So your Internet marketing blog is doing pretty well, eh? You’ve got hundreds maybe thousands of people visiting your site each day, soaking up your incredible insights to life, business and the state of affairs online. There’s just one problem…
You’re not making a dime!
Stop. If all you wish to do is blog for the fun of it, read no further, this post isn’t for you. However, if you would like to make money for all the time and effort you put into your blog, keep reading…
Making money with a blog through a process called “Monetization” (the process of converting or establishing something into legal tender.) isn’t as difficult as the word may imply. Simply stated, you are converting your blogs information into legal tender (monetizing) through the affiliate links; banners, text ads, etc. you place at your blog. Thus, forming a partnership between you and affiliate product providers, and making money from sales of the affiliates products.
For instance. You place a link on your site to another persons site, and then you receive a payment each time someone “clicks-through” to the other site. This is called a Pay Per Lead (PPL) affiliate program, where you get paid for the traffic (or lead) you generate to the other persons site. Likewise, you place a banner ad or text ad on your blog to an affiliate product provider’s sales page, and then you receive a percentage of the sale at the time of purchase.
Affiliate marketing done correctly, and you can create a high Return on Investment (ROI) with respect to the amount of time and effort you invest in your Internet marketing blog. Affiliate marketing done poorly, however, and you’re simply wasting precious space on your blog. Listed below are 5 affiliate marketing tips you can use to ensure you do not waste space on your blog, and to start making more money!
1. Relevant Links
First things first, your advertisement links must be relevant to the subject of your blog! More often than not, your readers come to your blog for a specific reason. They come to read about your experiences, your knowledge, and your insights about a specific niche or subject. For example: List Building.
Chances are, your readers in the area of list building are not going to be interested in ads promoting basket-weaving. Things they might be interested in, however, are products that will teach them how to build a list of opt-in subscribers, or list building. Placing relevant links on your blog increases the chances that your readers will be more likely to click them.
Real-Life Example- The other day I was doing research for an upcoming product launch. When I visited a particular blog related to increasing site conversions (getting more visitors to buy) there was an ad placed there at the blog about scrap-booking. The site was dedicated to increasing site conversions, traffic, list building, etc; but yet, there was a stand alone, non-AdSense, banner ad placed there deliberately for the purpose of making money scrap-booking.
The ad did its job in that it grabbed my attention, but it was distracting for reasons why I went to the blog in the first place, which was increasing site conversions. Don’t make this same mistake when placing links at your site, make sure they are relevant links related to the blogs content. Think: “Is my message, my blog, my advertisements congruent with all that I do at my blog?”
2. Insert Affiliate Marketing Links Within Your Posts
Let’s say you just discovered a great source for increasing backlinks that has an affiliate marketing program, simply add a link within the body of one of your blog posts. Links and banner ads on the side can sometimes get lost if the window it’s viewed in gets re-sized, or is simply ignored entirely as worthless advertisements. However, anything within the post will at least be read and considered, because your reader values your opinion and feels that the other site may be useful to their endeavors, or at least worth taking a look at.
Personally, I like text links for their ease of use and also that they flow within the text. Another thing I like about in-text links, if done correctly, is that they have been shown to increase click-throughs. And increased click-throughs means, you’re likely to make more money!
3. Rotate Your Affiliate Marketing Links
Rotating, or changing, your affiliate marketing links periodically is especially important if you have returning blog visitors. If returning visitors see that your affiliate marketing links never change, more than likely, they will not go to them because they’re considered “old-hat” or out of date. Be sure to keep a lookout for new affiliate marketing opportunities that you can take advantage of. New links will change things up a bit, and make your blog more inviting to repeat blog visitors.
Blog Tip- If you use a 125X125 banner ad widget as I do, that will allow you to add more banners than it shows, than load more banners than you show and they will rotate without you having to do much. For example, load 8 or 12 banner ads, but only show 4. This way, when the window reloads, it will show a different banner each time in the rotation. You may only have 4 banners showing, but in reality, you are promoting 8, 10 or more.
Another thing you may consider doing is, if you really like the product and it’s working well; producing profits, and it has several versions of the 125X125 banner size, then load two versions of the same affiliate program. Just be sure there’s a big difference between the two banners, so that way it doesn’t look as if you have the same banner displayed twice if they happen to load at the same time. Whatever it is you decide to do, mix it up periodically so your blog doesn’t become stale.
4. Add Excitement To Your Affiliate Marketing Links
Most of your blogs visitors will not click on a button that simply says: ‘Click Here.’ Ask yourself, what incentive is there for a person to click this? Other than pure curiosity I can’t think of any, can you? Instead of using click here, try using something like: “Increase Subscribers By 89 Percent!” Now that’s a lot more exciting, right? Sure it is!
Along with adding excitement to your links, if possible, also include a picture or banner to the blog post along with the link. A string of blue underlined words on either side of a page can be difficult to sift through, however, a picture with a mans hair standing on end grabs your attention immediately! Drawing attention to your links is goal number one, if you wish to make affiliate money!.
5. Explore Reciprocal Linking
A reciprocal link is a mutual link between two websites to ensure mutual traffic. Example: Fred and Barney both have blogs. If Fred’s blog links to Barney’s blog, and Barney’s blog links to Fred’s blog, then the two blogs are considered reciprocally linked. Some of your affiliate marketing efforts will simply be these types of link exchanges, as in ‘you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours’ type deal. Now, while these link exchanges are not designed to make you money directly, they will however increase traffic to your blog (And an increase in traffic to your blog means, more opportunities to make money!)
Many bloggers will submit their sites to link exchange directories to achieve higher rankings in the search engines, in addition to their “Fred and Barney” link swapping efforts. Reciprocal linking is an important part of Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, because Google uses link popularity (the number of links that lead to a particular page) in their ranking of your blogs relevancy. And if your blog ain’t relevant, then your money making efforts are going nowhere.
By placing relevant links within your blog posts, periodically rotating and adding excitement to your affiliate links, and by exploring link exchanges with other bloggers and through link directories, will you increase the chance of your blog staying relevant and making money with your blog.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this post, be sure to check back often for more updates. As always, we appreciate your feedback, comments and questions.
Until next time,
Godspeed
James
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PS: During my research for an upcoming product launch, I came across this system that transformed a homeless man into a multi-millionaire, perhaps it can do the same for you. Visit this page to read this man’s incredible rags-to-riches story…
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