Next week I will be giving a free webinar for bloggers who would like to learn more about how affiliate marketing can benefit their sites. It’s always amazing to me how many great bloggers there are out there with major misconceptions about what affiliate marketing is. I can tell you for sure what is it NOT: it’s not MLM and it is not get rich quick. It’s a completely legitimate way to make money selling products that you would recommend anyway.

If you have any interest at all in hearing more, I encourage you to sign up for the webinar. It’s only an hour and you can mult-task the whole time if you want. I’m going to talk not only about how you can make money through affiliate marketing links on your blog but also things like how to get products to give away or do review of and how to build backlinks to your site through contests. I’m not trying to sell anything at all. It’s simply a presentation that I gave at Blog Indiana a couple of weeks ago and truly feel like more people need to hear it.

You can sign up through the Blogging ABCs website. The webinar will be held Thursday, September 8 from 1-2pm Eastern.

5 Affiliate Marketing Benefits for Bloggers

There are days where I complain about my job; I won’t lie about that. And then there are weeks like the last one where I remember why being an affiliate marketer and a mom are a great combination. Although I sometimes feel like I work 24 hours a day, 356 days a year, I have to step back and look at the reality of it.

As an affiliate, I set my own hours and determine how much money I will make based on my own creativity and hard work. If I choose not to put in much time or thought, I just won’t make much money. On the flip side, I could choose to do nothing but work and make millions. I like being right in the middle. I work hard when I have to but make the most of the time off. It’s a lot of multitasking, but the benefits far outweigh the detriments.

Every morning I am able to get my kids off to school, including making sure that they eat breakfast, their skirts are not too short, and they have all of their papers signed. One day this week a folder was forgotten at home and it was no big deal to run it to the school. Every afternoon, I am in my office waiting for my kids. I keep working, but I make sure that they get a snack, tell me about their day, and get started on their homework. I can watch them ride their bikes from my office window. This week I was able to spontaneously take my girls out for ice cream when they both came home with perfect report cards and my older daughter was elected to student council.

Today I was lucky enough to get to ride a train from the school to the Indiana Transportation Museum with my 2nd grader. I got to learn what she was learning, meet her friends in class, and spend a little bit of quality time with her. Last week I was able to volunteer in her classroom and get to know her teacher a little better.

You are right if you are thinking to yourself that I could be a stay-at-home mom and do all of these things as well. But I wouldn’t be ME if I weren’t working because building my career has been something that I knew I would do ever since I was a kid myself. I like making money so that my family can take Disney vacations every year and have our own pool in the backyard. I like growing and pushing myself to learn new things and own my own business.

I’m sure one day in the next few weeks I will be complaining about “too much to do and too little time” because of my job and my work as a mom. When I do, just point me back to this post to remind me why being an affiliate marketer and a mom really is a dream job.

I’ve just returned from Affiliate Summit and am already making plans for Affiliate Summit East 2009 in New York! It will take place August 9-11 at the New York Hilton. If you are a mom who is trying to make money blogging or through internet marketing, attending Affiliate Summit is a MUST. Not only will you connect with merchants but you will learn so much. By biggest take-aways from Affiliate Summit West were new contacts, search engine optimization help, and fabulous ideas about how to drive more traffic to my sites.

Do you need a platinum pass for Affiliate Summit? Maybe not if you just want to hit the exhibit hall to get information. But if you are looking to network, meeting up with people at breakfast and lunch is HUGE! I had an opportunity to have meals with some very important people in the industry, and I just know that I will see results from it.

If you have never been to an Affiliate Summit, you should absolutely investigate the possibility of attending. Affiliate Summit turned my websites from a hobby into a small business. If you book now, you will even get an early bird discount!