Affiliate Marketing and blogging for profit.  Where do you start?  There are just thousands and thousands of products out there, choosing the right one may be a bit difficult. You may be considering using Contextual Affiliate Products, these affiliate programs include companies like Adsense and Chitika. When you choose to use contextual affiliate programs you want to make sure that the products you choose are right for your site. Being a blog, it could have a few different categories, so the possibilities are endless when it comes to choosing products. Keep in mind when choosing these ads, stay on topic, if you have a blog about cars then don’t place an affiliate program for cats. You won’t make any money and worse, you will lose all hope of getting return readers.

Ask yourself why people are coming to your blog in the first place, seek out the strengths and weaknesses of the blog and choose programs according to the strengths. Try to figure out what the intention is of the people who are coming to your blog. Do they come to read and post or do they just browse and leave. Choose products that are fun and interesting. If they are boring, no one is going to buy anything. Make sure the programs are practical. If you have a blog on pets, then use affiliate programs on pet toys or pet food, pet owners are  always in need of food and toys.

Placement of the affiliate programs is very important. If your blog gets more readers in a certain area then place the ads there. Place them where the bloggers are going to see them. Try to keep the affiliate programs visible to all readers. This may have to be done by trial and error. If you see that the programs are not working in some places but are working well in others then you may have to do some rearranging. If you see that ads are not doing so well anywhere, then it may be time to change them. You are not committed to keeping the same products, if something isn’t working then change it around. It can only help you in the end.  You will hear this forever on the internet: Track and Tweak!  You must constantly track your ads and tweak them for best results.

Follow these 10 blog traffic tips and your blog just might be your ticket to personal independence.

1. Blog Regularly – many of the top blogs post 10-20 times per day.  Who in the world has time for that?!  Once a day will be enough to get you going, do more when you can.  Do Not post junk!  Be sure that your posts offer valuable content based on your theme.

2. Create Authority Articles – instead of blogging frequently, post less often but focus on creating Authority Posts — lengthier articles that are really well put together which will attract attention from other bloggers & users of social bookmarking sites like Twitter, Digg and MySpace, etc.

3. Comment on Other Blogs – do not keyword spam in these, but rather use your own name and add value to the conversation.

4. Link Out Frequently to Industry Leaders – show some link love to other bloggers in your niche.  In turn, they might eventually link back if you have a quality post on a topic they have not covered yet.

5. Participate in Blog Carnivals – these are a way for bloggers within a niche to get together and periodically highlight posts from one another’s blogs.  You can find an index of these at BlogCarnival.com.

6. Do Guest Posts – not just for A-List bloggers, but B-List and beyond.  Be sure to work up some good material first, so as to make a good first impression.

7. Article Marketing – chances are, you’re reading this via a site that syndicated this article using an article marketing script of some sort.  Join a site like ArticleMarketer.com and syndicate your articles to thousands of participating sites.  If distributed via the web, these sites are required to link back to you via a byline.

8. Social Digging/Mixxing – join sites like Digg, Twitter, StumbleUpon, etc. and encourage your users and/or friends to submit your content.

9. Social Bookmarking – join del.icio.us, Furl, Wink, Backflip, etc and submit your popular articles to these sites to seed them into the community.

10. Use Great Headlines – okay, which sounds better “Some Ways to Get Readers”, or “10 Time-tested, Battle-Hardend Blog Traffic Techniques”.  Many readers are particularly fond of “Top X” lists, or “How To …” posts.

For some serious advise on successful Blogging, Check with the experts! Blogging To The Bank