A few days back I mentioned a few programs where you could make money as an affiliate. One of those programs is being run through ShareASale. A few of you asked for more details on that affiliate network. Ask and you shall receive. Here is your ShareASale review.

Pros

There are over 2,500 merchants in this affiliate network. There is a little of everything; online and offline companies, big name and little guy merchants.

If you are a blogger, there may be quite a few programs in here from people you know. StudioPress (Genesis Framework) and Business2Blogger are two in here that I promote.

Custom links are easy to create with ShareASale. If you want to point to a specific page on the merchant’s site as opposed to the homepage, you can easily do that.

There is a low payment threshold of only $50. Payment is made via check or direct deposit on the 20th of the month for the previous month’s commissions.

Pay Per Call is available on a few programs. This isn’t a big concern for many niches. Affiliates for products that often get people picking up the phone as opposed to purchasing online may find some comfort with this. It is not available for every program or for every affiliate however.

They have a referral program. I thought that it used to pay more and was two-tier, but it looks like it is $1 per lead. That’s okay. We won’t complain about them wanting to give us money.

Cons

Ugh. I hate the system. I know some affiliates love it. I’m not one of them. I love Commission Junction’s however, and I know some affiliates hate that one. This is just a matter of preference. On the plus side, you can do a lot with the advanced merchant search. You can search for cookie duration, minimum EPC and more.

Good News/Bad News

It is not cost-prohibitive for those looking to run their own affiliate program. This is great for the little guy looking to have their affiliate program managed through someone other than Clickbank. On the other side of coin, this means there are some things in there that are a little on the “junky” side.

I use the ShareASale affiliate network. They have always paid me on time and without issue. As with any network, you will need to be approved. But, it costs nothing to register and start earning. If you use my ShareASale link to sign up, I might even earn a dollar today. And I didn’t even have to ask you to buy anything. How’s that for a deal?

I had a couple of very profitable blogs these past few months. I made a conscious effort to see what I could do as a holiday affiliate marketer. I did a good job! The next few months I will enjoy the money I get paid for blogging during the shopping season. However, I have to admit that I felt rather panicked December 26 when those commissions immediately fell quite considerably. The past two weeks have gone a little like this:

I need more blogs to make up for that loss. No way! Not now. There are barely enough hours in the day sometimes with what I have now. If I attempted to start more profitable blogs at this point, someone is going to suffer as a result. Inevitably it will be me as things fall apart.

I need to push more stuff. No. That isn’t the answer either. Again, that will come back to bite you in the butt.

I need to change everything I am doing. No. What I do works. I just want it to do better.

If you are looking to get paid for blogging, you may already have what you need for a profitable blog. You only need to make what you have better. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel.

That was the blogging for beginners talk I had to have with myself. I felt quite relieved after doing so. I don’t need to compromise my ethics. I don’t need to sell out my readers. I don’t need to give up sleep for the next ten months while I build even more blogs.

Strategy for Success

Mindful Marketing – I was already well aware of which avenues are not much ROI and which ones are “money.” This is about working smarter, not harder. There is no point in trying to convert something that won’t. Focus your marketing time where it matters.

Alternate Images – Banners statistically don’t convert well on their own (I.e. without accompanying text). They convert even lower over time. Your readers have already seen them so many times they are immune, even more so if they are banners you see on every blog in your niche. Take some time to see what new banners are available from your favorite advertisers. Change them up. Move them around.

Scrutinize Your Stats – Click-Thru Rate (CTR) and Earnings Per Click (EPC) should also be monitored regularly. You are already going to be in your affiliate networks looking for new banners, see how the products you promote are performing. If no one is clicking through that product you thought would go like gangbusters, ask yourself why. Do your readers already have it? Do you need to polish up your sales pitch? Are you using SEO, or is the life of every post only that one day?

If you want to get paid for blogging, you need to learn to perfect the process. Going in another direction may not be the answer. You may already be sitting on a few profitable blogs. They just need the right attention.

It’s time for a little blogging for profit news from around the ‘net. Things have been rather quiet around here. It’s a new year now and that often means launch time.

Triberr Opens to the Public – If you have been waiting for Triberr to come out of beta for the last year, you are in luck. Monday they opened it to everyone. You will no longer need an invite.

Do you really want in? I can’t say. I have been in there for some time. Today’s Triberr is far different than Triberr Version I. It is no longer fully automated. You will need to go in and approve your tribe members’ posts daily. (Or every few days in my case. That seems to be how long it is taking my tribe members’ posts to show up in my stream right now. Perhaps the lag is due to the launch.)

My advice is to stick with a small tribe of similar blogs. You have to keep your followers in mind here. They followed you because they like the topic you blog about. If you are a recipe blogger and suddenly start tweeting out automotive tips all day long, you may not have many followers left. My second tip is do not even think about getting in there if you plan to use it as a one-way street. Out of all of the tribes I have been in there, only one still remains. There are always a few that plug in their feed and never show back up to promote other tribe members. No one likes a user.

Business2Blogger Affiliate Program – As a blogger you likely have to turn advertisers away from time to time. Maybe they aren’t a good fit for your blog. Maybe you are overwhelmed with what you have going already. Maybe you have hit your personal monthly limit. Regardless, you no longer have to send them away empty-handed. And you can still earn a little bit of cash in the process. Business2Blogger opened their affiliate program this week, and they will pay you 25% of the referred sale. Sign up through ShareASale.

New Emails from SocialSpark – I do love SocialSpark, and they have become a much bigger portion of my monthly blogging for profit plan with their ever-expanding income avenues recently. Their system did leave a bit to be desired though. Previously they sent out an email daily saying, “You have 86 leads available.” I had no idea what those leads were or how much they paid without heading over to the site. The previous emails also only listed sponsored post opportunities and not new “deals.” That’s no longer the case! Details and the pay for new sponsored posts and deals are now being spelled out in the daily emails. This will make our lives much easier. If you are not yet a member of SocialSpark, register your blogs here.

I’m happy to see some new things going on around here. I’ve been a little bored. What excited blogging news have you come across lately?

Holly from The Work at Home Woman released “Blogging Success: Tips for Creating Content, Getting Traffic and Monetizing Your Blog.” around the same time that I released my make money blogging guide. When she asked me to review her book this week, I was initially a little concerned that I wouldn’t be able to give a good review because of that. But, if you are a regular reader you know one of my favorite sayings – Every blogger is different. It would be highly unlikely that we each wrote the same book.

I have followed Holly for quite some time. Despite the similarity in blog names, I didn’t know of The Work at Home Woman until several months into my blogging journey. The Work at Home Woman provides some great insight into being a home business owner.

I don’t see Holly talk a lot about blogging however. I was quite intrigued to find out more about her blogging journey, what blog aspects she finds most important and how she would go about monetizing a blog.

Things I Liked About “Blogging Success: Tips for Creating Content, Getting Traffic and Monetizing Your Blog”

As someone who has been blogging for almost two years now, it is so important to me that bloggers are honest about what profit blogging takes – time and effort. Holly does that front and center.

Holly goes into creating content which isn’t something I did much of in my book. If you are just starting out, I think this would be much appreciated.

There was one site in particular in her Traffic section that I have been seriously wondering about lately. It isn’t what conventionally comes to mind as a blog traffic source, but sometimes you need to think outside of the box. Everyone is already doing what is inside of the box. Well, Holly mentions this little site in her book. I can’t wait to try it for myself.

There were several other sites to use as traffic sources that I hadn’t ever heard of or hadn’t yet tried. I’m going to start working through these.

Holly and most of the people she interviewed for her Success Stories stress the importance of having multiple income streams if you want your blog to help pay your bills. I could not agree more. My own blog income took a huge turn when I started diversifying.

I have thought for quite some time that Holly likely knows a heck of a lot more about direct advertising than I do. I was really hoping she would go into some detail in her book. She did!

If you are mom, there are several sites mentioned in “Blogging Success” that you can get involved in for various reasons. Me? I’m not a mom. Even though many of these won’t suit my needs, there were a few others that weren’t mom-centric I headed off to join.

Things I Wanted More Of

Holly does get into some good detail when it comes to a couple of different avenues for ad revenue. I would have loved to see that for every monetization avenue. In her defense, that could have likely made her eBook 100+ pages.

I would have also liked to see more of her personal recommendations for a few of the tools you may need with some of these income avenues. There are some things I am still experimenting with and there may be better methods available.

Overall, I think Blogging Success is a good read. And, we did not write the same book after all. Even though we are in similar niches, I am always amazed at how differently we run our businesses. There is always something more to learn!

Click here to visit The Work at Home Woman.

I was provided with a copy of Blogging Success to review. The opinions in this post are my own. 

If you are a regular reader of The Work at Home Wife, you may have noticed the new ad in the sidebar this past month. This blog was part of the pilot program for IZEA Media. I have been pretty happy with this program, and it may be one of the few good AdSense alternatives to investigate if you are looking to make money online.

What is IZEA Media?

IZEA Media is owned by, surprise, IZEA. This is the same company that owns SocialSpark, PayPerPost and SponsoredTweets. This is a legitimate and well-known company that I have worked with for quite a long time.

IZEA Media is their newest venture. These ads are similar to what you will find if you have an AdSense account. The exceptions here are that these are all image ads, from what I have seen so far. And, the size of your image ads are limited. As of now, your choices are 300×250, 728×90 or 160×600. These are your standard medium rectangle, leaderboard or skyscraper ad sizes if you make money with AdSense.

Why I Like It

I like this program for a few reasons:

Even though it can be one of the AdSense alternatives to consider, you don’t have to choose between the two.  IZEA assured me in the beginning that I could run both their ads and my AdSense account on the same site.

So far, the image ads have not been a problem. This was another big concern before I would put up their ads. Some AdSense alternatives I have seen are on the other side of scummy and scammy. I don’t want those on my blogs. The ones I have seen with IZEA Media haven’t crossed this line yet.

Did I mention guaranteed income? Unlike your AdSense account, where you usually earn from clicks, IZEA pays by pageviews. As long as you are holding up your traffic, you will continue earning money.

How to Apply

This program is found on the SocialSpark site. If you are not already a member there, you will need to sign up for an account.

Once you are in your SocialSpark dashboard, you will see a tab in the upper right corner called “ads.” You will then need to apply for the IZEA Media program.

Your blog will need to meet their qualifications. I’m not sure what all of these are, but another blog that I have in the SocialSpark network states that it isn’t eligible right now because of minimum traffic requirements – 5,000 pageviews per month.

So far, so good. It’s a good little program. It’s one of the few AdSense alternatives that I would recommend. Even if your AdSense account is in good standing and you are still earning money with AdSense, IZEA Media may be a nice little additional income stream each month if you are looking to make money online as a blogger or other website owner.

What do you think? Will you try it? Have you been running their ads already?

The end of the year is quickly approaching. I have been taking some time recently to reflect on what went wrong and what went right this year in order to get together next year’s Blog for Money Game Plan. Trying to earn money blogging isn’t always easy, but I can assure you it is possible.

To say 2011 was a year of ups and downs would be an understatement I believe. This wasn’t just me. I believe it applies to anyone that was attempting to make money blogging this year. The changes never seemed to stop coming. I made it through. I’m still here. I was finally able to meet my blog income goal in November. December started out strong, and I have no doubt that goal will be met this month also.

So, what happened this year? What changed? How am I going to make money blogging in 2012?

2011 Lessons

Choose Your Niches Carefully. If you want to earn money blogging quickly, stay out of the saturated niches. That should go without saying. But we all do it, don’t we? Hopefully, this will be the one and only blog that that I ever have with so much competition. I watched, waited and started a few smaller blogs this year where I felt I could relatively easily carve myself a spot. Let me tell ya, those are so much less work than this blog. I do my posting. I let the search engines bring me ready-to-convert traffic. I count my money each month. That isn’t an option with this blog. There is far too much competition to go hands-off.

Don’t Rely on One Income Stream. This was the year that I put all of the pieces together. There were several avenues that I hadn’t yet implemented. I did that this year, and it had a huge impact on my profits. Some took quite a bit of experimenting and time to pay off, but they did in the end.

Sometimes You Need to Take a Step Back. Though I started to make money from blogging with a bigger return, this blog seemed to hit a plateau in the past few months. That likely has a lot to do with getting *too* comfortable. I’m going to invest time in Blog Beginner methods and see if I can get things moving again.

Invest Your Time Wisely. I had several sites throughout this year. Some were just awful. I don’t know why I even started them. I couldn’t even look at them anymore, and they were not turning a profit. They were a total waste of space and time. I got rid of them. There is no sense in having a bad blog nagging at you when you could be doing something far more profitable and enjoyable.

Overall, 2011 was a very successful year for me. I learned to blog for money more wisely. I stumbled quite a few times, but I always got back up. My 2012 goal is to double what I set for 2011. That is likely going to mean a few more blogs, but I’m far more confident about my future in trying to earn money blogging with the lessons I learned this year.

How did 2011 treat your blogs? What are your goals and plans for 2012? 

Escalate Media Network sent out an email this morning. They are looking for new affiliates. This is primarily what I call a “deal network.” The types of offers in here include printable coupons, free samples, savings, etc.

They are a NET 15 network with a $25 minimum for payout. This means if you earn $25 in November, you will be paid by December 15.

They are looking for relevant blogs that are at least 2 months old. If you qualify, click here to register. (referral link)

As an affiliate marketer, this is a much anticipated time of the year. October through January can be the biggest earning period in affiliate marketing depending on your niche. Last year was my first attempt at capitalizing on a few big shopping days. I did okay, but my online properties and acceptance into affiliate programs were small in number at that time. This year is different. I have a lot of diversification in my blog portfolio and affiliate programs right now. Here are a few Black Friday affiliate marketing tips to gear up for the big day.

Open Your Emails – If you are already approved for several online merchant affiliate programs, their Black Friday sales are likely already rolling into your inbox. The biggest deals are already laid out for you, complete with your links and banners. Many of these online deals start before next Friday. Open and read those emails. I have also found a few “affiliate exclusive deals” that won’t be published on the merchant’s website. These sales are reserved for their affiliates to promote.

Schedule Ahead – The majority of these sales the merchants do not want published until they are live. Your links won’t work until that time anyway. Do not wait until the day of the sale to go post. You will be overwhelmed. Go ahead and get those scheduled to publish now…for 12:01 am on that day.

Snag Those Followers – Depending on your niche, it may be a good idea to set up a special list for incoming sale shoppers. Let them know you will be posting sales as they come in, and they can have those sales delivered to their inbox.

Be Realistic – Some affiliate programs aren’t big on communication. If you want to post their deals, you are going to need to search those out on your own. Be realistic about your time and what you anticipate as a return on your affiliate marketing  investment. If you don’t have much of a following, it may not be the best investment of your time to spend 24 hours straight scouring websites for deals to only earn a minuscule amount. Stick with the easy affiliate emails this time around.

Pick Up Your Posting Now – If you watch your stats, and you should if you are affiliate marketing, you likely have an idea as to how often Google crawls your blog right now. If Big G is accustomed to you posting once per week and that is how often they crawl, bump up that frequently ASAP.

Keywords – Polish those posts up for SEO. Search traffic has those credit cards in hand. They are going to click on someone’s affiliate link. Wouldn’t you like it to be yours?

Watch and Learn – If this turns out to not be your big affiliate marketing day, learn from it. Last year wasn’t my year as a Black Friday affiliate, but I took notice of where I could make improvements. I also watch similar blogs throughout the year to see what they do and how I could do things even better.

This isn’t a science. There is no one way to do things around here. Every niche is different, every blog is different, every affiliate program’s different, and every audience is different. Many people are not going to make it in the affiliate marketing arena. Those that do are typically those willing to make the investment of time and experimentation to see what works for them.

Every day is a new day with blogging.

What is your strategy for Black Friday as an affiliate? Are you expecting a big day, or is this your year for experimenting?