Targeting Affiliate Links For Your Readers

My regular readers know that I try to work on my many streams of income. I have had many of these streams of income on the back burner due to working on others. As of late, I have been really putting a lot of work into the affiliate relationships I have with various affiliate programs. It is important when choosing companies to work with that you feel they sell a quality product or service. I have some tips to share of my experience with making some extra money with affiliate marketing.

I think the best form to use for affiliate marketing is by writing a blog. Blogging is by far, the best avenue for reaching the internet public. Writing for a certain niche market, creating content that they look forward to reading every day is the key. After you have done that then develop a relationship with your readers. Be very honest with them at all times and they will put their trust in you.

The first thing I do when searching for a merchant that I would like to promote on my blogs, is to find ones that sell products that are along the same lines as my blogs. On my Solar Baby blog, I list affiliate links that have to do with solar or wind power. On my Homesteading On The Internet blog, I have mostly links to Amazon products, which I change from time to time. The products there are for anyone interested in gardening, canning, photography, etc. These are products for my readers who come there looking for homesteading or preparation information.

I have joined a few of the big affiliate type of programs like ShareASale and a couple of others. I am more comfortable with smaller programs or working directly with the merchant themselves. It is fun once you get into it, but it has taken me a few years to learn how to actually get some sales. Even little sales add to your many streams of income. Take little steps and you will get there!

Copyright © 2012 Kathleen G. Lupole

All Photographs Copyright © 2012  Kathleen G. Lupole

Increase Your Income In 2012

Even in a rural area, you can develop many steams of income!

I am ready for the new year. 2012..........good things are on the horizon for me, I am sure. What about you? It has not always been easy for me since I am living with some stressful situations. I just try to deal with it the best I can, but do not allow it to penetrate my being.

When that happens, it would be very easy to fall into the way of others. Instead keep your mind open and focused. Keep thinking about your plans, your ideas, positive thoughts and plans only! That is what I do. If you allow others to affect you, then you will never get anything done or any success. Maybe instead.........your positive attitude will affect them! Something to think about?

I am working on so many different things. They are all the things I talked about previously on this blog. The many streams of income. I feel if I can concentrate on all these various streams...................I will have much success. Look at how someone who works a job, and only has that job for income...........and gives up at least 40 hours a week of their lives, for that measly bit of money. That is your life, and is that all it is worth? If you took that 40 hours a week and concentrated it on a variety of streams of income, you could very well, live your dreams!

Selling three eBooks, affiliate links on my blogs, renting space on my blogs to advertisers and selling guitar strings are all  my streams of income. They are all independent of each other. If one does well, and the others don't, I still have some money coming in. I am adding to my streams as I can. It is not a matter of having too many irons in the fire, but a matter of having more than one way to make money. Presently I am working on another homesteading book and this one should be a bestseller. What are your plans for 2012?

Copyright © 2011 Kathleen G. Lupole

All Photographs Copyright © 2011  Kathleen G. Lupole

Identifying My Many Streams Of Income

Photo Source: Jon Sullivan

In trying to keep with my goal of adding many streams of income, I have been working on updating my first eBook, My Homesteading Journey. It needs to be updated every now and then. So in a short time I should have that done and for sale again.

Another stream of income, is my Bonanza booth. So I am working on adding more items for sale there. The more you have the more you sell. If you don't have sales, you just keep adding items. I did that when I had my eBay store. The difference here is that it does not cost anything to list the items on Bonanza so you can just keep listing. I am.

I consider another stream of income is the savings I can achieve through saving money on bills and things we buy. It is a savings of money not spent. So it is another stream of income.

I have been putting ads on some of my blogs and you will see that people have been doing this with me. I like those kind of ads better than affiliate links. They are more personal. I know the person in a way. At least I have emailed back and forth and hopefully, they are who they say they are. That is another stream of income.

Of course, I sell guitar strings on my two websites and that is another stream also. The sales did good for the holidays and now hoping they will pick up more. Working on the marketing part of that.

How many streams of income have you identified in your life? Remember it comes from other sources than just someone paying you for something. Could be a garden which makes it so you don't have to pay so much at the store? Or using coupons to buy groceries and other things? Or bartering? What about swapping babysitting with another mother who works a different shift than you do? What a big savings that would be! Think about it. Sometimes it is right under your nose and you just have to identify it and work on it a little bit.

Copyright © 2010  Kathleen G. Lupole

Creating Those Goals And Following Them

My husband and I are reading the books by Robert G. Allen, Creating Wealth and Multiple Streams Of Income. I have to say  I have read many books and visited many websites on these same subjects, and no one else even comes close to this author. He explains everything in clear details so you can try to do many of his ideas yourself. So many other financial authors tell you things to do but never give you a clear idea of how to do it, unless you buy their program. Robert Allen does have programs he sells but his books are giving us absolutely clear instructions and I really like that. How can someone who can't afford those programs follow someone's advice if it is hidden in some expensive program? Sometimes it is all you can do to afford the books! And what a disappoint the book is if you buy it hoping the advice is in there but find it is not. That is a rip off in my mind!

Anyway, we are working on implementing the "ten streams of income" into our life. I had written before in a previous post, Welcome To Little Steps, which was my very first post on this blog. I mentioned eight streams of income, but now that I am reading this book my ideas have changed. One of the most important things I have learned from Mr. Allen is that you have to concentrate on one thing as much as possible to get it going, before going on to the next. In my own case, I have an  online retail store which is already producing an income. It needs more work, but it is already working. I also have three eBooks, and my husband's music cd, Classic Fantasy, which are already producing some income, but need more work there too. I am updating one of my eBooks, and  as soon as I am finished with that one will be updating another one.

So those are two streams of income I am working on at the moment. It helps when your spouse is really into doing this also, that way you can work with him or her. We read these books at night together. I read them aloud and since we do not have a television it has become our focus in the evenings. We look forward to it.

If you have ideas of what you want to do the first thing would be to write them down. Make a map of where you want to be in 10 years from now. It does not matter how old or young you are..........you can do this at any age! So re-read some of posts on here where I touch on the subject of goals. Robert Allen agrees that your goals need to be written down and you need to read them daily. So that is a good place to start if you haven't done it already. Good luck and hope you come back and are ready to move on with me!

Copyright © 2010  Kathleen G. Lupole

Little Steps #1 - Goals

Freedom comes with planning and hard work!

Your first step should be listing your goals.What is it that you want? Do you want to own a big fancy house? Drive a fancy sports car? Or are you happy with a modest home and vehicle and look forward to seeing the world? Traveling is the goal of many people. Paying for your children's education is another good goal. List every single thing you can think of. All your wants. Maybe you just want to pay off all your debt. For me, I'd have to say my number one goal is the freedom I mentioned in my last post. Freedom will give me any or all of those things if I so choose.

Freedom will give me the choices I want in life. The choices to do what I want when I want. Not having to do something because it is all I can afford. Not having to buy a certain kind of car because it is the cheapest or in my price range. I want to be comfortable in my life. But not to have to work nonstop because I want freedom. Then that would not be freedom. That would chain me to a computer or whatever I am doing to make money.

Having many different streams of income also gives me the freedom of not being dependent on one business or one form of income generation. I enjoy working on my computer so that is where I find my source of income. Establishing my business of selling guitar strings has been a focus of mine for some time now. I am building this business up little by little. I see an increase in my sales and the hard work is beginning to pay off. I also write two other blogs that I have had up for more than a year. I write about my lifestyle on Homesteading On The Internet and on Solar Baby I write about our small affordable solar system. I have affiliate links on both of those and will have some on this site as well. Affiliate links help to keep my sites up and running. Maybe some day they will generate more income. I have to learn how to hit the right mix of affiliate links and non-affiliate links to generate the trust of my readers. Many of my links are not paid hits just links of sites that I like.

Another form of income for me is my eBook, My Homesteading Journey. It is a book I wrote about my lifestyle about three years ago. I was surprised with that book when I had a VERY famous celebrity buy it. Here I was thinking that a poor person living in Los Angeles was buying my book to learn how to escape from the city. I put the person's name in the search engine and who should come up but a VERY famous father and his address and telephone number! I could not believe it. I did it over again. Then I checked the address and telephone number and sure enough..............a rich person, living in Hollywood bought my book. It was on their computer! I was so psyched!! So working on the internet brings your products to the worldwide market.

So take a few minutes today and write your wants and goals down. They are two different things. Your wants are your dreams of the future. What it is that you want from life. Money does not matter. Whatever it is. As Donald Trump says, "Dream Big." Your goals are your list of what you must do to make your dreams come true.

Copyright © 2010 Kathleen G. Lupole

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Welcome To Little Steps!

One of my many steams of income comes from my eBook,

My Homesteading Journey

Welcome to my new blog, Little Steps! I am hoping to share my knowledge with anyone who comes here looking for answers. Answers to what? Answers to living in the world we now have. A world of depression and economic uncertainty. Doctors now say that the biggest cause of disease and ill health is caused by stress. Stress that comes from financial struggles. And I am not talking about just people living at or below the poverty level. I am talking about people making what most consider to be good incomes. Makes sense to me. The reason being that people who are living at poverty, or below poverty levels, are used to it. They know what to do to survive. Not people with good incomes. Or people who USED to have good incomes. By the way, what exactly is a good income anyway? 

Everyone is looking for money. Everyone is looking for an easy way to riches. Everyone is searching for a way to eliminate debt. People are struggling financially the world over. If you are not rich you are suffering from no freedom. Freedom is only available to people with the means to pay their own way. To pay for their own health care. To pay for their own food, housing, transportation, etc. What to do? Such a big to do over the health care insurance that is being forced on us. Don't you think everybody would have it if they could afford it? So what happens if you just don't have the extra money for it? Do they throw those people in jail? Maybe they should, because then they could get their health care without having to pay for the insurance. Maybe that is what will have to happen. If you are stretched already trying to live from one paycheck to another, how do they expect you will be able to pay for another bill? And how much will that bill be? Health insurance is very expensive. Otherwise, everyone would already have it!  

I presently have eight different streams of income. Some provide more income than others. Some do well for awhile and then lose their momentum for a period of time. You have to work hard on each of them. But I have learned not to keep all my eggs in the same basket. If I am too dependent on one income and something happens to it then I would be out of luck. Luck? Not really luck but hard work. Even with hard work things happen.One other way to have extra income is by cutting expenses in other areas. Now I am not talking about living frugally..........even though I have written often on my other blog about living that way. I have decided I want to live the good life, but not by being a penny pincher or a tightwad. I have cut expenses in ways that have raised my standard of living. I will elaborate more about that in future posts.

I believe you need a goal list or a map of sorts. One that will keep you motivated to actually do what needs to be done to realize your goals. Little steps is what my husband calls it. Little steps lead to the bigger steps, to attaining one of your goals. You work on one of your little steps and that will enable to move up to another step, and soon those little steps have enabled you to attain one of your goals. Your goals can be whatever you want them to be. There are no rules in following your little steps. It is what you want to do with your life. Think about it.

Copyright © 2010 Kathleen G. Lupole

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