If you want to make money online, affiliate marketing is one of the easiest ways to get started, and you can even do it with a zero-dollar budget. Earning online is not easy - and everyone who promises you "autopilot income" conveniently forgets to mention how much work it takes to set up a passive income online. But if you are willing to put in the work, it absolutely is possible.

The steps are pretty straightforward. First, you should find a product that you want to promote. It can be anything - for example, something that is related to health, or computer games, or self-help or travel. Sign up for their affiliate program, and then you'll get your personal affiliate link.

Next, you should learn how to create a website. That's not nearly as difficult as it sounds, and you don't need to spend any money on it either. Services like Squidoo or HubPages allow you to create your own website easily, without having to know anything about website programming or HTML coding. All you have to do is write something about your topic and put the affiliate link that you got from the vendor into your website.

Next, you want to drive traffic to your website, so that many people visit it and click on your affiliate link and order the product - so that you can get your affiliate commission. This is called search engine optimization, and it consists of using the right keywords, writing articles and submitting them to article directories like EzineArticles, bookmarking your pages with social bookmarking sites like Digg and commenting on other people's blogs with your sites address in the comment field.