A few days ago Courtney at Web Writing Info posted about low wages for articles and how they’re being profited on. Near the end of the article she says:

(That is a very, very brief excerpt- go read the whole post if you haven’t already), I couldn’t hold it in. I burst out in the comments with my own plans for doing just that.

Actually, I withheld quite a bit since I’m really quite verbose when not self-editing.

Anyway, thanks to the encouragement of Hope, Courtney (link above), and Alex, as well as the extreme exhuberance of CJ, Tracy, and their parents for me building a craft website, I’ve decided to expand.

Nothing is up yet, but I’ve been setting up templates for AffLove complete with niche directories. Yeah, not the domain I wanted, but everything seemed to be taken.

Anyway- the reasons for doing this are many. As Courtney said- marketers are paying obscenely low wages for articles, throwing said articles up on a few websites, and either collecting affiliate money or flipping the sites. While I have every intention of becoming a successful novelist, I’m also working towards becoming a web content freelancer. But if the marketers are taking my words and making money off of it, why can’t I do the same thing for myself?

So here are the reasons I’m starting an affiliate site.

1. I get the income. I’m not making a few bucks so someone else can rake in the bucks on the same words.
2. I’m not a freelancer yet. Sure I’ve had a client, and I review for TitleTrakk. But I still need to build my skills. By doing the same work I’d do for someone else, I’ll be building those skills on my own dime and not having to worry about being rated on my early work.
3. It’s a showcase for those newly earned skills. Potential clients may find me by my affiliate site, and I can use said site as a sample for potential clients.
4. It’s PLR fodder. I’d like to get into writing PLR. As I research the articles/posts for my site, I can turn around and use the same research to build PLR packages.
5. Similar to #1, it’s passive income. That’s something that I really want. Once each niche is fleshed out enough to be attractive to search engines, I can add to it as I choose instead of busting my butt to keep it going.
6. I still have a day job. If it fails, it’s just a lesson learned. A loss of time and a little money. If I wait till I’m already a freelancer, I’d be taking a much bigger chance. I’ve got my cushion, so why not use it?

Of course, it’ll take time to get it all off the ground- especially since I’m writing it all myself rather than… ahem, outsourcing. Though I do plan to buy some PLR and rewrite that as well since that’s another good sample to have. Besides, I wanted to buy some to see how it should be formatted and delivered; why not use it?

So, those are the basics. Hopefully I’ll have a brain this weekend and will be able to format the craft site the way I want it and get some basics down for the affiliate site. Anyone have recommendations for affiliates other than ClickBand/Commission Junction/Adsense/Amazon/Ebay?