Do you want to work at home and make an online income? Or, do you have a website and you want to generate more revenue?

One thing you can do is promote residual income affiliate programs. Promoting affiliate programs is one of the easiest ways to generate online income. Why?

With any online income you must have a service or product to sell. You must be able create this product or service and then you must be able to fill orders.

If you are not an expert at service or product creation, you can spend a lot of time and money in creating new products. The testing phase could even be more time consuming!

Selling your own service or product online also means the creation of a website, learning how to write ad copy, setting up a marketing plan, being able to accept payments online and also by doing the work. If you're selling a physical product then you will need to make or buy the item, package it and shipping the product can become very costly.

If you provide a service and are just starting out, many individuals start by doing free jobs to build credibility. Then when you charge for your service you are still limited by how much work you can actually handle.

Residual income affiliate programs in my opinion are a great way to start generating an online income. People are making a full time living promoting affiliate programs. As with any business it does take time and effort to become successful.

Residual income affiliate programs allow you to sell another company's service or product on your own website and make a commission on every sale or lead. You do not even need to handle the transaction.

Your job is to drive traffic or unique visitors to your affiliate link. An affiliate link is a special URL code that will identify customers coming to the company's site from your advertising. It will likely be the website address with a code attached to the end.

Two-tier affiliate programs will even pay you for the referrals of the people that you refer. I promote many programs that promote many levels deep. This is a powerful way to generate steady residual flows of income. Remember, this is money that you once made, and will keep building steadily over time.

Where do you begin? How do you know which affiliate programs to promote?

Look up affiliate directories in any search engine. You will find many. Some affiliate programs pay just once for a sale. I recommend that you use affiliate programs that will pay you a residual income. That means that if you refer a person to a website and they pay the $20 monthly fee, you will make a percentage of that every month as long as they are a customer.

I don't think that many people understand the importance of residual income.

After finding a program that interests you, please take time to read the terms and conditions. Make sure that pay outs are not based on a high commission earning or you may never see your money. Also try to choose programs with high commission rates.

Some of the highest paying programs are ebooks and downloadable software. The great thing is there is no physical product to make or ship. If you are satisfied with the terms then you need to sign up - usually a simple process.

I recommend that you only work with programs that have been around awhile and are reputable. Don't jump into anything without doing your research. If you are going to put a lot of time and effort into promoting the program, you want to make sure that you're not wasting valuable time.

The next step is marketing. The reason affiliate programs are so great for newbies is that you only need to focus on marketing - not making - your product.

Many affiliate programs have tutorials and step by step guides on how to market and give you tools such as banners, product feeds and more.

Other great tips on marketing include creating pay-per-click campaigns,writing articles, distributing free e-books, and commenting in online forums.

Make this your goal, spend some time researching and start promoting residual income affiliate programs today. With some hard work, you just might be able to put an end to the dreaded 9-5!