I had the pleasure this morning of attending the Indiana Business Rally, sponsored by Bitwise Solutions and Inside Indiana Business. The event was held during breakfast at McAllister’s Deli. Over 200 local business leaders were in attendance. In addition, donations were collected for Big Brothers, Big Sisters.

As an affiliate marketer, I do not attend many local networking events. However, I was inspired by Gary Vaynerchuk at the last Affiliate Summit to start networking more outside of affiliate marketing conferences. I am glad that I did!

The event was low key, starting with a $5 breakfast buffet and some opening announcements. Gerry Dick from Inside Indiana Business relayed some great news about 1300 new jobs coming to Connersville. It was a great way to kick off our networking with encouraging news for our local economy. Others spoke briefly about the need for us to take economic recovery into our own hands by being positive and networking to build trust relationships.

I was able to speak with people about affiliate marketing because most of them have never heard about it. In addition to spreading my own Sunshine Rewards brand, I think I educated some consultants about what affiliate marketing could do for their clients. I also met interesting people from places like Comcast (who is hiring!), Bitwise Solutions, and Sandler Training. I had a particularly good discussion with Amy Lemen of ALL in One Marketing about how she started her own business after many years in corporate America.

The rally was a perfect opportunity to 1) brush up on my elevator speech for upcoming Affiliate Summit, 2) spread the word about Blog Indiana, 3) meet new people, 4) learn about other businesses, and 5) remember why I am excited about what I do.

If you have the chance to attend an Indiana Business Rally or something similar in your town, you absolutely need to give it a shot. For $5 and a couple of hours of my time, I walked away feeling like a million bucks.

As an active participant at StartupNation.com, I was super excited to see their newest contest, the Leading Moms in Business 2009 Competition. The goal of the contest is to celebrate America’s top 200 mom-owned businesses and the women behind them.

A mom of two and the owner of my own Internet company, I quickly entered the contest. I posted about it in a couple of places where I hoped that our members would see. Much to my delight, our popularity meter has now reached the highest level, “On Fire!”.  At this point, I am hoping that means that I actually have a chance at being in the top 100!

If you could spare a moment, I would love to have your vote. You do not have to register with them in any way. All you do is click a button. You can vote for each contestant once per 24 hours, but I would be happy if you would even vote for me once!

Here’s my page:

http://www.startupnation.com/leading-moms-2009/contestant/3155/index.php

Thanks so much for your support. This would be an awesome honor.

The time has come for me to start taking my business (affiliate marketing) seriously and write about all that is business related. I’ve been in affiliate marketing for four years and have been dabbling in all kinds of niche sites and a rewards/coupon site. The further in I get, the more that I realize that affiliate marketing really is my career–my calling. It took a political science degree, a law degree, and 7 years in corporate America to finally get me to this point. But now that I am here, I cannot imagine doing anything else!!

As I write this, my new blog has no theme and no plugins. But that will all change in the next several days. Once I get all of the “pretty” stuff done, I will start adding content, including a recap of my recent trip to Vegas for Affiliate Summit. If you happen across this site between now and the “pretty,” just bookmark me and come back in about a week.