In affiliate marketing, an affiliate is someone who promotes a vendor’s product or service for a commission. So for example, lets say there’s a vendor selling dog collars online and they’ll give you 5% of every sale that you send to their website. As an affiliate marketer you would create an affiliate marketing blog and more or less promote the dog collar product and include links in there where your visitors can go to the vendor’s actual website to make the purchase. The link will be formulated in such a way that the vendor will know the visitor came from your website and you will get a commission if they purchase a product there.

A great way to promote the dog collar on your own affiliate marketing blog site is to write several blog posts reviewing the product and talking about it. You don’t really want to “sell” them the product either, because most times the vendor’s site will already have a sales pitch. The visitor is already looking to buy dog collars, so you really just want to encourage them to go purchase the collars at the vendor site you’re promoting (through your links of course). A good way to do that is by writing about your own actual experience with the product. You want to be honest and truthful too. With the affiliate marketing blogs I create I always get the product first, use it, then give my honest “two-cents” worth.

Affiliate marketing blogs are a great way to earn some money from blogging. There are tons of products out there you can promote, and a very popular place where it’s really easy for you to create an account and start promoting products is through Clickbank.com. They have TONS of digital and “e-book” products. A great product to help you get started with promoting products through Clickbank is George Brown’s Google Sniper system. I bought this system a while back and George is really thorough. He pretty much takes you by the hand and shows you how to create a blog site and sell Clickbank (and other) products quickly and easily.

I hope you found this post interesting and helpful. I’ll be back to talk more about earning money from blogging and creating affiliate marketing blogs, so stick around!

So what is a blog site? Well, starting with the name, “Blog” is a short name for “Weblog”. A blog can be a website in itself, or sometimes just a part of a website. It’s usually maintained by an individual who makes regular entries. The entries the person writes are typically displayed in reverse chronological order, so the newest entry is usually displayed at the top. That person could be writing about anything that interests him. It could be just commentaries on his favorite subject, a review of a product or service, or it could simply be an online diary that he writes to. Anything and everything that you want to write about can be made into a blog entry. When you post an entry to your blog, you can include text (of course), images, links to other blogs or websites, videos, audio files, and other media. A great feature about blogs is that you can allow your visitors to leave comments on your posts if you want. It can start a discussion, and you can get other people’s thoughts and ideas on the topic.

Now you’re probably wondering how a blog is different than a typical website though. (Keep in mind that a blog actually is a website.) A blog is something that’s meant to be updated on a regular basis, with new posts from the author on his thoughts, comments, ideas, experiences, etc… A website, in the typical sense, is pretty much something that’s there for informational purposes and not necessarily updated on a regular basis. For example, a company website might describe the products it makes or the services it offers, have some company background information, a page for some contact and location information, etc…, but that information doesn’t change on a daily, weekly, or even monthly basis. A blog is somewhat of a living, breathing thing (so to speak) and new entries can be added to it regularly and people can leave their comments and thoughts on it.

Whether you’re building a blog site or a typical website, you still need a place to host it (I’ll probably get more into this in another post), but another difference is that blogs can be much more easy to setup. There are ready made blog programs that can be easily installed on your host and you can be up and posting entries in no time. A favorite of mine is WordPress. You can get a copy of WordPress here. It’s FREE! I’ll definitely be talking more about WordPress in future posts. There are also many free places that you can start blogging at that don’t require you to pay for a host if you don’t want to. I’m talking about places like Blogger.com from Google, or WordpPress.com, or even Blog.com. However, if you’re looking for more control over your website and prefer to use your own domain name, then I would recommend checking out Host Gator. They’re really inexpensive (I would stay away from free hosts except what I noted above as you always get what you pay for). And if you use coupon code HTEMB201107 you can even get 25% off the package price. With a typical website, if you don’t know HTML or how to put a web page together (like building your own headers and footers, navigation links, contact forms, etc…), then you’ll probably have to hire someone to do it, which could cost you quite a bit.

This site is in fact a blog site created with WordPress. I’ll go over exactly how to use WordPress soon, and then we’ll get into the good stuff of how to actually make a profit from your blog sites and turn them into cash machines. If you’re really interested in learning more about blogs and their history, you can always check out the wikipedia article on it. I’ll be back with more information for you, so check back again soon!

I’ve done my fair share of buying programs thinking ‘This is the ONE’, and dishing out plenty of money in the process, only to find myself struggling and disappointed. Some were great, and others were just a waste of time and money. It’s not as simple as everyone would lead you to believe, but it can be done.

So I’ve been through it, and I’m still going through it. I’ve been making a little bit of money now by blogging, and I thought I would share some of my experiences with you and some of the programs, tips and tricks that worked for me. No, I’m not a multi-million dollar blogger. I’m not even a million dollar blogger. In fact, I’ve only been blogging for money for several months now, and although I’m still not ready to leave my full-time job, I’m just starting to make out pretty well with my blogs.

In the days, weeks and months ahead I’ll be trying to keep this site alive with tips and tricks, my experiences, reviews of programs I’ve tried, tools and resources for making money while blogging, etc… So stick around and lets get busy blogging for money!