Tiffany Washko

This is my story about how I got started with Internet and affiliate marketing….

Unlike many wahms in this business I did not get started because I needed money. After my second child was born…a beautiful daughter…I decided I had missed too much of my first baby’s life working at a marketing and advertising firm. It was then that I decided to stay home full time. I was fortunate to be able to do that, since my husband made enough to cover all our needs and my income had been essentially “play” money. Of course losing that much play money was a little tough on me. So I was staying home with my two kids and getting comfortable being a stay-at-home-mom.

But a funny thing happened…I was still itching to have something to do…I missed business. It just so happened that I was using cloth diapers on my new baby and sewing them too. I decided it would be fun to make a business out of it. It turned into a wildly successful venture in only a few short months. I got new orders for my custom diapers daily and when I expanded to include other retail products I was making a very good income again. I thank my knowledge of marketing for catapulting me to success so fast.

Seeing how fun it was to market myself online I decided to create a couple side ventures. I started a content web site about cloth diapers. Initially I wanted this web site to make enough money to cover hosting, the price of the domain, and the cost of a few scripts I bought for it. I created a paid directory and I offered advertising for other cloth diapers businesses. Of course I used it as a platform to further my own business as well. Right away the site became popular and I added regular content to it with my knowledge of cloth diapers. Pretty soon it was bringing in more than it was drawing every month and I wondered how I could make even more. So after a several months I added Google Adsense and some affiliate links. Each month it would make more than the last and I would tweak a little bit, add more content, add more affiliate links and BAM like clockwork …more money. The best part about it was that I was working on it at most a few hours a week.

So I added another web site. This one was about another interest of mine, Natural Family Living. I used everything I knew about online marketing to develop this site and added a new feature…a blog…and wouldn’t you know it, this site started making a profit within the very first month. I was beginning to reconsider my business model. I remember like it was yesterday when I began getting a check every month from Google. It was like nothing I had ever felt before….completely passive income. It was great!

My cloth diaper business started to become a drag. I HATED being tied down to a sewing machine all day, I hated the mess of inventory and fabric that threw up all over my house. I just plain HATED the amount of time this business was demanding. Something had to give.

Well, when I got sick (cancer) it was time to sell my business and concentrate on developing my authority sites and make Internet and affiliate marketing my full time endeavors. Because of the cancer I had to have several surgeries and while I was hospitalized my sites kept bringing in money. All through my chemotherapy….my sites brought in money. I knew this is what I needed to be doing full time.

When I got a clean bill of health I started concentrating on my web sites full time…building lists, blogging, adding fresh content, and finding new ways to monetize them. Amazingly enough I was spending more time with my kids than ever before and in fact I had a third baby in the middle of it all. I was staying home with my precious babies, I was doing work that satisfied me, and I was making a full time income.

That is where I am today. I have about a dozen web sites but I concentrate mostly on the two authority sites I mentioned above. I always imagined that The Diaper Jungle would be my main site, my “baby”, but NatureMoms has started kicking some Jungle butt! But still I am proud of them both and proud of what I have been able to accomplish. Once again I have “play” money and with three kiddies and a work at home job, I do plenty of playing!

Wan to know how I did it? See my Top Secret Business Tools list!

Technorati Tags: money, monetize, Internet marketing, affiliate marketing, authority sites

Share This

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Many of the built-in Squidoo modules actually help to monetize your lenses. With the eBay and Amazon modules for example you create a section for related products to appear on your lens and whenever a visitor clicks through and buys one of those recommended products…you and Squidoo share the commission. This is the same with Google AdSense. The Adsense ads appear in various places above and below your lens content and when visits click on these ads you get a portion if the profit. There are many other modules available to monetize your lens too..cafepress, KB Toys, Netflix, Overstock, Buy.com. The Starbucks store…many options.

Aside from the shared lens commissions, Squidoo lenses are also very easy to monetize yourself. Squidoo is very lenient about allowing you to use third party advertising on your lens. You can promote your own websites, your own products, or promote your favorite affiliate products. You just work those links into the content and you get paid when visitors buy. You can also use your lens to prompt visitors to sign up for your mailing lists so that you can pitch your products or services to them at a later time.

I made my first two large affiliate sales through a Squidoo lense within 3 weeks of creating it. And I also get Squidoo commissions every month. I make a relatively modest amount….I think I have 6 very targeted niche lenses. But there are some Internet Marketers who have 100 lenses or more. One man that comes to mind is Lewis Smile. He has quite a few lenses and I was just reading one of those about why he loves Squidoo so much and he mentions that Squidoo just paid for his new laptop at 2500.00 so the potential to make a lot of money is definately there.

Want to know more about Squidoo? Get the best Squidoo resource out there…Social Networking On Squidoo. I’ve read it…its awesome…if you want to Squidoo then you need it!

Technorati Tags: squidoo, social networking, money, lens, affiliates

Share This

Several weeks ago I got an email from renowned Internet Marketer John Reese. I always read every morsel that he sends me and I am never disapointed. Well, not long ago he recommended a new program for affiliate marketers and I knew when I saw it that I would like it. If you could think of one marketplace that has TONS of products for low prices that is SURE to have products that would appeal to your target market, what would it be? Amazon is a good guess. But the answer you are looking for is eBay.

So how can you make money by  promoting ebay auctions? With Auction Ads of course! This great new program allows you to display ebay auctions according to your chosen keywords, customize the appearance of the ads, and make money when your web visitors click on the links and take action. Easy! When your site’s visitors click on an Auction Ad listing and take an action on eBay you earn cash. Actions are defined as a Winning Bid, a Buy-it-Now or a confirmed user registration. Auction Ads is committed to paying out a minimum of 100% of eBay commission revenue.

I tried it out immediately by adding it to only 5 pages on my website. When I made over $20.00 with only those few ads I was hooked. I am now in the process of adding more links.

Another BIG bonus of this program is that it is a two tier setup. If a user clicks on the “Ads by AuctionAds” that is displayed and signs up it as an affiliate themselves, you earn a bonus 2% of all revenue generated by that user for the 6 months.

I hope you will join and see how easy it is to profit from eBay auctions!

Share This