Home Business Equals Income Hedging - A Practical Approach to Protecting Your Existing Income   

By Rick Carbone 

With all of the negative economic news that has happened in the last several weeks, it seems appropriate to discuss the benefits of home business ownership as a way to supplement or “hedge” an existing income.   

Starting a home business online is a simple and anonymous way of making some additional income.  Starting with the basics you can simply become an affiliate of someone else’s product and receive commissions on each sale.  You don’t need a web site to do this, however it’s a bit easier to do if you do have one. 

The next question most people have is, “How do you sell anything without a website?”  The answer is easy, if you know how.  The easiest way is to create a signature that has your affiliate link in it, and post to forums or blogs.  The key is to create the signature using html so that your affiliate link is not visible.  Here’s an example you can use: 

<a href="http://www.homebusinessresearch.com">The Best in Home Business Information</a> 

In the above example “The Best in Home Business Information” is all that anyone will see.  If they click on it, they will be brought to the home page of Home Business Research. 

Another way to advertise your link for free is to write an article about the product you are promoting and submit it to the major article directories with your affiliate link embedded into your bio information.  The critical point is not to blatantly advertise your product but to subtly extol it’s benefits or even better review it within the article. 

This has become a very popular way to promote a business or website or an affiliate program.  In order to join an affiliate program, it is sometimes necessary to have a website, however there are programs that will allow you to join without having a site.  For example ClickBank is a very popular site that allows affiliates to sign up for free.  They are the home for over 11,000 digitally downloaded products.  Some products offer as much as a 75% commission on a sale.  You can sign up for free at www.clickbank.com as an affiliate only.  If you want to become a publisher of products you can do that here, but there is a charge of $49.95.   

ClickBank also has a very diverse set of products covering a multitude of interests so it’s fairly simple to find a number of products that you can sell.  Another affiliate program is Implix which provides several programs for home business owners.  They have great payouts and are reliable and legitimate. There is no charge to promote Implix products as well. 

Other large affiliate managers such as Commission Junction, LinkShare and Google Affiliate require a website or blog, although they are free to join as well.  As always you can get site setup information from Home Business Research in greater detail.

So creating an online home business for extra income is a smart idea in this economy.