Happy New Year
Wendy

@Linda — Glad you found us here!

“would you mind sharing with me how to create the link within the actual article? When I try, all that comes up in the HTML.”

I’ll send you a note, because I’m not sure whether you mean an article you’re editing in an HTLM editor such as Frontpage or if you’re trying to add an affiliate link to a blog post or something else.

I think you’re probably trying to click one of the link icons in a blog post editor and putting the whole piece of code in that field. The affiliate gives you a chunk of code though, not just a bare link. What you need to do varies a bit from platform to platform, but there should be an icon you can click to go into html editor mode. Then you’d find your text and just insert the code after/in your sentence before switching back to plain old writing mode.

To find someone to help you set up your blog, you can get on Craigslist and get someone locally, but to have it done cheaply, it’s probably best to find someone on a webmaster forum (forums.digitalpoint.com is a big one). For example, on Digital Point, there’s a section for people offering their services, and a Wordpress install or transfer is super easy for those guys, so it should take an hour or less.

You can send a private message to someone advertising, or you can start a post of your own describing what you need done, and people will message you. Just pick someone who has good feedback in their iTrader rating (this is like eBay’s feedback rating system), and you’ll probably be able to get it all done the same day. Payment via paypal is standard over there, since people are all over the world.

@Maria NtSRT — There will always be some people who think everything on the web should be free, so you can’t please everyone. You deserve to make money from your work, so don’t worry about the naysayers.

@Maria WriterGig — $100 a month from CJ isn’t bad at all! Yes, I have accounts with them and LinkShare and average a few hundred a month. (Of course, December is always better!)

I usually look first to see if Amazon has a product, even if a CJ merchant offers a higher commission, because virtually everyone who shops online has an account at Amazon already and trusts them, so the order process is hassle free. Also a lot of merchants seem to come and go at CJ, so I’ve experienced the broken-link annoyance many times. But still, there’s one program there that offers a 30% cut in one of my niches, which makes it pretty easy to make money, when I actually bother to promote them.