When I woke up this morning, it looked like going to be a beautiful day but within minutes, the dark gray clouds started gathering and soon swallowed the whole blue sunny sky. Strong gusty wind rattled the clothes, windows panes and slammed the doors. There was shouting and screaming as people were busily collecting their clothes, closing their windows and dragging their children to school before it was too late. There was already a storm in my house as my family members were panicky rushing to get out to work before the rain started.

Within seconds, the drizzling turned into heavy downpour. It was a 2 hours marathon rain, causing disasters everywhere. Roads were flooded, trees were uprooted, pedestrians were drenched and the public transport system was paralyzed. The siren of ambulance and police added more anxiety to the air.

Since the buses and cabs could not function in the flood, people were rushing ferociously to the train station – their only hope to get to work dry and safe. The trains were already experiencing crush loads during normal day, just imagine the sudden overwhelming amount of passengers, it put even more pressure on its capacity. To rub salt against the wound, the public transport companies had just increased the transport fare despite no apparent improvement in their infrastructure and services. The daily journey to work has become a daily struggle. This morning heavy down pour just added more insult to the injury. As a result, many people were late – reaching offices exhausted, hungry and drenched.
 
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Despite all the drama, I still managed to start work on time …. safe and dry.

No, I didn’t fly to work by private jet.

But simply because I work from home. You see, my office is my bedroom; it is just a crawl away.

No other times, I would appreciate it more than I did this morning. While my family members were rushing out to work, I was sipping my tea and eating my favorite toasts. While they were battling against the rains and struggling in the trains, I was reading newspaper and watching TV. I was cozy and warm at home while it was wet and stormy outside. I was able to empathize with them as I went through similar experiences when I was working in the corporate world.

Joy of Working at Home
My nightmare stopped when I started to work at home five years ago. It was not a pleasant experience at a start as I used to depend on my colleagues heavily whenever there was technical problem. I missed them very much for lunch or social gathering and even the juicy news from the water-cooler. Nevertheless, I managed to set up my home office and business sole handedly and never looked back at my choice.

Ever since I started working at home, I finally realized the true joy of it.

… I started to have more personal time.

… I feel more relax and peaceful as no more bosses screaming down my neck.

… I can eat, walk and breathe more slowly now.
    (My body love the slow pace. I used to have gastric problem whenever I was
stressed but it gives me lesser problem now.)

… I have more time for my family members especially, my mum.
   (She used to complain her children treat the home as a hotel).

So if you dislike the daily traveling nightmares, increased transport fares, overcrowded buses, trains and even the rain. Think of the possibility of working at home. Be it your own business or working remotely from your office, technology has made this possible now.

You’ll soon discover the joy of working from home and love it more than I do.

If you have positive experience working at home, please share at the comment box below. I would like to hear how you are doing at home as a home entrepreneur.

Many people dread the ideas of starting a business at home because of the instability and unpredictability of income. Majority prefer to keep their day jobs even though they are unhappy and disappointed with their jobs. The only reason is a guaranteed pay check is paid every month regardless rain or shine.

This is the most common misconception of starting a home business. It is, however, no longer true if you choose your home business model carefully such as affiliate marketing business model. It is probably the safest and fastest way of building home business online without the hassles of keeping inventory, billing, shipping and customer services. It allows you the total freedom of working anywhere and anytime.

Besides the benefits mentioned, the most powerful part about affiliate marketing is its ability to give you long-term and recurring income just like your day job. Most importantly, you only require to put in one-time effort of attracting customers to sign up. Once the customers sign up, you will be paid lifetime commission as long as the referred customers continuing using the merchant services. This is definitely an ideal option because you would not need to spend endless hours and efforts to continue promoting the affiliate products.

But beware not all affiliate programs in the market provide such commission structure, you must check carefully before signing up. A good place to start is MoneyToplist.com; it is an online directory which listed all the affiliate programs that provide residual and lifetime commission. These types of affiliate programs will not only pay you the first sales commission but as long as the customers who continue using the merchants’ services, you will be paid. That is how you can achieve long-term and recurring income for your home business.

How to Select a Recurring Income Affiliate Program?
Generally, the commission for recurring income affiliate programs is quite low compared to those who give one-time commission. It ranges from 5%-15% while the one-time commission can pay as high as 60%. Personally, I prefer performance-based commission, meaning the rate of commission pay to you will increase based on the overall sales volume you can refer. For example, one of the email marketing company offer their affiliate commission based on the following structure.

• Level 3  =  $250/monthly revenue earns you 15% revenue share
• Level 2  = $250 – $5000/monthly revenue earns you a 30% revenue share
• Level 1 = $5000+/monthly revenue earns you a 40% revenue share

I find this is an excellent motivator as affiliates will be motivated to work hard to get more sign up. It also act as a marvelous guide as affiliates can work out in advance how much they need to work on to get the desired income every month.

Where to find Recurring Income Affiliate Programs?
Besides the MoneyToplist.com mentioned above, the most direct and fastest way of finding recurring income affiliate program is going through the affiliate networks. Some of them include Commission Junction, Clickbank, LinkShare and ShareASale, they are good places to start. All these different affiliate networks will give you different categories and various types of products to choose from.

Besides the affiliate networks, there are other independent affiliate programs available in the market but not listed anywhere. You can do a search in Google and approach the affiliate manager directly. If you can prove to them you can be their good promoter, they have no reason to reject you.

What are the Most Popular Recurring Income Affiliate Programs?
The most popular recurring income affiliate programs come mainly from software subscription services or digital products. For example, website hosting services, email marketing services, traffic analytics services, keyword research services, search engine optimization services and ecommerce hosting services. Digital products include home-study courses, video courses, how-to eBook and membership training courses are equally popular.

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It is not easy to find the right recurring income affiliate program to promote. Nevertheless, it is still worth the effort because of the great reward it provides you at the end.

I hope you can see that it is possible to build a recurring and long-term income at the comfort of your home. A stable and predictable income does not necessary has to come from a day job.

If you think otherwise, please leave your comments below.