Running a work at home program with affiliate marketing as its central strategy can be tough, especially if you are new. But, unlike traditional businesses, where you have to spend money testing various marketing methods and advertising venues, you will be happy to learn that your work at home program initially doesn't have to cost you more than what you've spent already on domain registration and website hosting. I say initially because as you start to grow and gain success, you might want to consider such advertising venues as PayPerClick and paid listings in engines. However, with this being said, you are now going to be shown how to use free reports to promote your online business. You can apply these techniques to any affiliate program you are promoting.

First, you will go to Clickbank, since this is the easiest route for beginners. Once there, go to the Clickbank Marketplace, then go through each of the nine major categories. The more popular ones, if you wanted to start with these, are business, health, computer and Internet, and Pet. You don't need to concern yourself with the sub-categories in each, at least not yet. Get familiar with Clickbank and using their techniques first, then dabble a bit in the sub-categories.

Go through each of the main categories, and visit the top four products from each category. Visit the sales page of each of the products, and look for the top two or three benefits (not features, benefits) of each product, as spoken of by the vendor site.

You will take these key benefits you have identified on the vendor's sales page and write a short report on each of these key benefits. To clarify, each key benefit will have its own short report, so that you will end up with two to three reports all promoting the same product.

If you can't write a report on your own, or don't want to, then find someone willing to write them for you and pay them a couple of bucks to knock one out for you. The main point here is to have two to three short reports focusing on a key benefit from the vendor's sales page, all promoting the same product.

Another important point to remember is that you should include references and links to the other one or two reports in each of the reports you write. Cross-promotion is essential.

What do you do with these reports once you have them? Pick one report that will be your main ?work horse.? This is the main article that you will be promoting all over the Internet. What you also need to do with this main report is to allow those who get it to be able to turn it around, with their information, and send it off to their lists or promote it across the Internet itself. Don't worry, they aren't taking your report, that you worked so hard to produce, and using it for their own benefit. Remember, links to your other two reports go with this report. Now, without any effort on your part other than what you continue to do yourself , you will start getting targeted subscribers through this main report that is now in the hands of others.

Now you have the opportunity to crack open that brand new website of yours. Your next objective is create a nice looking landing page for your visitors to...well, to land. Hence, the name. They click on one of the links in your distributed reports, have a desire for more information, or the product itself, and need a place to go for this. Your landing page serves this purpose. Here, they will sign up to receive the second and third report.

Another tool you need, in order for this to work properly for you, is an auto responder. If your web host does not supply you with one, I suggest looking at Aweber or GetResponse. Freeautoresponders might leave the taint of unprofessionalism on your work. Aweber is the best; for around $20 a month it gives the most features. What an autoresponder does is deliver automatically timed follow-up messages to visitors who have signed up to get your free reports. You should load your autoresponder with at least five messages, each message focusing on a tip or mini-solution and promote the same affiliate product as the ultimate solution.

Once you've got these items in place, you are on autopilot. Find another product and repeat. You are well on your way to a successful work at home program.