I’ve just received an email from my list asking “how do I make income through this” pertaining to my latest email message on the post “how to stay in the flow state for blogging“.
There’s a couple of main strategies people use to earn through a blog. One is advertising; using an Advertising platform such as Google Adsense to place ads on your content. When people click on the content, you earn advertising revenue. I personally haven’t had much success with this strategy, although it does work the amounts are incredibly small. So you need a huge volume of traffic to make it work – and free traffic at that, which is difficult to obtain.
The strategy I’ve had the most success with is affiliate marketing, hence the name of this site: “affiliate marketing mentors“. With affiliate marketing you sell someone else’s product from your blog. These are what I believe to be the main factors in making this strategy work.
How Do I Make Income Through Blogging? – Product Or Topic?
Blogging can be a tough way to make an income and you shouldn’t expect the money to suddenly come suddenly flooding in as a beginner. Although you can have some quick success as an affiliate, to make money consistently takes a little more effort.
Some people say to find a product you want to promote first. But, if you’re going to be blogging for traffic generation (to find visitors to buy your product) you’ll need to create a lot of content over a long period of time. So choosing a product first might not be the best idea because that means you’ll be blogging in a topic you might not be familiar or even interested.
So I would recommend choosing a blog topic first which you can align with a product you want to promote. Unless you can consistently create content for your blog, you’re better off using paid advertising instead, to build an affiliate business. This is far faster too, if you’ve got the budget for it. If not, blogging it is!
How Do I Make An Income Through Blogging – Why Your Blog Topic Must Align With Your Product Choice
To sell something through your blogging, you must align your blog topic with the product you’re going to be promoting. Otherwise, you’ll spend a huge amount of time building traffic, and nobody will be interested in what you’re selling. Think about why you would find a particular website, for example. Imagine you’re looking for information on how to fix a toilet seat. You land on the website, and they are selling picture frames. Would you buy one? Of course not! You’re looking for information about fixing your toilet seat – you’re not shopping for picture frames!
You might buy a tool, or a bracket to help you fix your toilet seat. You might even buy a toilet seat! But you are definitely not in the market for a picture frame while you’re trying to solve your toilet seat problem!
Unless you align your blog topic with a suitable product which can help your audience, you’re not going to sell your affiliate product. So for starters think long and hard about the product which will align with your particular interest for your blog.
How Do I Make An Income Through Blogging – Your Blog Topic
There’s over 600 million blogs on the internet so in order to get noticed and pick up some of that much desired traffic you’re going to need to create a lot of content. It can take several months to build traction from blogging, even several years. This will depend on how competitive your particular topic/niche is. In a competitive topic, you’ll have more competing websites online , so it’ll take longer to generate traction than with a topic with few competing websites.
Ideally choose a topic you can become obsessive about and keep creating content in. That’s likely what it will take to generate the traffic you need to build an income. See also how long does it take to make money blogging.
If you find an untapped niche, which has low competition, it can of course happen much more quickly. Or, if you can throw some marketing budget at your blog, this can help too! See also, best niche for blogging.
Cashing In On Your Blog Traffic
In order to “cash in” on your blog traffic you need to sell something to your visitors. This is done through finding a suitable product which helps your audience in some way.
There’s thousands of affiliate products you can choose from online. So it’s worth spending some time on this, finding the best product in your niche to promote. Unless you already have something to sell of your own, or have a service to sell, it’s probably not worth creating your own product initially. There’s plenty of high value products you can promote online without going to the trouble of product creation.
The best affiliate products to promote are firstly the ones which are the best for your audience and secondly those which offer the most value. If you misalign your product choice with your blog topic, it’s going to be difficult to sell anything. But find a good match and you can sell them more easily through your website.
Selling Affiliate Products From A Blog – The Email List
To sell an affiliate product from your blog you will want to offer some giveaway product to encourage your visitors to sign up to your email list. You can get an email autoresponder service here for free. This lets you collect subscribers from a blog and deliver automated messages to your subscribers.
To get website/blog visitors to subscribe to your email list, you can create some giveaway. I use an ebook on this website, for example. You can get a copy of Affiliate Marketing For Beginners here.
Ebooks are good lead magnets which attract website visitors to your email list. Once you have a “lead magnet” offer on your website, you can build out some email messages which automatically send out to your email list of subscribers. You can use these messages to promote your affiliate product using your affiliate link. An affiliate link is a unique identifying link which you use to sell your affiliate products through. When someone buys a product through your link, you earn a commission based on the sale.
Back To Blogging
While it may take some time initially to create a lead magnet such as an ebook, once you’ve set it up your email marketing can be automated. Messages are sent out on autopilot to your subscribers as they join your email list.
With a few carefully crafted email messages, you can sell your affiliate offer to your subscribers as they join your list, all on complete autopilot!
Once setup, you’re going to need to build that email list though and this is done by creating more content through blogging. There’s many other ways to get traffic to your website free. You can also pay for advertising if you’re less inclined to create lots of content through blogging.
But blogging is a good, cheap method of generating website traffic. Just make sure the blog posts you write are going to attract the right audience who will want and need your products.
Link Directly In Your Blog Posts
You can also place your affiliate links directly in your blog posts too. Use banners and images which you can get from your affiliate program. Here’s an example of an image I found through the affiliate program I use:
Most affiliate programs will offer banners, images and other marketing materials which you can use to help you generate sales through your blog. It can be a little more difficult selling products directly through a blog post.
Most visitors to a new blog will be hesitant to make a purchase if they don’t know you or trust you. This is where email marketing can help you sell online. By offering value to your subscribers through your email messages, you can build trust and lead people to your affiliate products.
