are the initial work is done. All you need to do is promote the site and watch the sales come in. The drawbacks are you do not have the same flexibility in the look of the site as you would with your own personal site.

Regardless of what avenue you decide to pursue you can see that there are numerous low-risk opportunities available to you. You can either continue to go to work, hate it, complain about it, and do nothing about it or you can make the leap into the happy lifestyle you are craving. Which choice are you going to make?