If you have a website or blog the chance is you want to know how to make money from it. In this post I am going to walk you through the process of making money from any blog or website.
I am assuming at this point that you do, at least have a chosen niche and have built a website. If not click on the links in the previous sentence to find out how.
I also want to make you aware that before you can sell you must be able to help. I urge you not to try selling on your blog before you are offering value to your customers or visitors. Being a dumping ground for promoting products will not sit well with either google or visitors. First and foremost your visitors will come to your site to find out information they have searched for. And if they find it, they will stay and read, and then google will reward you by boosting you in their rankings, which in the end will mean more visitors.
One of the most common mistakes we make is promoting to a customer or reader before we fully understand who our readers are. It is so easy to waste money promoting what you “think” people want, rather than what they actually want.
Don’t make assumptions about your customers, gain an understanding of them and then you will be much more successful.
If you feel that you don’t yet understand who your customers are, then read my post on the customer purchasing lifecycle.
The most popular “money making” technique is called Affiliate Marketing.
How Affiliate Marketing Works
The affiliate model is very simple, but people tend to over complicate things. Affiliate marketing allows you (The Affiliate) to promote product or services online for companies (The Merchant) This is done through affiliate programs. If you can buy something online, chances are you can promote the product as an affiliate through their affiliate program. When you join an affiliate program, they give you a special link to put on your site to promote their products.
When someone is on your site and they click your “affiliate link” you will get credit for the sale if this person goes on to buy something. Amazon for example pay affiliates 6% as a base commission. Let’s say you have a link to a sofa which is priced at £1500.00 .Your commission as an affiliate here would be 6% of this. £90.00 for simply referring people to a site where people can buy the product. This can be done within absolutely every niche and every website. There is an affiliate program for everything. Some are independent and some are based within larger affiliate networks, like Shareasale or Clickbank. Search “Affiliate programs” in Google and all the main companies will be there on the first page.
To find a relevant Affiliate program for your own niche just type in “your niche + affiliate program”. For example “handmade furniture + affiliate program” There really is an affiliate program for every niche.
All you have to do is sign up and then promote the product via a link on your site. The trouble is people won’t just click on a random link in your website and buy. Would you?
What we need to do is make the link relevant to your post or page and the best way to do this is by doing a product review of the said product. Tell people what you like about it and what you don’t. Be honest and even if you are not so keen on it, say so because the reader may still click the link to buy because what you didn’t like about it may not bother them. Totally negative reviews still get product links clicked.
What you also need to do is include some kind of call to action in your post. Don’t leave it to chance. Say “Click here to purchase product xyz” you can also put in subtle links in the post which could easily be put in when you name the product in question.
I want you to know that Google, Bing and Yahoo or the big three, hate websites that are full of affiliate links and will punish them harshly in rankings. To get around this you can put an internal link to your review on any of your posts. For example, I may write a post about the process of making a sofa and put a link into it that sends them to a review on that sofa you want people to buy from Amazon.
How Much Can You Earn as an Affiliate?
As much as you like is the answer but remember your revenue is closely tied to the amount of traffic you get. In order to get traffic you need a website that has relevant and helpful content.
You will hear stories about people earning £1,000 a day off of a single keyword, and while that is possible it is not the norm. You will also hear stories about people earning a residual income, year round, from home. This one is a reality and this is usually accomplished through affiliate marketing one way or another. Most of the best ones with higher % pay outs are the Independent ones. These are the ones not tied to the big affiliate networks.
For example, I belong to an affiliate network called Wealthy Affiliate. It is an independent (or “in house”) affiliate program. In 12 years, they have never been late with a payment and have paid out MILLIONS of dollars to affiliates. You can check out my review here.
In conclusion
We all want to earn a profit but we have to know that earning money is done by building relationships with real people who will read your content and then possibly become a customer. They become a customer because they trust what you say. Writing blogs or creating websites is a people business and you will be dealing with REAL people.
REAL people are coming to your site.
REAL people will be reading your content.
REAL people are going to take action and buy if they trust you.
If you understand your customer and treat them as if they are the most important person in the world, then the money will naturally follow towards you.
I hope this has been useful in understanding how to make money from blogs. If you have any questions please leave a comment below and I will get back to you as soon as possible.
With Grace and Gratitude
Karen