Home Business Blog

Running Affiliate programs on your site can be very profitable. The options are endless as to what to advertise and promote and you do not have to have a site dedicated to that item. For instance, I have a button for my hosting company and for PPP on my banner, although the site is about home business.. why? Because most business need a website, and my hosting company is the one I prefer to recommend, and PPP offers both advertising and payments to bloggers and businesses. Another affiliate company I plan on checking out is the Wirefly/InPhonic affiliate program; while I may not place a button in the sidebar here, a future post may be talking about cell phone options for a home business, and that would be a perfect time to plug in my affiliate link. Another option some home workers might be interested in is niche sites.

A niche site may be just a few pages but is all about a special subject, with articles and link about that. Now, I don’t personally have any niche sites, as I have a hard time coming up with extra time to make another site, but the money is there, blogs are a great way to do niches, having a blog about gadgets or cell phones is perfect, you will sign up at all the different affiliate programs that offer phones or gadgets and get to writing articles using the links. HOWEVER, niche sites can get very spammy, very quickly, so don’t try to do one unless you do know something about what you will be writing on.

ProBlogger recently published an article asking how we come up with stories for our blogs. Creating an open mike for comments and information.

I’m interested to hear from bloggers of all varieties (news bloggers, tips bloggers, business bloggers etc).

* Where do the ideas from your stories come?
* What tools do you use to find them?
* What blogs/sites/offline sources do you use to track them?
* How do you work out which stories to write about and which to leave out?

The comments left so far are wonderful ideas and information. So I thought I would jot my methods down.

I generally use my own experiences, be it remembering a company I worked for and doing some more research on that business as a work from home career; to even brainstorming while I am driving. Seeing a cool product or site and expanding on it. I also get alot of ideas from reading other blogs and sites, sometimes it only takes a paragraph about one subject and it reminds me of another. Right now this blog is only a few months old, so I am no where near out of ‘ideas’ sometimes I have a hard time not posting some things and saving them for later. I am sure however, that when this blog is years old, finding a subject that isn’t repetitive will be a task.

So how do you come up with stories? Leave a comment here and then jump over to the ProBlogger site and read and comment there.

This week, I am going to feature Cecile; whom runs both a Stampin’ Up! business as well as Jerky Direct business. Both of these are Direct sales companies. Where you sign up as a distributor and then promote and sell the product, making commissions. Direct sales companies are great to get into from home, as you set your own hours and schedule. Only working as hard as you want to. But with varied results.

Later in the week I will be talking to Cecile a little more to feature an interview with her about how she got started. Feel free to email or comment with any specific questions you would like to ask. Thank you for being in business. You can add this graphic to any of your sites if you wish. Thanks!