Affiliate Marketing - Part 1: How To Get Started

The internet is full of information about affiliate marketing. All you need to do is type the words into your favorite search engine and you will find a plethora of sites offering their version of ‘insider secrets’ on how to become a millionaire with affiliate marketing. In this series we will look at the information I have found to be helpful in my own journey to financial freedom.

Blogging Is One Of The Easiest Ways To Get Started!

Now, there are many ways in which you can begin your affiliate marketing business. Creating your own website is one. A couple others would be to create your own E-Book or E-Mail series. But, the one I have found to be the absolute easiest way for the beginner to familiarize themselves with affiliate marketing is with a blog.

Running a blog is fairly simple. For the person with absolutely no experience, it is easy to learn and there are many free options of where to host your blog. If you are a bit more experienced or want more control of what content you can use, you can choose to have it hosted somewhere like HostGator. We will go into self-hosted blogs a little bit later in the series, but for now I will use the popular free blogging platform called Blogger.

Blogger is an excellent free option for putting together your blog. It is easily set up and customizable. The blog that you are currently viewing this post on is a blogger blog and I have customized it to make it much more personal. That is just my preference. You may customize yours in any way you like. You can buy a custom domain name from GoDaddy and have it point to your blogger blog, which is preferable, or you can use the blogger sub-domain.

One of the bet things about using a blog is that they actually ‘ping’ different services to let them know when you have added new content. When your blog is ‘pinged’ this simply means that your blog is made available for google bots to analyze and index it in the search engines so that when someone searches for content that is contained in your blog it comes up in the search engine results. This can bring you backlinks (other websites that link to your blog) and increase your blog’s popularity.

Before setting up your blog you will need to know what it will be about. What particular area of information are you going to be blogging about? Many experts on the subject of Niche websites will advise you to base your site on only high paying keywords. However, using less popular keywords can also lead to increased ratings in the search engines. If you use too popular a keyword as the theme to your blog, you may end up with too much competition and sabotage your own efforts of becoming easily found.

When choosing your niche, do not pick too broad of a subject. For example, don’t make your blog about nursing. Rather make it about becoming a traveling nurse. Or, instead of dog care, use poodle care. A great way to make choosing your topics a little bit easier would be to use a keyword tool such as the Micro Niche Finder. You just type in a broad keyword that interests you and it helps you whittle it down to a more specific niche.

Since you will be writing a lot of your own content you will want to choose a topic that you already know something about and enjoy or one that you want to learn a lot about. Spend some time thinking about this before creating your blog and choosing your keyword. I recommend this because you will want to use your keyword in your domain name or sub domain name.

So, your homework for today - Think about what you would like your site to be about. Since you can find affiliate products for just about anything, don’t worry about that at the moment. Just think about what would be fun for you to write and learn about. Use Micro Niche Finder to determine what specific niche you will be using. Then head over to blogger.com to set up your blogger blog.





All articles have been written by Carrie Medford and are the sole property of Carrie and www.workfromhomewithcarrie.com. This site is protected by copyscape. Nothing may be used without permission, however you may ask nicely to be able to re-publish with credit given to the original publication. Thank you.

Six Ways To Separate Family & Business For WAHMs

I originally was going to title this post ‘Six Easy Ways To Separate Family & Business For WAHMs’, however, the word easy would have been going a bit overboard. Working from home is not easy and trying to do it while a bunch of kids are demanding your attention is even harder. Chances are, you struggle to get everything that you need to do done whether it is folding the laundry, cooking dinner, providing love and attention to your family or even getting a blog post written! Here are a few tips that may help you to snag a little bit more time when it comes to getting your work done while raising a family.

1.) Set Work Hours & Stick To Them - Treating your home business like, well, a business is the first step to being successful. It can’t continually be on the back burner. If you worked outside of the home, your boss would not be pleased with your performance if you were continually putting off your daily tasks or not showing up at all. Set a work schedule for yourself. Designate days and times that are devoted specifically to working on your home business and make sure that you do it. This can take quite a bit of planning on your part. You will need to make sure that your family is otherwise occupied and that you have a time period in which you are not going to run into a lot of distractions.

2.) Get Dressed For Success - Just because you can work from home in your pajamas doesn’t mean you should work in your pajamas. Remember, you need to take yourself seriously in order for others to take yourself seriously. Sure, other people won’t necessarily be seeing you. But, it changes your whole mind-set if you have gotten out of your ‘lazy clothes’ and made yourself look nice. Imagine if the people on the other side of your computer screen could see you. What kind of impression would you make? If you do freelance type work and have to apply to work for someone else, what if they want to schedule an impromptu video chat through Skype. Would you be ready?

3.) Designate Your Work Area - If it is at all possible, use a separate room with a door for your home office. If you do not have the luxury of being able to do that, then perhaps you could invest in a partition or find some way to separate yourself from the main part of the house. It is very distracting when you are constantly surrounded by all the goings-on in your home. Especially if it is a busy one, like mine.

4.) Work When It’s Quiet - Remember that one of the reasons you work from home is because it allows you the flexibility to work during the hours that are best for you. This comes in handy especially when you are not able to separate yourself and your work area during the busiest parts of the day. Personally, I find that I work the best when I schedule my work hours during the late evening or early morning when everyone else is asleep. The tv is not on, the phone is not ringing, playtime and mealtimes are over or have yet to begun. Find the time when you are most likely to not be disturbed and schedule your work hours then. You may have to stay up later or get up earlier. But, the ability to complete your tasks and work with a clear head will be worth it. You will be more productive in a shorter amount of time.

5.) Turn Off Your Instant Messengers - Friends and family may be of the opinion that because you work from home you are always going to be available to give them your undivided attention. If you are working on the computer with your messenger set to available, this is exactly what your buddies think you are - available. Avoid being distracted by chatty friends by setting your messenger status to ‘busy’ or putting up a custom message stating that you are working if you must have it open for business purposes. Better yet, have a messenger that is designated just for business contacts and keep your personal one off.

6.) Have A Separate Line For Business Calls - If you are able, have a separate phone line for business use only. It does not come across as very professional if your four year old answers the phone when a client or prospective employer calls unexpectedly. If this is not possible, at least have an answering machine or voice mail with a professional sounding greeting to screen calls.

These are just a few suggestions to help you find a routine and work more productively in your home business. If you practice them routinely, you should find that you are able to accomplish a lot more than if you were dealing with constant interruptions and distractions.

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