To follow up on my post about affiliate marketing and mommy bloggers, I have decided to start a series on beginning steps to get you started. Be sure to check back regularly – subscribe to my RSS feed or sign up for my free newsletter (sign up box on upper right) so you don’t miss anything.
Here is Beginning Affiliate Marketing Step One:
Find appropriate affiliate products
How do you know what’s appropriate?
That would depend entirely on your niche.
If you blog about babywearing, look for baby slings and ebooks about babyslings.
If you blog about beauty and skin care, look for beauty products and skin care and ebooks about such.
If you blog about kids and crafts, look for kids crafts products and ebooks about kids crafts.
See where I’m going with this?
There are good affiliate products in every niche, so start searching.
A few ways to find them:
Google.
A simple Google search for “keyword + affiliate program” or “keyword + associate program” is a fine start.
Other Blogs
Another shortcut is to look on the blogs of other people in this particular niche to see what they’re promoting, especially sites that you know are more highly trafficked than your own.
But it pays to be choosy about what you promote. Different programs have different payouts and some will convert better than others.
For instance, Amazon.com doesn’t pay the highest percentage, but their site converts well and people often buy other stuff while they’re in there, earning you commission on the whole lot, not just the little book you mentioned.
Find affiliate programs with great tools
Everyone talks about the large affiliate networks like Linkshare, Shareasale, etc. Those are great and I get payouts from them too, but in my personal experience, independent programs convert better and are more eager to please you as their valued affiliate.
To make life easier for yourself, find independent affiliate programs – especially those run by other work at home moms, and join them. Use the tools they have available.
As an example, I have a few products and my resources for affiliates are listed here: Affiliates Fun
I want to make it super easy for my affiliates to have success so I provide graphics, articles, recipes and brandable reports that they can publish and give away, branded with their affiliate link.
Another great thing about independent affiliate programs? They almost always pay you higher commissions. I pay out 30- 50% to my affiliates.
Plus you get that nice warm feeling that comes from supporting another small business owner. 
Many of the ladies at Mom Masterminds have fantastic products with amazing affiliate programs. A few of note:
(These all open in a new window and take you directly to the affiliate info.)
Affiliate Products Perfect for Mom Bloggers:
Tiffany Washko’s green smoothies, raw food for kids and salads cookbooks
Christine Steendahl’s Dine Without Whine menu mailer
Susanne Myers Healthy Menu Mailer and Menu Planning Central
Kelly McCausey’s Moms Talk Network home management and biz ebooks
Cara Mirabella’s household management ebooks
Aurelia Williams Real Life personal growth and parenting ebooks and life coaching
Nicole Dean’s party, gift mixes, and home biz ebooks
Alyssa Avant’s beauty by design ministries’ ebooks
So, now that you have found some great products you want to start promoting, how do you skillfully weave your affiliate links into your content?
That will be the topic of the next post in the series. Stay tuned!
Impatient?
Affiliate Marketing Sweetie - learn how to make great money with affiliate marketing while still being a nice person.
Tags: affiliate marketing, Blogging