Affiliate marketing is a fast growing online business. Unlike owning an eCommerce store with tangible products, you have no inventory and little investment. Once your coupon website is set up and ready to go, all you have to do is concentrate on advertising. The following steps should get you well on your way to a new income with minimal cost to you.

Purchase a domain name. Don’t use a free sub-domain, people won’t take you seriously. You can purchase your own domain for as little as $7.50 per year. When considering possible names, think of a theme that you would like to use. Try to pick a group of people to target. Stay-at-Home Mothers are a large group who spend a lot of time online looking for extra money and good deals.

Purchase hosting for your coupon website. Make sure the company you choose does not have any restrictions against affiliate marketing or for-profit coupon websites. If you will be designing and maintaining the coupon site yourself and have no experience, make sure you find a host that supports some type of coupon site-builder. I will suggest you to use coupon site builder software. Here I am sharing my one of most favorite and most powerful coupon site builder software. I used BACS software to run my all coupon sites. It’s totally automated. Just signup & get it. You would find best design & best reliability with it. If you are going to hire someone to design and maintain the coupon site, make sure they are comfortable with the host you choose.

Fill your coupon site with information that is geared towards your target audience. You can find free information on the internet. Search for blogs that cover your subject and ask the bloggers to write articles for your coupon site in exchange for free advertising for their blog.

Once your coupon site is completely set up, join an affiliate company like Commission Junction. They will ask you to fill out an application and it will be reviewed for approval. You will have two basic options to choose from. You’ll need to decide whether you want to use incentive or non-incentive offers on your coupon site. If you choose incentive offers, you will be allowed to offer your visitors money or other items in exchange for completing affiliate offers on your coupon site. This obviously would give you a better chance of having people complete the offers on your coupon site. However, it cuts into your profit and also gives you a much smaller pool of offers to add to your coupon site.

Once you are approved, the Affiliate Company will provide you with links and banners or buttons to add to your coupon site. Try to find offers that are relevant to the niche on your coupon site and place them accordingly. Use banners or buttons when available, they are more eye-catching than text links or URLs.

Create your own advertising graphics or hire someone to create them for you. The most common sizes for advertising are 125×125, 468×60 and 88×31.

Once your offers are in place, all you have left to do is advertise. Start with some free advertising to see if you can make money to pay for other advertising. There are many forms of free advertising online. Use your 88×31 advertising graphic, commonly known as a plug, on free Plug Boards. You can find these on thousands of coupon sites. Spend your time looking for free Plug Boards on coupon sites with relevant niche to your coupon site. You can also find coupon sites with similar niche who are willing to exchange a 125×125 (button) or 468×60 (banner) with you. Find blogs with relevant niche to your coupon site and comment on their posts. Most blogs have a place to put the URL of your coupon website to be included with your post. Be sure that your comments are relevant to the post. No one wants to do business with a spammer.