MommyBloggers: Changing the Face of Affiliate Marketing? panel from Affiliate Summit West 2010, which took place January 17-19, 2010 in Las Vegas, NV. An interesting note to this panel is that I posted a request for speakers in HARO to find the bloggers, except for Kim, who I already knew.

Another thing, for merchants that may be listening, too many merchants are carte blanche turning down “Mommy Bloggers” and bloggers in general. This is a powerful group of people that probably can hit your target markets.

Speakers:

– Deborah Carney, CEO, Team Loxly (Moderator)
– Wendy Limauge, Blogger, Sweeties Swag
– Carrie Rocha, President, Pocket Your Dollars
– Kim Rowley, President, Key Internet Marketing, Inc.
– Heather Sokol, Proprietor, Inexpensively

MommyBloggers are involved in many types of monetization strategies for their blogs, affiliate marketing being one, however they aren’t necessarily doing it in the “traditional” ways.

More details on Affiliate Summit at http://www.affiliatesummit.com/

Many thanks to Affiliate Summit for posting the replays of sessions from past summits. Many of these are still very relevant, like this one.

If you are unable to see the video below, please go direct to YouTube and watch it there.

In Affiliate ABCs #14 host Deborah Carney (a.k.a Loxly) interviews guest Cathy Stucker about her service that links bloggers (or webmasters) with other bloggers and writers appropriately named Blogger Link Up. BLU, as Cathy refers to it, is an email newsletter that currently has four ways for bloggers/webmasters to use it:

Request Guest Posts
Offer Guest Posts
Request Sources for Interviews
Offer Products for Review

There are other similar services, like Peter Shankman’s Help a Reporter Out, but BLU is more focused as a tool to create relationships between webmasters/bloggers and HARO is more focused on actual media connections. They are complimentary tools, and you probably want to subscribe to both.

As an affiliate looking for more content for your site, you can take advantage of BLU to make connections, and to get ideas also. You might see a guest blogger offering content that is in your niche but from an angle you didn’t consider or that you aren’t able to write effectively about.

One question I have been asked when talking about Blogger Link Up with people is they want to know why they shouldn’t just submit their articles to article directories (like ezinearticles, ideamarketers or any of the others) and the answer is simple, still submit your articles there, and go find artilces there, but use BLU to make personal contact with people so that you can get guest posts that are more targeted and offer your articles directly to blogs that really need your content so that you both benefit. It’s all about the personal touch and making direct connections.

The sources area is great for finding sources to quote for articles, and for finding people to interview for podcasts as well.

And the products for review is very valuable for affiliates to find things that are appropriate to their sites to obtain to review and put you in touch with merchants that are willing to give you items for contests or giveaways also.

Listen for tips from both Deborah on how she uses the service, and Cathy about why she started it, how she knows people are using it and where she hopes to take it in the future.

Links from the podcast:
Blogger Link Up Newsletter
Twitter: @CathyStucker
Cathy’s Idea Lady Website
Cathy’s Blog

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Jim Kukral hits the nail on the head by giving entrepreneurs encouragement and a heads up. If it was easy everyone would be doing it… work hard and you will achieve success.

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