As a blogger with good regular traffic, you will be approached with all sorts propositions and marketing ideas. Usually, it's amounts to an affiliate link that will get you a 3% interest on products sold--not very enticing. Especially since most people will see a blogger affiliate link and may keep that product in mind, but at the end of the day when the product is purchased, they go to the site directly or google someplace cheaper. However, if you love to blog and like to do it as often as possible, you need to find some way of supplementing your blogging habit and it's not easy to get paid to blog (and have total creative control of your content and own it at the end of the day). It's kind of like trying to find producers and advertisers for tv shows. I was recently approached by a company called OpenSky that asked if I would make videos about birding and products that I personally own and use. They will use the videos to create an online shop and if someone buys the item based on my video, I get a good percentage and at the end of the day--I own my own content that I created.
I am under no obligation to blog about any product I don't like and I can make the videos as educational as I like. So, I'm going to give this a whirl, these will not be infomercial style videos (not like Vince from SlapChop). Almost everything I post here already involves some birding product (especially all the digiscoping I do or birds that I get at feeders). So, when I post about woodpeckers feeding on the suet sandwich and I mention that I like it because it's fairly raccoon proof, there might be a link to a video or other information that I made for my OpenSky shop. We're in the process of editing some videos now, they should be popping up soon.
I see this as kind of like the days I managed a wild bird store but I don't have to carry products I don't like. Back then, the motto I gave to all of my employees was, "We are a nature center that happens to sell bird seed. Information first, sales second."
I promise this blog will not become all ads, but this is just a heads up that if you see OpenSky mentioned, that's my shop. And if you like the blog and want to support it, you can purchase an item there. All of the products are ones that I either use at my home, my friend's yards, give to family and friends as gifts for a particular bird issue and have a 100% satisfaction guarantee. There are some up now and we're hoping to add more soon (especially in the form of shade-grown coffee).