My own blog

Step One - June, 2008 

When I first started, I had no idea that I would have a blog. But some friends of mine were visiting, and they convinced me that not only did I have useful information to share, but that people would pay for that information in various ways. I didn't have a mentor, but I did set up a blog and decided on a posting schedule, and then work from there. It took a few months to find my exact niche, and then my friends convinced me to add Amazon affiliate links (sign up to be an Amazon affilate here). I was a bit skeptical at first. However, my friends pointed out that they were always calling me to ask for advice on certain products, and convinced me that they really wanted to just click a link rather than telephone me every single time they wanted to know something.

So I rather fearfully added an Amazon astore to my blog, and put a discreet link to it, and two years later got my first $10 payout from Amazon (I now average $3 - $5 per month). I went a step further and added a page for art related to classical music on art.com (sign up for art.com here), under an affiliate link. That page has gotten a lot of traffic, so it's something people must be searching for, and since I have gone to the trouble of searching art.com and finding all the pictures and putting them all in one place, I feel okay about the affiliate commission, too. I haven't gotten any sales from art.com yet, but I can always hope, and it does bring a lot of blog traffic.

To be continued . . . .