I have used oDesk to purchase articles from writers and I can confirm that it is important to have an impressive profile. I put out a job specification and got over 20 replies in a short time.

The first thing I did was filter out those with nothing much in their profile/portfolio. Then I had a list of solid looking prospects to hire for my article writing. This was for another website, not the blog.

With an impressive profile, whether it be on a site like oDesk, or your own blog/domain, potential hirers are more likely to take you seriously.

Michael

I also came over from MommyInc. because I was curious what your blog was all about.

When I started reading your post above I could immediately relate. I too don’t market anything I don’t feel totally comfortable with. Actually, I go a step further, I need to be totally passionate about it to make it work for me.

“If you love what you do the money will follow.”

As I read on, I came to the part where you saying you don’t get a lot of traffic or comments to your posts.

Well, it’s certainly not your writing style or you not giving value. I like it. Maybe you are just not hanging with the right people.

I started my blog a year ago and until January of this year it kept hovering around the 2 to 3 million mark in Alexa. Since then it has dropped to somewhere around the 271,000 mark.

I get plenty of visitors and plenty of comments. Just because …. I FOUND THE RIGHT PEOPLE TO HANG OUT WITH

Maybe you haven’t found your group yet, but I’m sure in time you will. You write very well and people need to read your posts.

So keep it up! You’ll get there!

Wishing you much success!

Ilka Flood

Amazon does have amazing tools for their affiliates, which I have used before (and still will be using on sites I have), but the plugin I ended up going with allows me to pull products in directly and then set them up to post randomly for as long as I choose – which gives my blog a more natural appearance for posting. It also integrates very well with the SEO plugins, and is so quick and easy to use. You can set up categories based on your keywords, and then pull products in targetted at those categories.

Another very nice feature of it is that it has click tracking – you can see exactly what your visitors are clicking on, which is good for getting a feel for what they are searching for. I had thought of using the aStore, but the problem I see with that is that it is difficult to SEO your site for keywords – by using the plugin, I am able to optimize my site to be set up around the keywords I have found and then just have the categories set up to put the products into.

I likely could have done much of it with Amazon tools, but it would have taken me a lot longer. I had this set up and running within just a couple of hours, which is nice.

Like you, I’ve been a work at home mom for a long time and I know I have so much to offer but I was holding back, thinking that I was not an “expert”. But when I started attending conference; I met some “experts” who didn’t know what they were talking about in regards to online marketing. That’s when I took the plunge and started offering my services.

Stop holding back and monetize your knowledge:)