My friend Tammy Strobel over at Rowdy Kittens was featured in a New York Times article over the weekend for simplifying her life and getting rid of most of her stuff.
Tammy simplified her life down to less than 100 possessions, sold her cars and the rest of the unnecessary stuff, and found she was much happier. I shared some of Tammy’s story earlier here on the blog and you can check out her book simply car free on this earlier post. She has been working as a writer and web designer on her own since making all these changes.
The question I’m asked most often by readers is how do people make a living when living in these unconventional ways. They don’t know how to design websites, or don’t think they can write for a living like Tammy. They ask about the ads that I have on this blog, and if I am making a living from them. This is a small blog and I don’t make much money from the affiliate links that I place on the site as I reference on my disclosure page. Most of the ads here just help the blog pay for itself, covering hosting costs and such. But they aren’t just random Google ads. They are affiliate ads for products I chose and like.
Most webpages on the Internet today that you see selling products are sold through affiliate programs. From tiny single page websites selling a single product, to large “compare and find the best travel deals” websites, many of these are set up to refer people to buy products that companies sell. These companies have affiliate programs set up for those people to make a commission on each referral they send. Amazon has had one since the mid 90′s, and it is a very common way for companies to bring in sales.
Many of the sites that you see are affiliate sites, and the people who own the websites are making commissions off of any products that you end up purchasing, when clicking on those links.
Tomorrow on August 10, another friend, Corbett Barr is launching his Affiliate Marketing for Beginners program at a discounted rate for the first 48hrs. In the course, he teaches a complete step-by-step course for beginners how to build your own affiliate sites from the ground up.
Affiliate marketing is probably the simplest and least expensive way to get into earning some extra money on your own using the Internet (that is legal, ethical and not a scam), and this course teaches you step-by-step how to do it. I was surprised how much information he included in the lesson plan. Even though I have done affiliate marketing, I have found a wealth of information and steps in there that I wasn’t quite doing as well as I could be. It has already helped me out quite a bit.
Since so many people ask me about this stuff, and I like Corbett and the program he has created, I’ll have more information up here on it tomorrow when he officially launches at 8am PST, so keep an eye on this space. Of course you can subscribe to our feed by RSS or email to be notified whenever there is new info here on the site.
