The first thing I would like to discuss is why you need a blog. Blogs have a couple advantages over a normal website. They automatically come with an RSS feed which gives them a big advantage right from the start.

The other thing is that the search engines love them because they have fresh content. If you are looking for free traffic getting it through from the search engines is the easiest way.

The first way to use a blog for affiliate marketing is to do a review site. This allows you to add new reviews every so often that are on specific products and link back through your affiliate link.

If the blog is set up properly, you will get indexed quickly and relatively high compared to similar sites.

The second way he use a blog for affiliate marketing is to set up a lead capture process on your blog. Gathering leads through making an ethical bribe can be a great way to build up your affiliate marketing.

This will allow you to continue to market other offers to these people long after the initial subscription.

The third way to use a blog for affiliate marketing is to combine both in the first two processes. This is actually the most powerful way to use it.

Create reviews, but don't forget to capture leads at the same time. This way you can generate commissions from the reviews but at the same time continue to market to these people in all ongoing basis.

Now I am old and bald and probably a bit biased, but I do not want to create anything that I don't control. This is why any asset that I am going to use to generate income should be under my total control.

That is why I always use my own domain and a self hosted blog. This gives me control of the content and everything else. It also creates an asset that has the potential to be sold in the future.

The free services like blogger and WordPress.com to make it extremely easy to get started with no money. However, if you are building a business. You do need to invest some money.

You can buy a domain for less than $10. You can get a hosting account that is relatively decent for less than $10. Investing that $20 can easily be leveraged many times over.

There is free software available like one press that will allow you to create a blog and not have to pay for scripting. There are numerous plug-ins available which will allow you to customize the blog easily.

For these reasons, it is my opinion, and obviously like I said I am biased, that you absolutely must host your own blog if you're going to use it as part of your business.