A blog is a great way to add content to a site quickly. You can use a blog as an add-on to your regular website, or use it by itself. Either way, a blog allows you to share content, like reviews, articles, or short musings on a particular topic with your readers.
To create a blog, you will need some sort of blogging software as well as a hosting account. You have several options when it comes to both. The blogging software is usually free, and you have a choice of free hosting, or paid hosting it on your own domain.
The two big players when it comes to blogging software are blogger and wordpress. The main difference between the two is that the blogger hosts its software on its own server, and wordpress, is free software that you install on your hosting account. Once wordpress is installed, it is just as easy to use as blogger's software.
Wile a wordpress blog is always hosted on your own account, you can host your blog free on blogger, or you can host it on your own hosting account and under your own domain.
Once you blog is set up, you will be able to start posting content. Using a blog is very similar to using email or a message board. You enter a title for your post and then type in your message. While you can not use regular search engine optimization strategies, you can use your main keyword for the topic you are writing about in your title as well as in the beginning of your message or post. This will help search engine determine what your blog and this particular post are about.
Blogs also tend to be indexed fairly quickly by search engines, which means you will get actively searching visitors to your blog rather quickly as well. Blogs make another great tool in any affiliate marketers toolbox, since you can very easy and very quickly add more content.
To monetize your blog, you can work product recommendations into your post, for example, if you are an affiliate for an ebook on how to get your baby to sleep through the night, you could write about the ebook and post it on your Blog, or you could write a short article about how new parents can cope with the lack of good night sleep until baby sleeps through the night and then mention the ebook as a resource at the end of your article.
Add links to some of your favorite affiliate products to the side bar of your blog, so they appear no matter what particular post the visitor is reading.
You can also add pay per click ads like Google AdSense either on the sidebar or in the individual blog posts. Here's a tip if you are using Google AdSense in the body of your post. Make sure your posts are not too short and you stick to one particular topic per post. This will allow Google to display ads that are related to your post topics and will hopefully be of interest to your readers and make them click.
