I often write informative posts where my main focus isn't to try and sell the reader on anything, but give them information about a certain topic. I've recently been going back through some of my most popular posts at I've Tried That and incorporated links to books and resources regarding the topic.

Quick example, I wrote a few posts on home organizing a long time ago and it still gets a bit of traffic today. I linked to a few organizing books in the posts and I'm now bringing in an extra $50-$100 extra a month! That's my cell phone bill and a night out at dinner each month at no extra work on my part.

This is something new I've been trying out recently. My newsletter emails are pretty personal. I try my hardest not to sound like some generic auto-responding machine. Really, I just like to add personal touches to my emails.

Every so often I'll throw in a sentence or two about a relevant book I'm reading or a new product I've bought and send a link to the product on Amazon. It's non-intrusive and occurs naturally in the text. I can usually get a few hundred clicks off of just one email. This means I just set an affiliate cookie for a few hundred people at Amazon. Amazon itself is really good at selling through product recommendations. All I have to do is get people "in the door" and let Amazon handle the rest.

The higher price an item is, the more reluctant I am to include that price in my article. If a product is on sale at Amazon for 20% or more off the original price, I'll link to the product mentioning the discount, not the actual price. Take for instance this instant coffee brewer...

It's a bit pricey and mentioning a coffee maker that costs $200 might scare people away. Instead, I'd have at least one link in my article saying Click here to save 36% on a Keurig B70. That way the reader isn't scared off by the price and they think they're getting an exclusive discount on a big-ticket item. I get the click and hopefully a commission.

Click to the next page for a few bonus tips!