Did you know you can earn money with your blog by selling products or services via their site. There are two main ways to earn money with your blog:
- Selling products or services that you have created
- Affiliate marketing – Selling products or services created by someone else
It’s the second of these, affiliate marketing, that we will focus on in this article.
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Affiliate marketing works as follows:
First, you sign up for an account with a business that wants to sell products; this could be with the business directly or via an affiliate network.
- You find a product or service that you would like to earn money with your blog from
- You create content based around the product or service
- You include an “affiliate link” in your writing, linking to the product or service
- A reader clicks through the affiliate link and makes a purchase
- You get a percentage of the sales price as a commission (this could be anywhere between 5% and 50%)
Here’s a video explanation of what affiliate marketing is:
Choosing a business or affiliate network
There are tens of thousands of businesses that are prepared to pay you a commission for selling their products. They get some sales and you get to earn money with your blog – it’s a win-win situation! You can choose to look at individual businesses, or sign up with one or more “affiliate networks”, where you can see lots of products, services and businesses in one place. Some of the main networks that you can earn money with your blog at includes:
Additionally, there are other networks such as Skimlinks and VigLink that will automatically monetize certain links for you. This makes it easy to earn money with your blog in a completely passive way.
Your best option to earn money with your blog is to investigate the terms, products and services available via each of these networks and pick the ones that work best for you.
Finding a product or service
Once you have signed up with one or more networks, you can start to explore products and services related to your blog that you would like to sell. Staying within your niche will make your recommendations more relevant to your readers, driving more clicks and sales and thus help you earn money with your blog in a bigger way than if you were promoting unrelated products.
Creating content
You should write content to explore and promote an individual product or service. Randomly inserting affiliate links into content is not likely to generate many sales. You could create articles such as:
- A review of the product
- Examples of how the service could be used
- Contrasting and comparing several different offerings
- “Top Ten” lists and the like
Inserting an affiliate link
You will need to include an affiliate link from your content through to there a reader can make a purchase. Without the link being set up properly, you will not be able earn money with your blog. These affiliate links indicate to the affiliate network or vendor that you referred the customer and allow them to pay you your commission.
Hints, tips and advice on driving affiliate sales
- Sign up to each affiliate separately and keep careful records of where you have signed up, the products and services that you are interested in promoting and the codes that you need to use
- Read the terms of service of the affiliates and networks and make sure that you stick to them
- Choose your networks carefully. Some of the products and services on offer can be low quality, and you probably would not want to recommend them. Make sure that you do your research
- Keep records of what products and services convert and sell well; look for more items related to those niches
Advantages of affiliates: Normally a comprehensive range of products that you can promote; potentially good income; easy to setup.
Disadvantages of affiliates: Finding products and services to sell can be difficult; effort to write content to specifically promote items; potentially low conversion rates.
Closing thoughts about how to earn money with your blog
Used well, as a natural part of your blog, affiliate networks and products can be an effective way to earn money with your blog. Try to avoid the danger of promoting products just for the sake of it and create recommendations that your readers will find useful. That is the best way to profit over the medium to long term with affiliate networks.
