Just what is affiliate marketing? Basically it is "Selling Other People's Stuff" and it is a great way for your to make money on your mom blog.

Affiliate marketing starts off with a merchant. That merchant has a product they want to sell. It might be a physical product like a pair of pants or a clock, a digital product like a music download or an eBook, it could be a magazine subscription, or maybe they are trying to sell membership to their membership site.

The next part of affiliate marketing is you, the blogger. A store like Old Navy might have an affiliate program and once you sign up you have the potential to make money promoting their sales and coupons. You share with your readers about the sale on the Old Navy site this week. Embedded in the link to the Old Navy site is your affiliate link. If that reader goes to the Old Navy site and makes a purchase you earn a commission.

As mentioned above, those products don't have to be physical but they can be digital like an eBook. A great place to find eBooks to promote on your mom blog is ClickBank.com. Sign up for their affiliate program and then start promoting them right now. There are so many titles that you will find something that appeals to the vast amount of people on the Internet. Every ClickBank product has a commission rate that is set by the vendor, ranging from 1% to 75%.

Leads vs Sales

As I showed you above, you can make money by selling other people's stuff like in the Old Navy scenario and that is called a Sales affiliate offer. But, you can also make money promoting "other people's stuff" through Lead Generation offers. A lead basically works the same way but you don't have to worry if the reader makes a purchase. You would still write about the offer that Old Navy has but if they have a lead offer you would earn flat price based on what they are willing for that person to click through from your site to the Old Navy site. I have found that leads pay from 20 cent in the low range to $3.50 in the higher range. I tend to see a lot of $1.10 lead offers. But, if you have a lot of readers then promoting one offer can still earn you a fair amount of cash in your pocket.

This was just a brief overview of Affiliate Marketing Basics but stick around for more details in the future about how to sign up, what is required of your the blogger to promote affiliate programs, what affiliate programs are good for mom bloggers, and more.

More and more women are leaving the workplace to stay home and be full time mommies. Since most households still require the income that Mommy was bringing in prior to the birth of her child, these enterprising women are coming up with ways to work at home. This allows them a chance to spend those precious first few years with their children and still help pay the bills.

Companies employ some of these moms in “telecommuting” type jobs. Others, however, are striking out on their own to earn their keep. These enterprising “Mommy Entrepreneurs” are starting cottage industries and most of them are using the world-wide-web as their storefront.

If you are a mommy with an online business, your blog can be more than just an ongoing article or story. It can become a valuable means of drawing potential customers to your website. For instance, take the case of a neighbor of mine makes custom diaper-bags. She does beautiful work, and can add a compartment for this, or embroider the child’s initials on the outside of each bag. She worked at a textile plant before “retiring” to work at home and raise her son. Her bags are beautiful and each one is made to order. Still, even with a quality product, she had trouble finding an outlet for them in our small hometown. So, she turned to the web. Her website is simple, providing shoppers with photos of her work and a price list and contact information. She has email and, for marketing purposes, she writes an ongoing blog. Marketing? Blog? Yes. Marketing and blog can be a beautiful pairing. It’s really pretty simple, and quite profitable.

If you are a mommy with a product to sell on-line and are writing a blog, make sure you include words that are in the address of your site, or in the byline it carries. In her blog, my neighbor frequently uses phrases like “diaper bag”, “customized bags” and “baby’s initials”. When someone does an online search for a “customized baby’s diaper bag with initials”, these phrases will cause the engine to pull up her site, and it will show up in the list of potentials provided for that shopper to choose from. The rest is up to her site and her skill. She is doing pretty well as of this writing, and enjoying the time she is spending teaching her son the alphabet in the process.

Using phrases that will refer customers shopping via search engines to your site has a name. It is called Search Engine Optimization. This means that you will optimize the amount of potential hits from search engines by inserting as many key phrases in the text of the blog as it will contain without being saturated to the point of becoming boring. Almost every blog on the Web has been written with SEO in mind. This makes the blog a valuable source of marketing for on-line businesses, including those businesses that are run by a mommy.

This is a guest post by Gavin

While I am still perplexed as to what I call the "rhyme or reason" of why some blogs make money. I have seen some "butt ugly" blogs doing extremely well.

I used to be a web designer and the goal of creating a website was make it the best looking site it could be to please my clients and the public viewing it. However, I am learning that sometimes the uglier the site the more money it makes.

When I am talking about money for these kinds of sites I mean with Adsense, not affiliate programs. It is very easy to blend Adsense ads into an ugly site.

There are blogs that are crammed full of ads

• ads on the left
• ads on the right
• ads in the middle of the page
• ads at the bottom of the page
• ads in between posts
• and ads anywhere else the person can cram them in

Are those butt ugly blog making money?

Let's break it down. What would someone visit a blog for? If the blog is setup correctly and they get search engine traffic then there is a good chance a butt ugly blog will get as much traffic as a esthetically pleasing blog.

Maybe the person who designed the blog doesn't know how ugly it is or even care. If I end up on a site like that I don't usually go back most of the time because it drives me crazy. Either the ads are annoying or the colors are off. I know there is nothing I can do to fix it so I just don't return. I don't even care if they have good content if the site is that annoying. Kind of like when I go to someone's house and the picture is crooked on the wall. I want to fix it so bad I could scream and sometimes do when they aren't looking :-)

But, are butt ugly blogs are offering their readers something they need? Are they are solving a problem, answering a question, or fulfilling a need of some kind? They could very well be doing the very thing that brings in traffic but the visitor might not stay around long enough to find out because the design makes them cringe or annoys them so much they want to leave.

The ugly blog could work to your advantage. If the visitor doesn't like the design or the blog is too busy with ads then they just might click on one of those ads and leave. The ads could be the thing that sticks out the most. I think many times that "butt ugly blogs" do make more money than pretty blogs for just this reason.

Remember, we come to the Internet basically to solve a problem, fulfill a need, or look for answers. If your blog can do any of these things you can make money and be successful in attracting visitors and loyal readers.

However, many bloggers strive to make their blog looking pleasing to the reader which is totally understandable. Your blog represents you and your personality. This is a good thing and it is what I tend to do but sometimes I know it is hurting me in the long run because visitors tend to find a home on my site and never leave. Readers don't make you as much money as visitors - well that is true with Google Adsense.

A pretty blog will encourage visitors to come back and be regular readers. When that happens you have to be more creative in the way you make money. A butt ugly blog will definitely make more money with Adsense and probably less with affiliate programs. Affiliate programs do better when the visitors turns into a reader and sees you as someone to be trusted. The loyal reader will tend to listen to you when you are promoting a product or service and that is how you make money through affiliate programs.

Do you have a butt ugly blog you love or hate? Tell me about it.

#asw10 If you are a mom blogger and are using affiliate programs, I want to hear from you. I will be a guest panelist at the upcoming 2010 Affiliate Summit West in Las Vegas on January 17th and before I go I want to do some research on my session's topic, Mommy Bloggers Changing the Face of Affiliate Marketing.

I want to know what kind of affiliate programs you are already using, what kind of offers you would like to see, what works, what doesn't work, and how affiliate programs can be better for mom bloggers.

With this information I will be able to share what I know from my own experience and the collectible experience of other mom bloggers who make money blogging.

Please take 3 to 5 minutes to fill out this survey. By giving me this information and giving me permission to use your blog's name and URL you could get some much needed advertisement for your blog both on this site through the article I will write and at the conference when I give out quotes I receive.

#asw10 I recently did a podcast series with @loxly Deborah Carney from AffiliateABCs and I will be a guest panelist at the upcoming 2010 Affiliate Summit West conference in Las Vegas.

Below you will find two of those podcasts. If you get a chance, listen to them so you will get to know me a little bit better. Then feel free to email me and we can discuss how to work together or meet up at the Affiliate Summit. If you check out my Facebook page you will see the schedule I have picked out while at the Summit.

Podcast #1: My Introduction

Podcast #2: Using Social Media to Drive Traffic

I will be discussing, along with 3 other "mom bloggers" how the mom movement is changing affiliate marketing. I believe we have a lot to teach the online community about alternate ways of making money online and how you don't have to work in traditional ways anymore.

Blogging as a whole has changed a lot for moms, who in the past, didn't have the opportunities to stay at home and make money for their family. When my kids were growing up I stayed at home and didn't go out and work until my youngest was in school. I know that it not the norm anymore and I am glad that the Internet is giving moms all kinds of opportunities to expand their horizons.

Not only can you make money online but now you have a community of other moms to turn to for support and help. I offer free advice on this sites that comes from my experience as a mom who has "been there" and someone who found blogging and is now making a living doing it. The freedom of staying home and working for yourself cannot be compared.

Blogger (owned by Google) is partnering with Amazon Associates to help you monetize your Blogger blog. If you already promote Amazon products this will make it much easier. You won't have to go to Amazon.com and find the code for the products you want to promote. You can use the new Amazon Associates Blogger widget from the comfort of your new post page.

With just two clicks, Google Blogger users can now add revenue-generating Amazon product links to their blogs.

To get started log into your Blogger.com account, click Monetize, and then the Amazon Associates tab on the blog you want to setup.




Either choose to setup a new Amazon Associate account or use an existing one. You can setup a new Amazon Associates account right from that Monetize section. If you use an existing account you will need to know your ID. If you don't know what that is you can go to Amazon.com, log into your account and you will find it on the top left-hand side of your Associates homepage.

You will also need to check to Product Finder Blogger Editor to be enabled and then Save what you have setup. The Amazon Associates widget will now be enabled and it will appear when you go to create a new post or edit an existing post. It will show up on the right-hand side of the screen.




To use it just bring up an existing post in Edit mode or create a New Post and then type in a keyword in the Product Finder to find products that relate to what you are writing about today. Then you can insert a text link, image, or text and image to that product with a click of a button which will include your Amazon Associates ID, enabling you to earn up to 15% in referral fees from Amazon.

You will also be able to show dynamic content in their blog's sidebar using a new set of integrated Sidebar gadgets, such as gadgets for MP3 clips from the Amazon DRM-free music store, an Amazon Deals gadget, and an Amazon Search box.

If your blog primarily makes money with Adsense then you should optimize it properly on your site. If you are focusing mainly on affiliate programs then it doesn't matter so much.

Too many bloggers do not have Adsense setup properly on their blog. I have seen this over and over. Why would you put your Adsense ad blocks at the bottom of the page? How many people actually make it to the bottom of your page or stay around that long? Why would you bury your Adsense ads on the sidebar in between badges from other bloggers?

After reading that title of this post you probably think I am trying to sell something or it is a scam. Actually, it is the honest truth. It's not a trick and it happened because of some modifications I did to my blog. I noticed the jump in Adsense earnings within hours of this simple tweak and it continues to stay at that level. I thought you might like to know how you can do it too.

Of course, with blogging and making money with your blog you need readers or visitors to click on your ads. That's the first step. To get traffic you need to have a blog, write informative, topic focused articles that will attract readers, and get relevant, anchored textual, keyword backlinks for your topic and keywords. This post is not about how to get that traffic. If you don't have traffic and are not making any money with Adsense this article will probably not help you. Once you have some steady traffic and are at least making some money with Adsense come back and read this post again.

As women we worry way too much about what people think about our blog. Will they like it? Is it pretty? Will they approve? Do they like me? To make money you have to stop this train of destructive thinking and focus on facts.

To make money blogging you have to think like a businessperson.

When you go into your favorite clothing store, grocery or drugstore do you think they care if you like their business or approve of them? Not really - well maybe a little but that is not how they make money and stay in business. They make the store pretty to keep you there and keep you shopping and buying. They make you feel at home so you will spend money, not to make you like them. Their ultimate goal is to separate your money from your wallet and if they can make you comfortable, happy, solve a problem, or fulfill a need they can do just that.

Stores are arranged in a way that make you want to shop. There is a reason why the milk is at the back of the store. It is so you will have to go through the entire store to get there and along the way you will see "impulse items" and buy more things. Think of Adsense as those impulse items. When strategically placed on your blog they can be a source of income. When they are not placed properly they can either be ignored or an eye soar.

I am always tweaking my blogs because I like to test out different methods of making money with Adsense and other ads, checking out hotspots on my blog, and seeing what people are actually using my blogs for. By testing and tweaking you can learn a lot about what people do while they are visiting your blog and sometimes you can make simple changes that either help you make more money with Adsense. When I learn something new I want to try it out and see if it works. This little trick definitely worked for me and it will work for you too if you are willing to implement it.

Where do you position your Adsense ads on your Blogger blog?

Do you use the checkbox in the Post gadget (Layout | Page Elements) to allow Adsense to put ads under posts? Or maybe you make an Adsense ad block and drag it to the bottom of the page or put it under a long string of ads on your sidebars.

When you click that checkbox Adsense ads will show under the first 3 posts on a page. The keyword here is UNDER. So, if you have a very long article then the reader will absorb all you have to say and THEN see Adsense. Maybe they will click on the Adsense ads and maybe they won't. By that time they have gotten what they came for and might just move on to the next post or next blog.


Also, when someone visit yours blog through one of your post pages and does NOT come in through your homepage they are most likely seeing only ONE post and not three. If that is the case then they will only see ONE Adsense ad block UNDER that post so there is less chance they will click on an ad.

When I started blogging this is exactly how I had my Adsense ad blocks setup because I didn't know any better. While you can make money with Adsense setting it up this way there is a more effective way of setting up Adsense to generate more clicks.

Listen to this - DO NOT USE THE STANDARD ADSENSE LAYOUT by placing them between posts or using the monetize option Blogger gives you. By customizing where you have your Adsense ads placed on the page you will most likely double your Adsense earnings.

Where should you place your Adsense ads and why

You should place at least one Adsense ad block at the very TOP of your page ABOVE the post or just below the post title. Why? When someone visits your blog that will be the first block of text they will see. Maybe they will take the time to scroll down and read the article but maybe something in the Adsense text will catch their eye and they will click on the ad and you will make money.

Remember this

When someone is clicking on your Adsense ads or any other ad you have placed on your site they are LEAVING your site. Do you care? If you care too much you won't make money. If they like what they see they will be back. If they don't come back don't worry, there are always plenty of new visitors that can take their place. I now have enough permanent readers and "fly by night" visitors that satisfy my need for readers and people clicking on Adsense ads. Regular readers don't usually click on Adsense ads. Visitors who are passing through or are looking for a solution to a question or problem are your most likely candidates for Adsense clickers.

Do you want to make money with your blog and Adsense?

Recently I tried to help a blogger double her Adsense earnings overnight by using this method and this person tried it for about an hour and removed it. Why? They didn't like the way the Adsense ad block looked at the top of the page. They thought it messed up their blog's image.

That's too bad for them because they are losing out on a lot of Adsense earnings they could be making.

Do you want to make money or do you want to keep your perfect image

I can tell you this. I have a bunch of blogs and have Adsense at the top of everyone of them and it has not hurt my image at all. People still read and my readership is actually growing. The people who want to stay will eventually ignore those Adsense ads and the people who don't want to stay will click (hopefully) and be on their merry way.

You will never please everyone with your blog so why try so hard. Please those who want to hear what you have to say and make money off of the rest.

Blending Adsense to Match your Blog's Style

Another sure fire way to get visitors to click on an Adsense ad is to make sure the Adsense ad block blends in nicely with your blog's style. The way I do it is to make sure it has the same background color and link color as what I am using on my blog. You can also use the same font that you blog is using for the posts so that the Adsense ads look like they were meant to be there.

And, by blending Adsense ads into your blog's color scheme it will look like it is part of your blog layout and is much less annoying. If an ad stands out many people will ignore it or it will be obvious that it is an Adsense ad. The key is to make it blend so that it looks like a natural part of your blog.

How to add an Adsense block at the top of the page

The easiest way to add an Adsense block at the top of the page to help you double your earnings with Adsense is to just create an HTML/Javascript gadget/widget and then drag it just above the Post gadget/widget.

Here's how:

1. Log into your Adsense account.

2. Create an ad by clicking Get Ads and the Adsense for Content.

3. Create an Ad unit. Customize the background, title and link color to make your site's color scheme. Make sure the link color matches so it will look like a part of your blog.

You can use a 486 x 60, 300 x 250, or 336 x 280 banner ad sizes. Do not use a 728 x 90 as it most likely will be too wide to fit just above the post area.

4. When you are done copy the HTML code (CTRL + C on your keyboard).

5. From your Blogger.com Dashboard click Layout next to the blog you want to work on.
Page Elements will be showing.

6. Click Add a Gadget from any area of the Page Elements screen.

7. Click the plus sign next to HTML/JavaScript to add it.

8. Paste the Adsense HTML you just copied (CTRL + P on your keyboard).

9. Click Save.

10. Drag the Adsense Gadget just above the Post area. Click Save at the top right.

It will take up to 10 minutes for the Adsense ad block to appear on the blog. At that point you will be able to see what it looks like and decide if you want a different size.

If you want your Adsense ad block to be centered then go back to the Gadget, click edit and put <center> before the Adsense code and then </center> after the code.

Try this method and see if your Adsense earnings will double just like mine did. I am super happy at the results and I have no gone back to the way I used to display my Adsense ad blocks.