A lot of people think that a work at home job is some sort of mundane, envelope stuffing, boring or poorly paid activity and yes if that is what you want, it can be. But there are plenty of other alternatives that allow you to work at home and that can be quite enjoyable, interesting and rewarding. They can also be considered as free to set up, work at home jobs because you can start your business with zero charges, assuming of course that as you are reading this then you already have a computer and access to the Internet.

So what are these alternatives, well the first option is to get involved in affiliate marketing or Internet marketing as it is often referred to. There are a number of affiliate marketing opportunities out there and once you have an Internet presence you can apply to companies like Amazon and eBay to ask for an affiliate relationship.

Once this is agreed you can place adverts for the products and services they supply on your websites or blogs. If anyone goes to their website from yours, via the adverts or links you have placed, and makes a purchase you will receive a commission. This type of affiliate relationship is called 'Pay per action' (PPA)

Another idea for creating an online business is to place adverts on your websites or blogs on behalf of companies like Google or Konterra. With this method if someone clicks on their adverts you will get paid a small commission. This method is called 'pay per click' (PPC).

One little word of warning however, never be tempted to click on your own PPC ads or ask family or friends to do this, because this would effectively be fraud and with companies as sophisticated as Google they will be sure to recognise it as unusual activity, will refuse to pay you and you will be kicked off the program. Its also a good idea if you click on an ad in error, to let them know and stop the payment so that you don't get kicked out for making a mistake.

This is all probably sounding a bit too good to be true and it is unless you are prepared to put in some work. You have to put in work on researching how to set things up, how to get traffic or visitors to your sites and work producing useful and interesting content that will attract visitors to your websites, blogs and associated adverts. There really is no such thing as a free ride, but with a little consolidated effort you can build a reasonable income.