Affiliate marketing is a great way to make money online, but many people give up long before they see that first check. Creating a business is a tough thing to do, even if it is online. A quick search on the internet will show that there are millions of articles, content and ebooks that are filled with information on how you too can get a piece of the work at home pie. For those who want to use affiliate marketing to make money online but are strapped financially there are several no cost ways to start earning commissions. The methods are free but do require an investment of time to be successful. They generally are not as fast at generating commissions as paid advertising such as google adwords but are more of a gradual way of building income online. Blogs are the most effective tool to earn affiliate commissions without incurring any expenses. Writing niche blogs around a specific topic that are keyword rich tend to get ranked well in search engine results. It’s important for a blog to be updated often and provide a feed to draw in traffic. Posts to update a blog should be done everyday. Anyone who runs out of ideas for updating his or her blog can find free articles on just about any topic in article directories. These free articles can be used as blog posts. Feeds from other blogs can also be included in a blog to provide updated information. Having a interesting and frequently updated blog will recieve links from other sites and will get noticed by the search engines. Writing articles and publishing them online is another no cost affiliate marketing technique. The articles can have an link to an affiliate site in them. A good strategy I recommend though is a link to a blog or site with information related to or reviews of the affiliate site itself. Once an article is published it is often reprinted on many websites, blogs and ezines all accross the internet. This alone will produce some targeted traffic. Oftentimes the articles will rank well in search engine results and also the links the articles generate help the affiliate site rank well. Traffic exchanges are another free affiliate marketing method. With traffic exchanges one views other websites to gain credits which can be redeemed for traffic to their own site. Traffic exchanges are much less effective than blogs or articles. There are two reasons for this. First of all exchange traffic is not targeted. Secondly traffic from exchanges are from people who are mainly interested in generating hits to their own websites. Even so commissions can be made from traffic exchanges. The time spent on traffic exchanges should be much less than on blogs and articles though. Placing advertising on free classified sites and ezines is another affiliate marketing tool. Since there is usually a lot of others placing these free classifieds an ad should really stand out from the others and compel someone seeing the ad to click on it. Using free affiliate marketing methods to make money online isn’t a way to “get rich quick”. It takes a lot of time writing and placing ads. If one works at it consistently especially blogging and writing articles they should be able to build a nice income over a period of several months and not have to spend any money doing it.Network marketing like MLM or multi level marketing has been around for ages. So has affiliate marketing. However, what works better is a matter of personal preference. Here we explain what each of these entail. What is affiliate marketing? Affiliate marketing is carried out online and all affiliate marketers get their compensation on each transaction. In affiliate marketing the kind of products sold are those that are purchased only one time by the customer. Thus the more the marketer sells, the more his or her chances at gaining income online. The compensation plan in affiliate marketing is purely based upon performance benchmarks. Thus the more the sales, click through and registrations the affiliate marketer manages to get, the more the chances of income. The actions which will result in compensation are outlined between the marketer and merchant before starting the contract. What is network marketing? The compensation plan in network marketing is quite similar to affiliate marketing. However, the main difference is in the number of levels through which compensations can be achieved. The sponsoring company can pay the network marketer upto several or even unlimited levels. However, the original agreement will outline the restrictions in the maximum amount of payment as well as the maximum number of levels the payout can reach. Usually individual arrangements and contracts will differ from one network marketing program to another. This makes comparison quite difficult. The network marketer earns a direct referral fee which is a result of his recommendation of a friend or acquaintance. He may also avail a leverage fee which is due to his “downlines” referring their friends and associates into the network layers. Differences between the two There are many differences between affiliate marketing and network marketing as outlined below: Presence of layers: While network marketing has several layers or strata of people referring other recruiters into the system, affiliate marketing is devoid of any such layers. Ongoing effort: In affiliate marketing one needs to put in continual efforts in order to gain sustainable income on a long term basis. However in network marketing just with initial efforts, one can continue to reap long term dividends because of the leverage fees associated. People to people: Network marketing success largely depends on the ability to have good interpersonal skills and enhancing the “downlines” more. However affiliate marketing is more of an individual effort which focuses on gaining maximum profits through individual attempts. Types of products sold: In the case of network marketing the kind of products sold are primarily those which will be bought by customers again and again. Thus the sale is a repeat process. However in the case of affiliate marketing the type of products sold are such that customers will buy them only once. Ease of selling: In network marketing it is more difficult to sell products to customers. It’s because supply far outweighs demand. Because of the many layers and sellers trying to sell the same product, the likelihood of the product getting sold gets diminished. In the case of affiliate marketing, it is easier to sell these products especially since they involve more than one type of product. Thus there are more choices and options in an affiliate marketing program. Stagnation: In network marketing it is very easy to reach a point of stagnation. In other words, once the layers start to increase, the chance of selling the product reduces. This can result in the network marketing chain stagnating in terms of sales. On the other hand, in the case of affiliate marketing, although initially a lot of effort and time maybe needed and sales maybe sluggish, over time the results can be exponential sales. Downlines: In the case of network marketing, each person has two downlines. These two downlines have two persons under them and so on. However in the case of affiliate marketing, the maximum number of layers it can go to is 5. Final thoughts Both affiliate marketing and network marketing have their own benefits and drawbacks. No matter which marketing method you opt for, be sure to assess all compensation plans and choose the marketing tool wisely. At the end of the day, you want to maximize your profit potential and it is solely up to you to decide which model suits you best.