Dianne Murray

Promoting Your Mom-Stuff Affiliate

 with Your Blog

Blogging has become extremely popular over the last few years. Mom-Stuff loves the blogging community. It is one of the most exciting ways to communicate, ever. Blogs have some of the best content anywhere for free. Many bloggers use their blogs as a way to journal their thoughts, provide great content and now you can make a extra income by promoting Mom-Stuff.com.

Members with Existing Blogs

If you already have a blog then follow these steps and add a new element to your blog with a new revenue stream. It's important to start off on the right foot. First contact us by email contact@mom-stuff.com and give us your blog address, if you did not enter it as your website on your affiliate information. We will add it to our favorite blogs list.  This will help increases your traffic. Traffic is king when you are promoting your blog so support other Mom-Stuff bloggers. Next, put your mom-stuff banner on your blog. Your banner has your own affiliate link. You can get your banner in Your Affiliate Account on the Making Money Online section. This will give you commission on everything your contacts buy from Mom-Stuff for life. Now, once a month post about something wonderful on Mom-Stuff.com. It will be easy because we promise to keep plenty of good content there for you (make sure you read, blog post example, below.) Use mom-stuff as one of your key words.

Members Without a Blog

What are your skills, interests and passions? The topic should be something that you are knowledgeable about and, preferably something that you are passionate about, so you'll remain interested in blogging about the topic for years to come. Whatever subject you decide on, you should enjoy writing, taking photos or making videos about your subject. The success of a blog depends on its interest to readers. If you do not enjoy your subject you can almost be guaranteed that your readers will not return to you for information or entertainment. I believe that blog readers choose to follow blogs because they can get honest information. So choose wisely, your blog needs to be really you. It needs to be what you want to share. Everyone mom has something to share with other moms.

Plan Your Blogging

One mistake bloggers make is blogging when they feel like it -- whenever they think about it. This is fine if you are just journaling for your own benefit but if you would like to gain an audience and an income, a bit of planning is key.

When you plan your blog it would be beneficial to make a posting schedule and stick to it, whether that is once a day, once a week or a few times each month.  Your schedule may need a tweaking as time goes on but starting with one from the beginning will lay a good foundation for your blog success. We suggest a posting at least once a week and remember to add something about mom-stuff.com. once a month.

Remember to carefully select your keywords if you are trying to rank high in the search engines. Newer bloggers will find it easiest to choose long tail keyword phrases related to the niche that have less competition in the search engines than single words. (Ex: "how to get more followers on Twitter" would be easier to rank for than "Twitter" would be.) Always add mom-stuff as a key word. Use the "-"  because some spiders read the space between words as separation.

Create Interactive Elements

Your blog may provide a place where you sound off on your thoughts and offer valuable advice, but it a good tip would also be to offer some interactive elements. Part of what makes blogs so fascinating is that they hold the possibility of developing a loyal readership. If there is nothing on your blog that people can "do" other than read, it's going to be hard to develop a relationship with your readers. If the trust and the relationship don't develop, your success with it may be hindered.

Examples of interactive elements would include a comments section and a poll section. Comments are generally included in the set up of your blog. This is where people can comment on the things you write, and communicate with you and other readers. Polls are available as a blog "widget" and they are beneficial to have in the sidebar of your blog. You can ask a question and have visitors choose their response.

Including these interactive elements will allow you to provide readers with what they are seeking, making them loyal readers for what hopefully be a long time to come. Blog give a ways are also popular.

Setting Up Your Blog

There two basic ways to set up a blog, own your own blog or use a social blogging site.

First let's talk expenses. The first one is to set up a FREE blog on a social blogging site. The second one is to get a domain, a hosting account and a word press account. The word press account is free but you will need to buy your domain and pay to have it hosted.

What are the benefits to pay for your own site? The basic differences are your rights. If you own your domain you have copy rights to your posts and the right to sell advertisement space. If you decide to set up your blog to sell advertizing space make sure to positioning ads on your blog to increase your income but not to be distracting from your content. Remember your visitors come for the information not the adds. It's also important to make sure you are serving your readers with ads that interest them and are related to your blog.  Unless you are going to post information that you want to be covered under copyright laws it takes some time to build traffic before you can sell add space so the cost is not justified if you are a newbie. After you build a following you can transfer to your own domain.

Social blogging sites have their own rules that you must abide by. Before choosing a site read their policy and make sure they will allow you to use your blog in the manner that you want. Most sites do not allow you to sell your add space but they do allow google to place adds. Some sites do not give you the choice, they use your space for ads and they use the money to pay for their site. Make sure you know the policy for the site before you begin.

As your visitors increase this will be easier to track and then tweak for ultimate success. That is why taking time to plan your site and work hard at getting steady traffic is of the utmost importance. That way you can split test and figure out your best strategy.  This may include having to try different banners, text links, etc. and see what is working and what's not.

We do not suggest that you start this way. We have had the most positive results for blogspot. They let you set up your blog for FREE. They allow you to choose if you want Google Adsence. But my top reason is the community. The blogspot bloggers are a perfect fit with mom-stuff.com. If you want help setting up a blog visit http://www.thecutestblogontheblock.com/

Blog Post Example

Go to www.mom-stuff.com and choose one of the ABOUT US/Sample Articles or GREAT IDEAS/Family Fun articles and tell your visitors about it. These are free content. You don't want to send them to member content, because they will not have access. Write your post beginning with why you like the article then add a description of the article. Tell them to get more information by clicking on your banner and then give them the category name, department name, article name. Always direct them to use your banner so their activities are logged to your affiliate link.

Mom-Stuff.com is a great resource for your Halloween Party. They have a really cute Monster Invitation complete with the instructions and pattern. Click on my mom-stuff banner, then GREAT IDEAS/Family Fun/Monster Invitation.

Copy this format and save it for fast blog posts

Mom-Stuff (why you like the article and description of the article)

You can get more information by clicking on my mom-stuff banner and then "the category name," "department name", "article name."

Thanks for choosing to be a part of Mom-Stuff. We believe we can enrich all of our lives by helping, supporting and educating each other. The mom-stuff bloggers can help each other increase traffic by visiting each other's blogs often. Traffic can convert into money from advertizing. Posting your mom-stuff banner and posts about mom-stuff articles converts into commission checks. Creating informational products brings more commissions for you and others. Are you getting the whole picture, yet? We are creating a win-win community and we love having you here.