I’m wondering what it is that you are hoping to find when you came to my blog.

I’m wondering if you were looking for affiliate marketing tips and advice, techniques and strategies, products that will help you?

What is it that you would like to see the most?

Use the comment fields below to let me know what you want.

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Warmly,

Mike Perkins

P.S. – I’m sure you must be asking asking yourself “What’s the catch?”

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Talk about an internet boom…

Well it’s been a while since I’ve made a post and I feel like I need to explain myself.

You see this blog is not my full time job. It’s also not my only online project. I have some other websites that I built. A few I am letting go and I’m not going to do anything with them, others I am working on.

I’ll post in a couple of days at least one of my other websites that is active, and I’m thinking about posting the address for one that I am about to start developing.

For now let me explain why its been 7 days since my last post. (Update: I made this post on 1-30-09, but for some reason it is showing a posted date of 11-29-08)

I mentioned above this is not my full time job. In addition to the other online projects I have going, I also am a sheriff.

I’ve had a lot going on with that recently. I am a Sergeant and have had several projects recently.

Every year we have evaluations to document our job performance. I’ve been working on those and it’s been pretty time consuming.

I also have 2 other projects related to that job that I am working on that are due on Feb 2.

So my time has been extremely limited, but I hope to be able to invest more time into this site again in a few days.

So in the next few days look for a post about at least one of my other websites, I’ll even give you the address so you can check it out if you want.

I’m also going to be changing the catagories on this site after reading something about how important they are to search engines.

So, you want to start making money with affiliate marketing programs, but you don’t have any money to get started. The good news is you do not have to invest any money to get started. There are ways to get started without spending any money upfront.

That said, I recommend you spend a little money. For less than $9.00 you can register a website name. After doing that you can get hosting for a website for as little as $5.00 a month. While you can use the techniques I am going to tell you about, you will have better luck if you are willing to invest this tiny amount into your business.

If you have the money to invest you can still use free these techniques and you will probably get better results. To learn more about why I suggest you invest a little money into your business, read my post Why Your Own Website Is Critical To Affiliate Marketing Success.

But if you do not have any money, or don’t want to spend any, follow the free techniques I give you here and you will still make money, it just might take a little longer and you won’t enjoy the same benefits as those who get their own domain name.

The first secret to getting free traffic is using a blog. Blogs are just diaries people keep on the internet for others to read about whatever area they want to describe. Real-estate, investing, photography, computers, affiliate marketing, whatever you can think of, someone probably has a blog dedicated to it. You can go to BlogCatalog.com to see examples of things that people write blogs about. Or simply choose a topic you have interest in, go to a search engine and search by typing in your topic followed by the word “blogs.” You will be able to find blogs that way also.

How do you make money with a blog? You can create a blog or a few blogs about topics that interest you. Then sign up for affiliate programs relating to that topic, and include links to your affiliate programs on your blog site. You can include the links on your blogs home page, and in each article you write in your blog.

Don’t think you can write articles about anything? No problem. If you go to BloggingProfitsBlueprint.com you can learn some ways to get content for your blog. This is a membership website, and right now you can join for free.  I also cover anothe method later in this post.

If you choose an affiliate program that is related to your topic, your visitors will be pre-disposed to the products you recommend once they trust you, and as long as the things you recommend are good quality. They will begin trusting you after they have come to visit your site a few times, respond to your posts, and then see you respond to them on the blog.

How do you do it?

1. Create a free affiliate account at Clickbank.com, or CommissionJunction.com, or search for others. Choose your topic that you want to write about, then research these sites to see if there are any programs you can market relating to that topic. If you want to write about home security, search for security related products. If you don’t find anything, choose a new topic until you find one with programs you can market.

Once you find a topic that you can market to, it’s pretty easy from there. There will be a link that says “Click here to get your link code” or something similar to that. When you click, you get a unique code that identifies only you to the website where the sale is made, and when one is made, you get a commission.

2. Go to Blogger.com and create a free blog account. This will get you set up to start posting you blogs. They will walk you through the process. Create your first article and post it without any links to marketing programs. Your first blog post can be as simple as telling people what you hope to share with them by creating your blog. This will allow you to get some practice at the process of posting your articles.

Now I want to say again, I recommend that you get your own domain name and hosting account. After you buy the domain name all you have to pay each month is he cost of hosting, which you can get for about $5 a month. Also if you do that you can use wordpress to run your blog, which is probably the king of blog platforms. It has a lot of support, and is a really good program.

3. Once you have practiced posting a couple of articles, start posting articles with your affiliate links on them. Put the link at the end of your article so anyone who found the article interesting is more compelled to click it. You can also place banners or buttons on the sides of the articles. Do not rely on the banners and buttons alone. Many people do not like them, and will not click them. So include a text link in your article.

What if you do not know how to write an article, or can’t think of what to write? You can go to one of several sources that provide articles covering a large variety of topics. The following is a list of a few I recommend:

http://articlescity.com

http://ezinearticles.com

http://www.goarticles.com

Each of these sites will allow you to use articles they have, free of cost. The articles have a link to the authors site which you must leave in tact to use the article.

4. You need to promote your blog. There are hundreds of blog directories that you can submit your blog to. These directories are places that publish a link to your blog for their readers. These directories are where readers go to find blogs to read.

Most blog platforms have an RSS feature you should use. RSS stands for Real Simple Syndication. Using this process you can post to all the directories you choose in one easy step, instead of having to select the directories each time you submit. RSS allows people to subscribe to your blog as well. Then they do not have to come back to check for new articles, each time you submit a new article, it’s sent to them automatically. It’s like mailing the article to them, instead of them having to go search for it.

5. Each time you post a new article to your blog, go to PingOMatic.com and submit your article. You will enter the name of your blog, your blog web address, and select which blog services (directories) you want to ping to. This will send your new article out to several of the more popular blog directories. The more articles you post to them, the higher you rank. The higher you rank, the more traffic you get. The more traffic you get, the more chance you have to make commissions.

Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!