I’m finally back from my 10-day road trip to CJU and BlogWorld. Back-to-back conferences means lots of schmoozing, a ton of great ideas, a laundry lit of action items, hundreds of business cards to input, interesting people to follow up with and much catching up to do.

Commission Junction’s CJU was a great event. The format changed a bit from year’s past, but the networking was still top-notch. If you want to see all the winners from the CJ/You award (previously called the Horizon Awards) check out the complete list.

BlogWorld was inspiring. Unlike most of the talk about blogs in the past as just a passion and communication vehicle, there were plenty of people at the conference who were making money from their blogs. The big buzz was about how one of the best ways to monetize a blog is via affiliate links. Well, duh. You’ve all known that forever. Finally the rest of the blogosphere is catching on. I expect many of the attendees to spend the latter part of this week investigating the world of affiliate marketing.

And the online marketing community was well represented at the show. Super affiliates and affiliate marketing experts including Zac Johnson, Mike Allen, Tim Jones, Shawn Collins, Jim Kukral, Stephanie Agresta, Michael Jenkins and others were on panels to talk about the affiliate topic as it relates to blogging.

I may also get on the bandwagon. Despite having the outlet of this blog, a magazine and Twitter, I’m going to launch a personal blog in the next few months. I’ve tortured all of you long enough with snippets about my dog, my urban gardening, my road trips, my love of all things foodie and my obsession with Project Runway. However, when the blog launches I hope to chronicle some of my efforts to monetize on this blog and let you all now what is working and what isn’t.

If you want to learn what is working in social media be sure to attend the Social Media Marketing Summit in San Francisco next week. Use the code SMDC to get half off your registration.