How To Make Money Blogging

One of the common ways for bloggers to make money is affiliate marketing. Even though this might seem pretty straight-forward, I have seen many people doing it wrong – including some of my clients.

That is why I have set up two different lists of dos and don’ts.

For a quick overview, you can also jump straight to the infographic.

• Don’t start spamming your affiliate links all around your website.
• Make sure to express your honest opinion about the product/service you link to.
• Don’t be afraid to tell your readers about the bad sides and negative points of the product/service.
• Let the reader decide for himself if he wants to follow the link. Don’t be push for sales.
• Make sure you do not violate the Terms and Conditions of your Affiliate network.
• Always make sure the main content of your posts remains visible and easy to read.
• Make sure the products/services you promote are of value for your readers (i.e. don’t promote yoga courses if your blog is about tech).

• Do some research about the best Affiliate Programs out there.
• Look for specific Affiliates Networks for your niche.

• Make an Excel sheet and note the names.
• Plan the topic of your blog posts around your affiliate links.
• Contact support if you run into trouble (also a good way to get a feeling of their professionalism).
• Be patient and observant.
• Check your statistics regularly and control the validity of your links.
• Play around with the locations (i.e. in posts and widgets)
• Have a balance of in text links and banners.

(This list has last been updated on the 12th of April, 2018)

Handy Infographic (DO and DON’TS):

One last general thought: Affiliate Marketing is generally not the main source of income for a blog/website. If it is, you need to be selling high-value products/services in order to make a reasonable amount of money.

It is therefore best to combine Affiliate Marketing with other marketing techniques to really learn how to make money blogging.

Now that we have this out of the way, let me talk about some of the awesome Affiliate Networks out there.

(I will try to mainly focus on some lesser-known ones to keep it interesting)

This is a fairly new platform for advertisers and publishers. It looks extremely promising, and having it tested out myself on some of my client websites, I highly recommend it. Legiit does not require a certain amount of visitors/month and is easy to set-up.

The platform serves different niches such as: Graphic Design, SEO, Programing and Technology, Internet Marketing and a couple of others. Before you decide to enter this program, watch this video of Chris Walker to see if it is a suitable match.

TIP: to determine if the program is right for you, think about your niche. Are the products/services of value for your visitors? You should always do this before asking yourself how to make money blogging.

POSITIVES

• Easy to set-up.
• Reviews buyers + sellers to keep the quality high.
• Fairly high commissions.
• Good Customer Support.

NEGATIVES

• Limited amount of material.
• The design of the banners is not always of the best quality (but improving rapidly).

Want to get started with this awesome platform? Sign up with Legiit.

Once you start to become a serious blogger, a large portion of your visitors will come to your website to check out how you are “doing things”.

Some of these people see you as an example of how they want to start a blog. This is why it is helpful to promote your favorite webhosting. I picked out Siteground, but for some people it may be Bluehost or any other web hosts. If you promote their services, make sure to understand how they compare with the competition. The most crucial question: how is the balance between cost and quality?

This is exactly why I decided to include Siteground in this post, because I believe they offer better quality at a slightly higher price than most: high speed and performance, free SSL certificates, good security and excellent customer services. On the flipside, the data-storage limits (quite low) and the monthly allowance (~10.000 visitors) are things to consider.

POSITIVES

• Monthly Commission Rates (i.e. 40$ for 1-5 sales, 60$ for 6-11 sales and 75$ for +11 sales).
• Earn 40$ extra for your first conversion.
• Professional banners and in-text links.
• Easy to implement.
• Good tracking system.
• High Conversions.

NEGATIVES

• Very specific and might be of any interest to your audience.
• Limited incentive to promote expensive plans.
• Lower commissions than Bluehost and some other web hosts.

Would you like to start making use of this effective Affiliate Network?

There are more than 1.5 billion websites live on the world wide web (you can track the numbers by following the link if you don’t believe me).

Maybe this number does not surprise you. Nowadays, nearly every type of business needs a website. Plenty of these websites need a stable and easy-to-set-up online store. Do you not have the best design skills? But you still want to build an awesome eCommerce website? Then become an ambitious entrepreneur through Shopify. It’s also a possible answer to our main question: how to make money blogging.

The platform allows users to create formidable webshops within no-time. I have used their services for a couple of my clients, and I must say that the ease of building a fully functional webshop with Shopify is just great.

As someone who has used their services for a considerable time, I feel confident that I can promote Shopify for the right reasons. If you are looking to build an eCommerce website, then I highly recommend using their services.

Now that I have told you a bit about the platform, let’s take a look at their Affiliate program.

POSITIVES

• Extremely High Commissions.
• Low Minimum Payout (25$).
• Superb Tracking System.
• Dashboard is easy to use and navigate.

NEGATIVES

• Conversion Rate is quite unpredictable at times.
• You need to get approved as an affiliate (usually takes 2 working days).

Have you been convinced? Join Shopify!

If you are a blogger, it is a good idea to invest some time in understanding the use of sponsor and guest posts. This is another great way on how to make money blogging.

There are mainly two different methods to be successful:

1. Passively wait for people to take notice of your great website

What you need for this a lot of patience and perseverance. By creating an awesome blog with excellent content, you will get more and more in the spotlight. Other bloggers, but also companies, will start to keep an eye on you. How to make money blogging should be a long-term questions, and you will most probably not succeed within your first weeks, months or maybe even years.

That does not mean that you should just give up. On the contrary, set yourself goals, and try to differentiate yourself from your competition.

You have to realize that bloggers companies are outreaching blogs and websites on a daily basis to gain new high-value backlinks. With several data tools such as SearchMetrics and Ahrefs, they will determine if it is worth to contact you for a guest/sponsored post. As long as you keep going and keep improving your work, the requests will come.

It is therefore imperative to have ways of contact on your blog/website. Make sure that visitors can easily find your email or phone number. It would be disappointing if you missed out on business, right?

Also, if you have the ressources, make sure you are aware of your Rankings, your Domain Authority and other attributes of your website. Usually, they have a big influence on the price that an external party is willing to pay.

Also make sure to have a great sales speech ready in case someone contacts you. Determine for yourself the terms and conditions, and make sure to clearly convey them to the interested party.

On a side note, always be careful with people who approach you out of the blue. When someone is contacting you for a sponsored/guest post, make sure to take a look at the following:

I’m sure there are more things to look at, but these are the simple basics. In any case, if you are in doubt, try to contact some other bloggers or feel free to talk to me about it. Join the blogging groups on Pinterest, Facebook and Google+ (and of course other platforms) to obtain useful information from other people. Most of the time, they are more than willing to help you with your queries.

2. Actively Searching for Sponsored/Guest Posts on your blog

In case you feel comfortable in selling/pitching your blog or website to other bloggers and companies, it is a good idea to start reaching out to them and generally a superb way on how to make money blogging.

A lot of companies and bloggers will be interested to post on your blog if you can provide them with high-value backlinks. The reason for this is mainly SEO. As you could have read in my Google RankBrain guide, the algorithms of the search engines take off-site SEO into account.

This means that any party you offer backlinks can benefit from these in their website/page rankings. This is why external parties are often willing to pay for sponsored and guest posts.

As I said before, the value is determined by the value your website brings. It makes nearly no sense to approach big players if they don’t benefit from your backlinks.

Nonetheless, bloggers and companies also take your social media presence very seriously. If you have a lot of followers on different platforms, it still may be interesting for them to consider partnering up with you.

This is why it is crucial to know your own worth. What do you bring to the table?

If you are still in the process of figuring this out, then set some goals for yourself:

• What are your strengths and weaknesses?
• How can you provide value to external parties?
• What niche market do you belong to?
• How is your blog progressing in the last weeks/months?

By answering these questions and more, you will be able to construct a convincing sales pitch, which you can then send out to different bloggers and companies.

If you don’t know how to get in contact with external parties, then I recommend starting with joining some sponsored/guest post exchange platforms. These will help you to set up connections with some of the players in your field.

With more than 100.000 different active bloggers on the platform, this is one of the big guys in terms of connecting buyers and sellers of sponsored/guest posts. If you really want to know how to make money blogging through sponsored and guest posts, then this is the place to be.

To find proper partners, the platform allows you to filter the offers by keyword and tags. This helps you to identify the sponsors and guest bloggers who are interesting to contact for your blog.

If you are worried about having to pay for the services, then don’t. For bloggers, the basic utilities are free of charge. It is actually the businesses who have to pay to get in contact with you.

Are you ready to set up a BlogDash account? It is very straightforward, and if used correctly, it can be of extremely valuable for your wallet.

TIP: BlogDash also has an exquisite affiliate program. If you wish to take a look at it, you can find more information. In case you are already registered with the well-known network ShareASale, then you can directly start to use them.

This one is a little bit different from BlogDash, because the platform is in some way very controlling. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but the process is just a bit longer.

PostJoint puts a lot of effort in maintaining good relationships between the marketers and bloggers. If you want to make use of their services, you will first have to go through a sort of screening.

Once you have been accepted to make use of their services, the platform will match content which is ready to be published with your blog. You will be shown short extracts of the content, before you decide (or not) to publish the sponsored content.

In the past, PostJoint has been a nice source of income for some of my blogs. I must admit that I have not used their services in a while, but I trust that it is comparable to what it used to be.

One thing left to do now: start using this powerful platform.

TIP: Similar to BlogDash, Postjoint has an affiliate program. For every marketer who you refer to their services, you will be able to earn up to 20%. Be aware though that you can only start using this program once your account on the platform has been approved (Usually takes 1-2 working days).

I have talked about two different and effective methods on how to make money blogging. If you are starting to blog, or have been blogging for a while, I highly recommend to consider both options.

Don’t wait with it, it is best to subscribe to these platforms from the start. Earning money online from blogging has a learning curve, and you will learn along the way.

If my suggestions don’t correspond to your niche, then put some extra time aside to researcg appropriate affiliate networks for your blog. It would be a shame if you missed out on great opportunities to make some extra income.

I hope that this post helps you to get some ideas on how to make money blogging, and definitely let me know in the comment section if you are planning on implementing any of strategies for your blog.

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