Ignore CJ and CB

I know many people go to affiliate programs like Comission Junction, ClickBank and Amazon Affiliates. If you can make money from these, that's fine. But I've taken a different approach. As I discover new products that I personally like, or things that are advertised to me through Google's amazingly efficient algorithms, I always check if that product has an affiliate or referral program.

The result is I've built up a large list of sponsors for my sites, too much to handle if I'm being perfectly honest. However, this is a good thing.

I have a "sponsors" subdomain that I like to post to when one of my favorite products updates it's own blog and when I come across some inspiration to write about one of them else where. One of those sponsors, ManageWP recently wrote a post on how to take a vacation from your site and keep it updating on its own. This inspired me to write a similar post and add in some different perspectives.

As I was writing I was going through a fairly normal plan. "Introduction, subject, subject subject, action call, conclusion, social request." By the time I finished the article and started thinking about how I should advertise ManageWP and ask people to sign-up, I realize I had already done that. I had even thrown in a reference to Wealthy Affiliate without even knowing it!

This is where the real value of advertising things you actually know and use comes in. When the knowledge you draw from is the source of your advertising you don't have to worry so much about action calls and sneaky anchor linking at just the right moment. It happens on its own.

And just in case you're wondering, here is the post I'm talking about. :)