As a work from home marketer I get to enjoy a lot more freedom than I did working for others. However don’t let that make you think I don’t work hard for my income.

My experience started out a bit shaky but I eventually learned what it takes to be a work from home marketer and is so worth the time it took to learn.

My Daily Commute Is Shorter Now

For a long time I’ve dreamed of working from my home and making a living at it. Now it’s become a reality and the short commute to the office is so cool.

I get up really early, the middle of the night for most people, and never liked waiting hours before I could go to work. Now I can get up a 4am and pretty much go straight to work. It’s nice to have my day done by noon most days.

I don’t use an alarm. I just get up when I wake up and that’s always early and then it’s off to the office to turn on my computer and next the kitchen to start my first coffee of the day. Then I hit the bathroom to freshen up and I’m ready for the day.

First Let’s Dump The Email Spam

Even though I wake up without an alarm I am still a little dopey for a while so this is a good time to get rid of the spam in my email box. It gives me a little time to wake my brain up enough to really start working.

It doesn’t usually take long as my email software kicks most of the trash to the curb. Next I can get to the real email. Just this morning I received 4 guest blog posts for two different niches and 2 other requests from people wanting to guest blog on one of my other niche blogs.

Guest bloggers make my life so much easier today as I have more than a dozen blogs to provide content for.

I Review Each Guest Blog Post

Each guest post is saved in a temp folder so I can come back to them once I have finished with my email checking. Once I have them all saved I check each on to make sure it meets the rules I have set for guest bloggers.

I don’t accept all guest articles as not all follow the rules. Maybe they don’t think I am going to check them but I do and they get rejected.

Some are bad and get rejected but for those that write quality articles and yet make a mistake somewhere, well they always get a second chance with me. Just not the spammers.

It’s usually about this time I head to the kitchen for another cup of java.

I Schedule Publishing Guest Posts

What’s really great about guest articles or posts is that I don’t publish them all at once. I like to have a single post per day or every other day and schedule posts so that the show up exactly when I want them to, even when I’m off fishing with a buddy.

Publish To Article Directories With PR

EzineArticles.com is one of my favourite article directories and is where I publish first. Why, well EA has the toughest guidelines and won’t mess with any duplicate content. So I publish there first, wait for approval, which can take a few day if you’re new there but it’s quick for me.

After I get the email telling me it was accepted I take the article and spin it using The Best Spinner. This makes a few extra articles I can then use for the other article directories which are less strict.

Relevant Blog Commenting

Don’t overlook blog commenting as it can send you a lot of relevant traffic. There are a couple of commenting tips that will help you get your comment accepted.

1. I don’t just leave a generic comment like so many I reject each day. Instead take a few minutes, read the article and then add a comment that adds some extra value to their article. This will usually get the attention of the blog owner. Especially if they moderate their comments like I do.

2. Don’t know enough yet to leave a value added comment, not to worry. You can read the article and then come up with a real question that will help you learn more. People are usually eager to help as it makes them look good and you may go to their site as well.

Note: Be the first to comment. This will mean most people reading the article will see your comment. If you are commenter 27 they may not even see your comment. To make this easier I use Google Feed Reader or Bloglines to monitor the blog feeds I want to comment on. Feed readers are great time savers.

Need More Content Hire A Writer

There may be times you will not be able to come up with all the content you want. I am always looking for more content so I can publish articles all over the place with links back to my money pages. The thing is I need unique content and rewriting isn’t always an option.

Just a few months ago I learned about iwriter.com where I could request articles for the writers there.  The cost was very affordable which kind of led me to thinking maybe it sucked but my concerns quickly faded away.

An example: Just yesterday I made a request for 3 different articles at 500 words each. They were completed, checked through CopyScape for uniqueness and I was notified they were ready for approval. Today they are already scheduled to appear on my blogs.

I kept one of the articles to use as my original for spinning a bunch more in The Best Spinner software.

PageRank Building

Just two weeks ago I got an email from a blogging friend telling me about BuildMyRank.com. She told me it was a great place to publish articles to build my rankings. It wasn’t free like some of the place I’ve used that got me zero results but they do have a 15 day trial and I would have 10 links.

Of course I signed up and started using the system immediately using up my free links in no time. My articles we picked up and published quickly and indexed in a couple of days. That info is available for tracking purposes.

I wrote 4 articles and used iwriter.com for two more articles covering 5 of my niche domains.

The articles are only published once so no duplicate content floating around. My articles got published on a PR4, PR3 and PR2 sites. I don’t have any free links left but I am certainly convinced it’s a good place to be a member and made the commitment to a monthly membership.

And that brings an end to this article, hope it helps you reach new heights. If so let me know by leaving a comment. Maybe you are even a possible guest blogger.

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Guest Blog Post by: Work From Home Moncton

Not every one has a product to sell online. I am one of those work from home online marketers who has no products of their own but I don’t mind at all because it doesn’t mean I don’t have products to promote and sell.

It’s great to have an opportunity to sell other people’s products as it means I can go into a whole lot more niches as I can join affiliate networks and promote other people’s products. All I have to do is learn about them and promote them on my blogs.

Affiliate Products To Promote

Today you’ll find affiliate marketing has limitless potential as there are so many products and services one can choose from. Selling affiliate products all day long for the rest of your life and you’d still never come close to selling all the products available.

One of my favourite niches is the home gardening niche as it’s a great way to save money and if you choose to blog about it you have a way to make money blogging. The garden niche is so big that it has many sub niches meaning you will find unlimited products to promote and sell.

Digital Affiliate Products

I use the Clickbank marketplace to find and promote gardening related digital products called ebooks, which are books in digital form so you can read them on your laptop, computer or ipad or Kindle.

You will find other affiliate programs for digital products other than just at Clickbank. You might want to look at PayDotCom.com and eJunkie.com too.

You need to learn all you can about affiliate marketing and Clickbank is the place to look. It was there that I found the Super Affiliate Handbook by Rosalind Gardner and my online business life started making money. Rosalind Gardner is the go to person for all things affiliate marketing.

Non Digital Affiliate Products

Of course all products are not digital so I went looking for other affiliate networks that have physical products I can promote.

There are so many affiliate networks I have joined but my top sales come from just a few I have listed below:

Commission Junction, LinkShare Affiliate and ShareASale Network

Those are just a few affiliate networks I use and they carry a lot more than just garden related affiliate programs. I use a lot of the same affiliate networks for my other niches like fishing and acoustic guitar.

I really doesn’t matter what you niche is there will be an affiliate program you could make money with, unless you pick a niche that is so out there that there is little to choose from but for the normal things there are often multiple programs to choose from.

Just as a reminder, it took Rosalind’s Super Affiliate Handbook to get me on the right path to making money with affiliate marketing on my blogs.

Related articles

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Blogging is a great way to make money working from your home, even if you’re an old hippy like me. All you need to get started is a desire to make money, a willingness to work for your money and access to the Internet.

Of course Internet access will only get you online, you are still going to have to do some learning before the money starts rolling in or before you start writing anything.

So it’s important I point out the fact that blogging for profit does take work but also that it is so worth investing the time it takes to learn. how to start a work from home blog that’s profitable.

Step One – Learn How To First

My biggest blunder when it comes to my online business was taking so long to decide to learn how to make money online. Don’t try to wing it hoping it will work for you as it will most likely just frustrate you. So the biggest mistake in marketing is NOT LEARNING FIRST.

Learning how to start your work from home blog for profit has to start with more than just a desire to make money. It will take some niche research so you can be sure you’re going to be blogging for profit in a niche you can rank for without working for years to do it.

Know right up front that the vast majority of those who try to make a profitable blog never actually make any money. This in my mind makes it vital that you learn how to succeed with a blog before ever writing a word.

First steps first …

How To Find A ‘Profitable’ Niche

Finding a profitable niche is important if your goal is to make money blogging but no this that most niches are profitable. The trick is to find a niche you can profit in which means a niche you can stick with long enough to make money.

It’s really not the niche that’s not making money, it’s the blogger who isn’t making the money, yet so many other are able to make money in that niche. Why is that?

Your Niche Has To Keep YOU Interested…

… long enough to get traffic that you can keep interested long enough for you to profit. Get that right and you may just have a winner.

Take the time to match a niche with your interests and you can go far. On the other hand pick a niche you think the money but don’t have a strong interest or experience in and you could be spinning your wheels for a really long time and never make any head way or income.

Where To Look For Profitable Niches

One of my favourite places to look for niches I can profit with is to head over to Amazon.com where I can find best sellers in every category. I just start going through the categories that I have hobbies and interests in.

Amazon makes it so easy to find products in niches I like and from there it’s all about finding the keywords and phrases that I can create a profitable blog with.

Enter A Niche You’re Knowledgeable About

I suggest one niche per blog so you can stay focused on one topic to help you gain ranking for your pages easier. Get too many topics in one blog and it’s hard for the search engines to narrow down what your site is about.

There is a number of methods used today to get content on ones blog but if you have a niche you have know-how in you will find creating your own content the best way to go at the start.

As I started to gain momentum and ranking with my blogs I began receiving request by guest bloggers. They wanted to write content for me, at no charge, how cool is that. Today I have blogs I seldom need to create content for as guest bloggers are giving me all the content I need to gain in the rankings and make money with my blogs.

Although I have some how to make money working from home blogs most of my blogs are hobby related like my fishing, gardening, acoustic guitar, and puppy potty training blogs.

Researching Your Niche Choices

Okay, you’ve found a few niches you’re interested so now it’s time to learn more about the competition in these niches. You don’t want to go for a niche that’s going to take way too long to rank for. However that doesn’t mean you want to avoid that niche.

Every niche I work through my blogs was hard to rank for when I wanted the top keywords but I didn’t go with the top keywords as my main focus. That would be blog suicide really as the competition for the niches I have are strong.

Instead I use tools to help me find the best keyword for me to use NOW, TODAY.

I started by using Google’s Free Keyword Tool, easily found with a quick Google search but once I had the money to invest I purchased two keyword tools that make my research a breeze. The two keyword research tools I purchased are Keyword Elite and Micro Niche Finder, you can check them out for more info.

Next Step Is A Keyworded Domain Name

Now if you are here and haven’t purchased a domain yet I’m proud of you as your domain name is an important step in having an optimized niche website. Example: which domain name do you thing I would get better ranking for as a home gardening blog, www.hbb2obm.com or www.backyardgardeningtips.com.

Well both those are my blogs and both are about gardening but the keyworded domain, which was started a year after the non keyworded domain is getting more than a thousand unique visitors per day over the non keyworded domain and is making considerably more income for me.

I use GoDaddy.com for all my domain purchases and highly recommend them. Learn how to purchase a domain on GoDaddy.com here.

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I have been working my work from home online business since April 2001 and have seen so many start an online business only to give up and quit shortly after.

Once blogging became available I thought I would give it a try but wasn’t sure about it so I went with free hosting and blog services. Unfortunately it didn’t turn out like I had hoped and I almost just gave up on free blogging.

Before I just dropped blogging all together I was talking with a friend who said I should try hosting my own blog and that started something wonderful.

Hosting My Own Blogs Today

Now I am not saying to spend a bunch of money and by your own servers. I am talking about buying your domains like I get from GoDaddy.com and then getting it hosted on a services like HostGator.com. Both are affordable and have top notch service 24/7/365.

True Blogging Success Takes Targeted Traffic

Learn quickly that without traffic to your blog it’s going to be a little tough to earn a living. This should tell you just how important, better yet, vital, to your blogging success. Learn early how to get web traffic that’s targeted to your niche.

There was a movie that came out years ago called ‘Field of Dreams’ and as I understand is where the phrase ‘If you build it they will come’ came from. This doesn’t really work in the blogging world so don’t be fooled into thinking you don’t need to do any more than build your blog site.

I learned this lesson with my first gardening related blog. After a year it was still only earning pennies a day. This was about the time I started learning how to work a blog and how to get traffic that converts to income. So I decided to try and fix my initial gardening related blog and also starting a new garden blog to see what would happen.

Long story short, even though I used the same but rewritten content for both sites that first site has never recovered or even come close to matching the more than one thousand unique visits my new garden blog gets.

I started the first garden blog in 2006 and the second garden blog in 2007, exactly a year apart.

Even though the first site has never caught up with the second site I am making good money with both now because I took the time to learn what I wasn’t doing right.

Go After Relevant Backlinks

Everything I do for my business is thought out in advance today. It makes that much of a difference.

When I plan an article or blog post I already have plans to write more than one article on that topic using relevant keywords in each article. I do use The Best Spinner to help me rewrite unique and readable content.

I write an article for my blog, publish it and then start an campaign to gain relevant backlinks to that page.  I don’t stop with just one article though because I need lots of links to keep a head of others trying to pass me in the search results.

What I Do To Get My Backlinks

1. It has to start with writing quality content for my blog. My content has to keep my readers reading, right.
2. I research keywords so I can have a strong keyword focus.
3. I write more relevant articles using specific keywords that I publish to top article directories.
4. Every article I publish is unique, vitally important today.
5. My keyword match the article I link to for relevance to the search engines.
6. Each link in my article is keyworded with related phrases that match the page I link to.
7. I like to be a guest blogger in a relevant niche.
8. I also do a lot of value added blog commenting and linking.

Having a strong backlinking campaign on the go for each of your blog posts is going to give you the edge you need to pass all the slackers and those NOT in the know.

Link Deep Into Internal Blog Pages

Don’t just link to your main page, like I did for so long. You need to link to your internal pages so they get some ranking going. That’s going to help your entire site.

What I do when writing an article to publish that will point to my blog is to make sure I point to a relevant page and not just to the domain or main page. This creates deep linking.

If I have just one link for an article, depending on where I publish it, I will point to an internal page. However if I am allowed more than one I will also point a link to my main page.

The key to making this work most effectively is to take care with your keywords so that they point to relevant pages, not just any pages. It makes the difference between seeing money in your Paypal account and wishing you did.

Forums Are Great For Getting Traffic, However

I have wasted a lot of time on forums but I am not saying forums are a waste of time, not at all. Forums are a powerful way to get traffic but also to establish relationships in your niche.

There is a problem with forums and it’s due to liking them too much and sticking around long after you’ve already created a link back to your pages. Don’t allow yourself to get caught up too much with forums as it can drain away the time you have to make your business more productive. It has to be a balance.

I will visit forums during my work day, but this is work time so I work while I am there. I respond to posts, write a few of my own and then get out of there. However at the end of my work day I can do what I want, so often I return to my favourite forums and hang around to chat a bit. It still has benefits for backlinking of course.

I saved this one for last because it can make such a difference to your business.

Do Invest Time And Money In Your Business

By investing time I mean you will dedicate a specific amount of time each week to the success of your blog. That can take some money to get things going but is well worth the investment.

I talked about purchasing your own domain like I do at GoDaddy.com and hosting your own blog at a good but affordable place like HostGator.com.

Also investing your time writing unique quality articles that will help you gain that traffic and ranking you need to succeed.

I will write a single article, that I wish to point back to another unique blog post on my site. I also make sure it’s keyworded like the article I wish to link to. Then I publish it, once only.

Next I rewrite the article completely so that it’s once again unique. I have a CopyScape account I use to check uniqueness so that I am not publishing any duplicate content.

Then I make sure the link text is varied a bit to cover a variety of relevant keyword phrase for that niche. Then I publish it to another site and it’s unique and relevant, plus I like to make the helpful of course.

In conclusion. Everything I do for my business is focused on specific keywords for my niche which I find using two paid tools. 1. Keyword Elite and 2. Micro Niche Finder.

Blogging can be really powerful when done properly and is so worth learning to do right.

Excellent my friend, you’ve finally decided to start your own blog. You looked at a few other options but in the end you decided to go with a WordPress blog. Great choice as I use WordPress for my blogging purposes as well and have been quite happy.

It took me a bit of learning so I am sure you have a few WordPress how to questions. Now is the time to get those answers so you are more comfortable with blogging. The most asked question I get about WordPress blogs is how to install a WordPress blog.

Many work at home moms take the opportunity to use WordPress blogs to make money in the little spare time they have. That’s what’s so cool about blogging. You can just say what you have to say and get on with your day.

How to Start a WordPress Blog

First you have two choices with WordPress blogging.

1. You can go with free hosted WordPress blogs but for me personally option two is best.
2. Host WordPress blogs on your own hosting account.

I prefer hosting my own domains as I have more control over what happens to my domain. Also hosting one’s domains is quite affordable today. I host all my domains with HostGator.

I use HostGator because they use cPanel for control every aspect of your site, which I am used to. They also have Fantastico which lets me install WordPress on my domain in a couple of minutes. When you have as many niches on the go as I do you will want some automation.

Logging Into Your WordPress Blog

When you have your WordPress back-office installed also known as your dashboard, you will need to log in to manage your blog. From the dashboard you will be able to add posts, pages, plugins, change themes, so many things, especially SEO related things to help your site rank in the search engines.

Logging into your WordPress administration panel, again also called the dashboard, is easy however it’s important to remember your username and password.

http://www.yourdomainname.com/wp-admin/

Writing a Post in WordPress

Writing a post in WordPress is simple and can even be done through emailing, which is great when you’re on the road like Jenny and I like to be.

Publishing posts is what WordPress is all about. Once you’re logged into your WP account you only need to click Add New under the Post menu and you will see a new edit window open.

You can of course add text but you can also add tables, graphic, video and so much more as well as having the ability to link to other sites and pages.

Publishing is just as easy as there is a publish button, but there is also a Save Draft option in case you’re not quite ready to publish and need to leave.

Creating Pages Using WordPress

Blogging with individual blog post is what I do in WordPress, most of the time, however WordPress also has a section for creating individual pages which is very similar to writing a post. Instead of clicking Post you would click Pages instead and from that menu you would click Add New.

WordPress Posts vs WordPress Pages

What’s the difference between posts and pages? Should you be publishing posts or pages?

Pages look similar to posts but there are differences. One big difference is the lack of categories and tag options on pages.

When I am using pages instead of posting it usually means I have content that’s static like a garden tools page on my garden related blog.

Blog Categories

Marketing is all about specific words known as keywords. Blog categories usually reflect the keyword research done by the blog owner. Keyword focused categories that match your content of course is how search engines establish where you belong in the big scheme of the search engine listings and ranking.

Handling Comments in WordPress

WordPress blogs have the option to have comments turned on or off for all or individual posts. So the first thing you need to decide is if you want comments active. You also have the option to have comments appear immediately or have them wait for approval. Personally I manually approve or reject comments.

Blog comments can make your site very interactive, if you have the right content.

I check each comment. If it doesn’t ask a question based on the content or adds value to my post I don’t usually approve it. If the link is not relevant to the content I reject it as well.

You will find there are a lot of work from home comment spammer trying to a backlink from your site, so be diligent and monitor your comments before approving them.

So Many Free And Paid WordPress Themes

One of the things I love about WordPress blogs is the variety of niche focused blog themes available.

Be sure you looking in the Appearance menu from your WP dashboard. From there you will see the themes available. You will also see an Install Themes tab. Click that and start looking for themes that will meet your needs.

I have paid themes today but I have had a lot of fun with free themes. I just like the power built into the paid themes I use today.

Once you’ve found the theme you want you can install and then activate it.

As a work from home marketer there are many reasons love WordPress blogging. I’ve found that using the right plugins help me greatly. Just because search engines love WordPress doesn’t mean it can’t be improved on for even better performance.