HOW TO BOOST YOUR
BLOG'S INCOME
10 DAYS TO BOOST THE REVENUE FROM YOUR BLOG
SARAH ARROW
sarah@sarkemedia.com
http://www.sarkemedia.com
HOW TO BOOST YOUR BLOG'S INCOME
Whether you are a new blogger or an established one, many of us are looking for
extra ways to boost the income from our blog. This guide to boosting your blogging
income is to be read and actioned one section a day.
Print this out, take notes, highlight sections, scribble all over it… but most
importantly – take action.
If you need advice you can tweet me @SarahArrow or find me on Facebook and
post stuff on the wall – I will reply ?
Day One – Appraisal –
where are you?
This post is a quick assessment or
appraisal of where you are at with your
blogging – we’ll start by revisiting the
basics
Blogging for Your Target
Market
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Have you ever read a blog post and thought,wow, the writer totally gets me. This
blogger knows the secrets of my soul, she’s answered the questions that I’ve
pondered upon and now I’ll subscribe as I want to know more…
Knowing your reader or your prospect inside out is the key to a successful blog.
It’s easy to forgot that you don’t write what you want or for yourself, that you write
your content exclusively for your prospect. We’ve all done it, you are not alone.
From time to time we’ve chosen to write about our favourite TV program over
what our readers really want. In order to write the type of content that appeals to
them you have to know their likes, interests, concerns (what keeps them awake at
night) and other details that enable you to build a profile of them.
Let’s be honest with each other here if you’re not getting the level of engagement
that you want out of your blog, it might be time to reassess your target market and
make a few tweaks to your content until you make the connection.
When you have been blogging for over 6 months, it’s easy to veer off track, you’ve
lost some of that initial enthusiasm. You can get back on track fast enough by
making sure you are blogging for your target market.
Why Target Market Matters
Understanding your target market and why it matter is important for two reasons.
One is that a good blog builds relationships. Blogs are a form of social media (and
often the home base of all your social media activity) and you want your readers to
feel connected to you. If you look at any blog with comments, shares, and other
signs of engagement, you’ll see that the writer has a strong bond with their
audience.
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The second reason is that when you start monetizing your blog, this deep
connection will help you select the right offers. You need to understand at
an instinctive level what your readers want before you can offer the products or
services they need. Furthermore, when you have a strong connection to your
readers, your recommendations to them won’t look like selling and creating desire
for your own products will be come much easier.
How to Reassess Your Marketplace
I’ve lost count of the times that Linda Mattacks has sat down with me and
reassessed our marketplaces. At first I found it painful; I didn’t like to be wrong and
I didn’t like admitting I’d targeted the wrong market. It’s one of those pitfalls of
working for your own business – you don’t have a marketing department to give
you the information that you need.
There are a few easy ways to reassess your market. One is to look at your
feedback. There is more to feedback than comments and emails. Feedback
includes everything a visitor does (or doesn’t do) on your blog. If there’s little
reader activity this means you’re not engaging them. If your analytics tell you that
people are hitting your site and then bouncing off immediately, this means you’re
not speaking to them in their language, you are not capturing their attention.
The writer Suzan St Maur often says that a blogger’s second paragraph is stronger
than their first, and if that’s the case delete that first paragraph. If that opening
sentence doesn’t make you want to read the next sentence and then the one after,
and the one after, then deleting it is the best option.
Lack of engagement could indicate that your blog has quality issues, your content
could be all froth and no substance. Your reader has thousands of blog posts
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competing for their attention – light content just won’t cut it. You may think you are
offering value but if there is no meat to your post, if there is nothing to captivate
your reader, then you are in trouble. Lack of engagement could also tell you that
you’re offering the wrong kind of content for your market. 63% of people love
visuals, that means 37% are happy to read posts – work out what your ideal
reader prefers and provide it.
Another common blogging problem is that you may be casting your net too wide.
Blogs that try to please everyone rarely do and hardly ever achieve the same level
of engagement as those that are laser-targeted to a specific audience. You may
focus on a broad niche but each post must talk directly to one segment of that
niche.
Your Target Market Profile
In order to reach their audience effectively, marketers create a target market
profile. This is a specific description of the individual that they are targeting. You
should do this as well, create a profile of your perfect reader. Include demographic
information, and then add the psychographic information - likes and dislikes,
feelings, concerns, and anything else you need to know about them. In case you
need extra help I’ve enclosed a link to a worksheet to help you work this out. (Link
to Worksheet)
When you choose topics, write with this single person in mind. When you write for
a specific audience, they feel that they belong there on your blog. When you’re
target is too broad, your readers won’t feel any connection to you or your other
readers. A laser-targeted blog is like an intimate coffee shop. A blog that’s too
wide-ranging is like Heathrow airport. From your own experiences where do you
feel most comfortable? Which one suits you and your needs best?
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Tweaks Are Your Friend
After reassessing your target market, you may feel that tweaks need to be made
and change needs to happen. But this is easier said than done, it doesn’t always
seem easy or feel comfortable to do.
Many bloggers steer clear from making dramatic changes because they know
they’ll lose a portion of their audience. This is a good thing. You’ll keep the
readers who you want to keep and lose the ones who were never going to listen or
buy from you in the first place.
Reassessment may take a little time, but you’ll build a new audience that’s more in
tune with what you’re writing and sharing, and they’ll be engaged and interested in
you, your business and your offers. I know what I’d prefer, what about you?
Day two: Creating a Smarter Blog Design
Did you know you can increase your blog’s income just by tweaking a few design
features on your blog? Tweaking your blog’s design is simple and you usually can
do it yourself. There is no need for outsourcing help or hiring a developer. It’s often
a matter of simplifying and toning down your blog. It’s not about adding bells and
whistles and an all singing, all dancing theme: It’s about making things easy for
your reader to take the action you require. It’s about tweaking your menu and your
widgets.
If you don’t have a premium theme on your WordPress site, now might be the time
to consider purchasing Thesis or Genesis Dynamik, to give you the flexibility and
control you’ll need to make to give your blog an income boost. This aspect isn’t
essential if what you have right now is working well. If it’s not working, give it some
consideration.
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Easy Navigation
Your blog should have simple and easy navigation that makes sense to anyone
who visits your site. You should have a main home page with links to categories,
posts and pages or the home page as a landing page, both work. The only
decision you have to make is what your audience should click next. Everything
should be just a link or two away from the home page.
It makes it easy for the visitor if you have links for navigation on each page. A
great example of this is my friend Claire Jarrett’s (of Marketing by Web) home
page.
The navigation is simple, the reader lands on the home page is is offered a few
simple choices of where to go next. See the image below:
Note: the large red arrows on the image are mine, and not part of Claire’s design.
Another great navigation is from Mary Weaver’s blog – Prime Fitness for Women.
Unlike Claire, Mary’s front page is a blog layout and not a landing page layout.
This is reassuring to the reader when they land on the site – they can scroll down
and easily see Mary’s expertise. But her navigation is really simple and effective,
as the eyes are drawn across the top the land upon the “how can I help” section,
and they are lured across the top by the offer of freebies
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Yellow arrows not on original site…
You must place yourself in your least web-savvy visitor’s shoes. If you can’t do
that get help – ask your mum or gran to test it, and look where she goes and
where she stumbles and hesitates – make notes and correct the stumbles and
hesitation. Make your navigation as simple and fluid as Claire’s and as effective as
Mary’s. Observation on how someone uses your site is very valuable information,
what’s intuitive to you, may not be for your ideal customer.
Easy on the Eyes
Colour choice can make a tremendous difference in how your blog performs.
Colours that are too loud or that contrast too sharply can make your blog hard to
read and send your readers off to another site without so much as a hello. Muted
colors or a simple colour scheme are often a much better choice for your blog.
Newspapers have trained us to read black text on white background, it’s a hard
habit to try and break, and it will break you before the newspapers agree and print
black pages with white ink
You might think it’s cool to stand out from the pack,
but it may be affecting your blog’s income. Your design isn’t about what you like,
but what your reader does and how comfortable it makes them feel.
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If you’ve been reading this blog from its early days, you may recall the blood red
theme with black flowers and white text… it lasted three months. I loved it. That
theme was truly me. Sadly my 3 visitors a day didn’t like it… That soon changed
when I changed the theme.
Never put a light colored text on a dark background, it truly makes your eyes bleed
to read it. White text on black is a great way to kill your readership and skyrocket
your bounce rate. No matter how brilliant your content is, it will not get read if it’s
too much work to read it. Reading should be pleasurable. Remember it may look
fabulous and fit your personality but your blog isn’t about you…
Spend time testing your colour scheme yourself by reading your blog entries. After
a few minutes of reading, you’ll really get a sense of how easy it is on your eyes. If
it doesn’t feel right, change it. If this sort of thing fascinates you, and at the very
least it should pique your interest, then take a look at this SEO and colour
article from Search Engine Land, I love the part about minesweeping
Easy on the Fonts
You’ve seen the most gorgeous font. It looks stunning. If you could create the
perfect font, it would be this one. No matter how gorgeous it is don’t use it.
• Not all fonts render in all browsers
• Plain fonts that are large and easy to read work best.
• Not everyone has the same taste as you
Over on Food on the Blog we had a lovely theme and the font that came with it
made the words look as if they had been carved in stone. It looked elegant, it
made us look like experts or so I thought. Within minutes of going live with the new
look both Lisa Attias and Lynn Tulip flagged up that it didn’t look quite right… so it
was bye-bye carved font and hello Georgia.
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Sure, look at a few fonts and then choose the one that’s simplest. To be on the
safe side, choose a font with your mum / grandparents in mind. If they can read it,
all of your readers will be able to as well. Make sure that your font is a decent size
too. Sure your reader can hit Control and then the Plus button to increase the size,
but how many of them do? If you’ve not read Derek Halpern’s article on font
size’s check it out here, and remember size 16 is the new size 12. Take on board
what Derek shows you about perceptions of skill and the type of font and if you
have to have fancy fonts, think about using them as headers rather than the main
text.
Think about the nature of your blog’s content and who your readers are. If they are
professional or business people, look for fonts that are more traditional (like Arial
or Times New Roman). If your readers are the younger and trendier crowd, you’ll
probably want a font that’s a little slicker as well as interesting. Whatever you
decide it still has to be easy to read
The Call to Action
The �call to action’ is a part of every blog that’s often misunderstood. It doesn’t
have to be something such as �Buy Now’ although sometimes that is the only call
to action you should have.
Calls to action can be very subtle yet persuasive simply telling the reader what
they need to do in order to receive the benefits you’re offering, whether it’s a place
to get more information, a resource that’s helpful, or a product you’re selling.
Your call to action needs to stand out and be clearly understood, but it shouldn’t
sound like hype. Hype or perceived hype puts everyone off. One good place for a
call to action is on the sidebar where you’re making your offer or requesting email
addresses. Another location is the very end of each post, often in the P. S. section.
This is great for the people who scan posts, they pick out the sub- headers, bullet
points and go straight to the PS.
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Limit your calls to action – one call to action per post. Do not ask for
comments and shares. Ask for one or the other. Asking for both means you will get
very little of either. As often as I drill this into my clients, I often have to edit the call
to action to just one request. Put yourself in the readers shoes – if the call to action
is:
Please Like my post on Facebook and share it on Twitter. I love comments so
make sure you leave one and if you want to buy my ebook the link to it is here.
What would you do? 99% of readers will do nothing. Ask just one thing in your call
to action.
Try to avoid mixing your calls to action into your main content unless you can
manage to do it with great subtlety. There is no law that says it has to go at the
end of a post but it takes a skilled writer to add it in the first paragraph and not put
people off of reading further. Calls to action can also go as the caption under an
image.
It’s important that your readers to see you as the most helpful soul, throwing in a
few offers here and making a few recommendations there. Your readers are
people. If you don’t like pushy sales people, how do you think they like them? Be
firm but be gentle.
The Magic of Split Testing
The best way to discover what truly works and doesn’t is to split test. Go and blow
your head up with this article here – 27 A/B testing optimization posts and then
come back. I’ll wait for you.
This part is where the magic really is – seeing what changes work for you.
Create two versions of your home or landing page with only the design features
changed. Then, check your analytics, whether it’s through Google Analytics or any
other program that allows you to split test. The results will tell you which design
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features your readers prefer, and you can then implement them on your blog.
Simple, effective and the fast track to better blogging income.
Tomorrow we are going to look at active and passive selling, and what works best
for your readers. So go and play with your blog’s design from your ideal readers
point of view ?.
Day Three: Selling on your blog
Some bloggers grab their readers by the throat and shout their promotional
message into their faces. Yes it’s a tried and tested technique for astonishing
headlines that get clicked, but it can be painful to read if we are not the intended
audience. This is day three of the blogging income booster series, and we’re
covering selling on your blog.
Others (like me) focus on building a relationship where they can make relevant
offers, indirectly, as a part of the relationship. This approach to selling is a
continuum with various levels in between. As a blogger, you have to decide which
kind of approach makes the most sense for you and for your marketplace, as
much as I hate the throat grabbing, shouting kind… it has its place, it just isn’t this
blog. Decide if it has a place on your blog.
Remember a headline is a promise that your post must deliver on.
The Active Selling Approach
I’ll be the first to admit the active vs passive thing is something that my writing
coach works hard to stamp out of me. It’s a struggle, it seems to fight how I
naturally write. The active selling approach is different to active writing, it doesn’t
need to be as obvious as a cold call or a “screaming in your face” sales page.
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The approach we are taking here is content marketing, which is active by nature.
In other words, you’re presenting content and then guiding the customer to a
recommended product. The easiest content marketing strategy that’s active is
writing reviews and product recommendations. For a lot of bloggers it’s how they
cut their affiliate marketing teeth
.
Popular reviews on my site are
• Dynamik Theme
• Content Lockers
• Bring my Blog Visitors Back
• Scribe SEO 4.0
• Product Creation Pro
Reviews do not have to be in your face and blackmailing your reader in order to
work. My own observation is that in your face stuff just alienates people, and
attempting to blackmail then or make them feel sorry for you makes you no better
than an internet marketer of the yellow highlighter brigade. Blackmail, emotional or
otherwise has no place on your blog.
Keep your desperation to yourself.
Desperation is like blood, when people scent it, they become sharks. Your blog is
not the place to write things like “By my ebook or I’ll go bankrupt”, you can
have bailiffs (the repo man) battering down your front door and walking off with
your furniture, but your readers should never know about it until after you have
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resolved the issue. Why? You have troubles enough without forever being
branded as the blogger that was bailed out by their community. Sure, everyone
loves It’s a Wonderful Life, but it’s fiction, it’s black and white, and it took place at
least 6 decades ago. Being authentic isn’t about making your readers feel sorry
for you. This is a relationship of equals, it’s a partnership, unless you are prepared
to bail out every single reader of your site, keep your desperation to yourself.
The Passive Approach
With the passive approach, bloggers don’t even try to sell anything at first, they are
focusing on different goals. They build their audience and their list whilst focusing
on interacting as much as possible with their readers. This is similar to a sales
person qualifying leads. As you get to know their readers better and build trust and
authority then it’s much easier to make relevant offers that your readers will listen
and respond to.
Another popular passive approach might include providing a list of links to
resources or tools you use. You’re encouraging readers to explore on their own
initiative and choose what will help them. I do this in my ebook tool kit post, I share
the tools I use in my ebook creation, and in the post I share why I use that
particular tool. I don’t review products that I have not used; everything I
recommend is something that I’ve used several times.
The Call to Action
Whether you take the direct or indirect approach, you need to have an effective
call to action. If you don’t, then readers won’t know what you want them to do.
Even with the passive selling approach, you still need to make the call to action
crystal clear. A good way to do this (indirectly) is to tell readers what specific
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action; they need to do, in order to receive the benefits you’re describing or to
alleviate their pain. See day one of this blogging income booster series for more
information about talking directly to your ideal reader.
Up Close and Personal
Whatever selling approach you decide to use on your blog (or a combination of
both) should be personal. Your words need to resonate with readers. The reader
need to feel a personal connection to you and your blog, they need to understand
why you use a tool or service and what you are overcoming or gaining when you
use it.
If the personal aspect isn’t there, they’ll feel like you’re marketing and selling to
them, and of course you are, but no one really likes the overt sales pitches, it’s
one of the reasons many people unsubscribe from email lists. If someone feels
they are only wanted for one thing; their money, they don’t feel good. We’ve all
been on those lists, the ones where you hear nothing for months and then they
try to hit you up to buy something or go into a launch cycle leaving you wondering
what happened…
Your Target Market
Which selling approach works best depends on your target market and your own
degree of comfort. Many different factors come into play. Younger consumers, for
example, are much more skeptical of marketing and advertising messages. They
need to be engaged differently.
While you need to spend your own time learning as much as possible about your
target market, there’s one shortcut. Take a look at your competition. Examine
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and follow highly successful blogs in your niche that are offering the same types of
products / services to see what marketing and selling techniques they use. A word
of warning, outright copying will probably not work – this is an examination of their
methods, not replicate what they are doing. There are some unknown factors in
play – their ideal reader may not be who you think it is, and the work and
relationships behind the scenes may be stronger than you possibly think.
This method is a shortcut not a franchised business model
and remember, an
original is always worth more than a copy.
Content Is King
Gosh, I can’t believe I’ve uttered the Bill Gates cliche, but I have, I shall wash my
mouth out with soap and swear to give up cliches for the next year.
Whatever selling approach that you use, your blog content has to be the best
quality it can possibly be.
• Connection – Your content needs to build a connection with your readers,
so all your content must be helpful, targeted and well-written.
• Consistent – Stay on your audiences reading radar with regular posts and
get readers involved in your blog as much as possible.
• When it comes time for you to make offers, your reader will be more likely
to buy if you’ve offered genuine value all along.
Selling does not have to take place in your written
content, on your blog.
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It can take place in your sidebar, in your header and it can take place in your
autoresponder. It can come in the form of a how-to video, special report or Kindle
guide.
A popular way of boosting income is to create a special report based upon a
technique or product and the guide contains affiliate links for that product. As
always your call to action should guide the reader to the right place, to take the
right action.
If you wish to be really slick with your selling, you can find plugins that change the
adverts depending on how you tag your content making the adverts more relevant
and likely to be clicked. I’m testing one on a client blog at the moment, I’m not
impressed but she is. I’ll let you know more about it in the future
Some often overlooked selling tips.
Do you know what Australia, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Bermuda, Brunei,
Canada, Cayman Islands, Cook Islands, East Caribbean, Fiji, Guyana, Hong
Kong, Jamaica, Kiribati, Liberia, Namibia, New Zealand and Samoa have in
common?
They all have a currency called the dollar.
If you are selling products and services on your site specify which dollar you price
in. It’s as simple as saying USD (US dollars).
Do you know the country with the highest online spend?
It’s the UK.
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Price your products in pound sterling and add your webinar times in GMT and
guess what… you’ll create loyal customers that appreciate your consideration and
keep on coming back… Sure you can slap a link to timeanddate.com so your
reader can check it out but the chances are you’ll lose them. It takes less than two
minutes to make your reader feel comfortable.
When you write your sales copy, use transitions to move your reader through the
text. They also make your sales copy sound conversational and more natural.
It takes a little practice to get right, but once you’ve mastered them then your sales
copy will sound like it’s talking to a person.
Typical sales page transitions include phrases such as
• And most importantly…
• As you may already know…
• As you may have noticed…
• Aside from that, one thing’s for sure…
• Bottom line is…
• Here’s exactly why…
• I’ll let you in on a little secret…
• I’m sure you’ll understand…
• In fact…
• Just imagine…
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• Let me ask you this…
• Let me explain…
• The next step is…
• Today, more than ever…
• To prove it, here’s…
• You’re gonna love this…
Day Four: Is there still a place for
advertising on your blog?
Advertising is dead, advertising isn’t dead… you hear all kinds of stories but the
only way you’ll get the right answer to whether advertising works for you is to try it
out.
People are not as adblind as you might think – some bloggers do incredibly well
with advertising. If you are a member of Brit Mums, you can join their Brit Mums
Professionals where they will help you work with Brands. In the US there’s the
BlogHer network. If the Mum bloggers are doing it, it’s not dead yet. So let’s
explore blog advertising a bit more.
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Google AdSense can be a good way to monetize your blog, but it’s not the only
store in town. While it’s considered quite effective by some bloggers, many (for a
multitude of reasons) decide to look beyond AdSense and try out different
advertising options. I’m not that enamoured with Google Adsense, and only have
one Adsense unit on Birds on the Blog. There are a number of ways to earn
advertising revenue on your blog without cramming your site with AdSense
adverts everywhere you look, to this the reader may be truly ad blind
Ad Networks
There are many different ad networks that work in a similar way to AdSense. They
use your blog content to post relevant ads that your readers would find interesting.
One network that does this is Talkahead.com. It puts real targeted ads (RTA) into
related stories on your blog.
These are small text-based ads that you can customise. The advantage is that
they’re inside the content where they don’t stand out and scream �ads’ like
Google’s do. And yes, Ads that are customised to feel like part of the blog convert
better, but most bloggers (and I include myself in this) don’t bother to do this. It
could be the time taken, it could be the lack of knowledge, it could be anything but
the bottom line is, we don’t do it.
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Over at Birds on the Blog, we’ve just installed SkimLinks. As a multi-author site
with in excess of 2,000 pages it’s been hard for us to monetise in the way we’ve
wanted to. To monetise thoroughly would make it a full time job for three people,
and then we have the US/UK traffic issue. 70% of our traffic is US based, so how
do we add US and UK Amazon affiliate links? Skimlinks is looking like the answer
to our problem.
Some sites, like LinkBucks, give you more choice about what ads your blog
shows. You can choose the sites you’d like to link to. LinkBucks gives you the
option of either getting paid whenever someone clicks the link or earning referral
income when you send someone to their site. LinkBucks is still in Beta, so expect
some changes and I’m pretty sure if you had feedback, they’d appreciate it.
There are many alternative ad networks and all have their unique qualities that can
help you monetise your blog. If you are looking at fast payouts, then Skimlinks and
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Linkbucks should be at the top of your to-do list. In fact, go and register with them
right now, I’ll still be here when you get back.
Chitika is a popular advertising network that’s unique – it only shows ads to
visitors who found your site through the search engines, which can be very handy
if you don’t want to advertise to your regular readers and subscribers.
Visitors that access your blog through a social media link or by entering the URL
directly don’t see the ads. I tried Chitika and didn’t like it, please note, I am what’s
known as a fussy so-and-so, and Chitika works well for plenty of other bloggers. I
just didn’t like it. For the record, I don’t like coffee, ice cream sodas and Cheerios.
This shouldn’t stop you drinking coffee or trying something like Chitika out.
Adbrite is an ad network that includes non-English ads, so if you blog in another
language this is the place for you to checkout and monetize your blog.
BuySellAds is a marketplace where you can negotiate with advertisers. They have
a diverse range of monetising options such as monetising your RSS feed (also
available with Skimlinks) and your site will be checked out, they do not let anyone
in. They cater for all sizes, and are known for their high quality advertisers. I have
an account there, but never did anything with it.
Some networks, such as Infolinks, allow you to run their ads alongside ads from
other networks. Like Chitika, you can choose to show adverts to only search
traffic, they also have “in tag” advertising, so if you are a tagger, this could be the
advertising site for you.
Ebuzzing is my final offering here. Ebuzzing is the only place I’ve found where
you can advertise videos on your blog. They also do sponsored posts, and yes,
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they are a pain in the backside with things you have to mention (which makes
them impossible to use on a multi-author site), but if you are based in Europe or
blog in French, Italian, Dutch or Spanish then check them out. The support team
are really friendly and super helpful. They have a good range of advertising
videos, so if you blog in a less popular niche, go and take a look.
Working Directly with Advertisers
Another option is to skip the ad networks completely and sell your own ad space
directly to advertisers. This is painful. I have one international company email
me on a weekly basis to find out why I missed the amazing opportunity they’ve
provided for Bingo advertising… And the outreach from a lot of advertisers is truly
atrocious, but if you are brave, please continue.
The main advantage of ad networks mentioned above is that they make finding
advertisers easy. In most cases, all you have to do is sign up. Finding your own
advertisers takes quite a bit more work, but you have total control over the entire
process and the final say if you wish to carry their ads or not.
In order to attract advertisers, create a media page that describes your blog, its
readership, analytics that show your level of traffic, and an outline of the benefits
of advertising on your blog. Include a “media” or “advertisers” link in the footer of
your site that goes directly to this page. If you have a selection of 125 x 125 ad
boxes in your side bar have a plain one that says advertise here.
Tell your readers that you now accept advertising and ask them if they know
anyone who is looking to advertise on blogs, referrals can be a great way of
sourcing the right advertiser.
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You can request that the advertiser gets in touch a specific way, place your own
pricing and negotiate directly with advertisers that show interest. Expect to haggle
and expect to spend some time on this. I’ve never accepted an advert yet that
didn’t take at least 5 emails and some haggling over prices.
In order to approach advertisers directly, you need a good deal of traffic and it
helps if there’s a high level of engagement with readers. Placing an ad on your site
has to be a good value for them and remember they get unhappy if they are a
bank and you post an article about porn the next day…
Other Monetization Options
Remember that ads are not the only way to monetize your blog. You can write
about products for affiliate programs and sell your own information products as
well. If you have information products for sale, you should advertise them in your
blog’s sidebar and mention them in post, as well as in your author bio.
And finally there are Sponsored Posts to consider, this is where you write the post
about a product and include a link to the website of the advertiser. The company
tend to want sponsored post approval, and whine when you place sponsored post
on that page and make the links “no-follow” in order to avoid a Google penalty. A
sponsored post works well in a lot of cases, for all kinds of blogs, just don’t sell
yourself short and get the money in your paypal account up front.
Depending on your goals for your blog and the tastes of your target marketplace,
these approaches may be more profitable than selling advertising space.
Affiliate Advertising
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The ads on my site are all from affiliates, they don’t pay to be here. I choose which
products I advertise. If you have affiliate links in your posts it’s worth considering
advertising some of those products so you reinforce the message. If you blog in a
popular niche then make sure you have some variety to the ads that you have so
you look different.
In some niches (like crafting) to advertise certain affiliates is the norm and
expected – you’ve not made it as a blogger unless you are advertising these
products. Advertise what you like, but if you wish to fit into the community you may
find it worthwhile to bow to peer pressure. It’s not just crafting, it’s similar in
transport blogging, at one point back in 2006 you didn’t have a successful courier
site if you didn’t carry advertising for an insurance company and a ferry company.
Rather than buck the trend, we decided to go with the flow and
joined TradeDoubler. We never earned a bean, but we looked like we were
expected to look
Other considerations when using advertising on your
blog…
• Adverts that are relevant to the post will get better clickthroughs. If you are
writing about gardening then the adverts that will convert the best are ones
about gardening. If you write about gardening and post adverts about web
tools then you are going to leave cash on the table.
• As I mentioned earlier 67% of people are visual, your ads could be images
to attract more clicks.
• You may wish to call advertising something different like site sponsors.
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• Paid advertising links should be no-follow links. People still click them, but
you won’t pick up a search engine penalty.
Plugins to manage your blog’s advertising
1. AdRotate plugin for WordPress – rotates adverts including banners
2. WP125 again, a WordPress plugin that makes managing advertising easy
for you
3. oio publisher a paid WP plugin that offers complete ad management
(allows ad buyers to pay, upload an image and removes ad when paid time
has lapsed). I’ve not used this yet, I’ve seen it in action and it’s pretty
impressive and hassle free.
4. Tag Advertising plugin, part of a 6 pack of plugins by Acme. This plugin
changes the ads according to how you tag your blog post. Really useful if
you blog on a variety of topics and or have a multi author blog. I’ve tested
this on a client site but not on my own. My client loves it. At $10 for 6
plugins, it’s a good buy.
The final plugin…
It’s not quite advertising, but it is. If you are in the internet marketing or blogging
niche you might like the JVZoo plugin. JV Zoo has a huge marketplace of internet
marketing plugins, software and videos. It also has other niches, but I’ve not yet
checked them out.
Installing the JV Zoo plugin means you will have a live update of all the products
you wish to affiliate with on your site. You can adjust where you want to have
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these feeds and use a short code, and its well worth investigating as the pay-outs
are very quick.
An example of a JV Zoo advert, again this is customisable.
Okay, that about wraps up advertising on your blog. Find a method that suits you
and your audience and then keep at it. Advertising is a long term strategy, which
can be used to your advantage.
Day Five: How to Get Paid Blogging for Brands
A great way to make money with your blog is to promote a specific brand. Yes,
there are many big brands that pay bloggers to write about them. The blogger
writes about the brand’s products or services and describes the features and
benefits to their readers. This shouldn’t be a sales pitch but a genuine this is what
the product is, this is the problem the product solves style article.
If the blog is relevant to the brand, it’s a win-win situation for everyone involved.
And of course, you should not attempt to hide from your readers that you were
paid for the post or commercially associated with it. Decent Brands will be cool
with this – they don’t want to tarnish your relationship with your audience, they
want a happy blogger-reader relationship. No Brand wishes to be known as the
one that soured a blogging community – the negative backlash from something
like that can last a long, long, long time.
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Where to Start – Brand Networks
You can connect with relevant brands through networks designed for the purpose
of partnering up.
These include
• SocialSpark (part of Izea)
• Escalate Network
• Blog Frog
• Sponsored Reviews
• Brit Mums Professionals
• Ebuzzing
You sign up and submit your blog, and advertisers can find your site by browsing
blogs in their niche. I’d start with one site at a time and thoroughly explore it before
joining the next one, however if you are in need of cash fast, then you might want
to sign up to them all at once.
These networks allow you to set your own price in some cases and, if there’s
interest, you can negotiate with the brand. Sponsored Reviews start at $5 a post,
the most they ever offered me was $20 a post, and it wasn’t relevant to my
audience, so I didn’t do it. There is no need to take everything that is offered. Sure,
you want to earn some cash but you still have your audience and readers to
consider.
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Payments through Brand Networks tend to be reliable, and directly into your
Paypal account. You may have to wait up to 60 days to receive your payments,
although some Networks pay faster.
Brand Advocates
Some Brands get more involved with their bloggers or Brand Advocates, beyond
providing a pay cheque. They may help you further build your readership by
offering free giveaways. This gives your readers a chance to try the brand’s
products themselves and helps grow your community or following. Free giveaways
also can generate links back to your site, build your list and gain your blog
massive exposure through the entrant’s social following. On the downside? It
takes time to manage and collate the feedback and Brands tend to want things on
their time scale not yours
.
BT Tradespace had a terrific way of managing their Brand advocates and I met
many other great bloggers when I used their platform, and much of that was down
to Amy Cutbill, Bian Salins, Martin Faux and Derek Hemphill. There may be other
Brands you can form a long term relationship with, you just need to keep your
eyes open to long term opportunities as well as short term ones.
Getting Started
Before you sign up on a network, there are a few basic considerations. Your blog
should have a consistent following of readers but, even more importantly, you
should be influential with them. You’ve laid the groundwork by building a solid
relationship of trust with your readers and they listen to what you say. When you
have influence, your message is more powerful and it means more sales for the
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brand. I met with a publisherlast year who loved Birds on the Blog reviewing his
books, he said we help push authors up the charts on Amazon
When it comes to blogging for brands, certain niches have a higher success rate
than others. Brands of all shapes and sizes love mommy bloggers. Blogging
moms are extremely influential with their readers, many of whom are mommy
bloggers themselves. This is what you need – a core group that listens to you and
buys products on your recommendation. Back in the summer I met a group of car
and racing bloggers, they were drift racing courtesy of BuyAGift.com. BuyAGift
were talking to the bloggers, creating Brand awareness and encouraging the
bloggers to share their racing experiences. Drift racing has a lot of excitement
surrounding it and the bloggers were trained how to do it. It was a great day out
and as well as the online buzz it generated among racing enthusiasts, it also
generated a lot of offline word of mouth. My husband never stops talking about the
day, and BuyAGift are always mentioned.
Catering to a specific geographic location also works in your favor. If your blog has
a geographic base in Paris or Oslo, these may be areas where a brand wants to
increase its sales. If you’re involved in the community offline, this gives your Brand
an additional influential boost in the community.
Can you Brand Blog without Selling Your Soul
For many bloggers the idea of blogging for brands doesn’t rest easy with them.
You’ve been writing a blog and building a loyal readership writing what you want,
offering helpful tips, and really connecting with your readers on a personal level. If
you start to advertise brands, it might feel like you’re selling out, but you still have
bills to pay and a roof to keep over your head – you are just like your readers in
that respect, so is it really selling out?
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Selling out is a matter of style. If you change your normal blogging style from
useful and informative to blatant sales promos then it looks like selling out and you
can’t disguise it no matter how hard you try. I recently visited a social media
blogger’s site and was invited to take a survey to make their content better. The
survey asked increasingly personal things including things about my hair….
Seriously, unless you have a salon blog and write about salons and social media,
how is my hair colour going to improve your writing?
How do you promote a Brand without feeling unethical?
• Choose brands you really like and endorse them honestly.
• Choose them based on products your readers can actually use.
• Don’t advertise anything you don’t wholeheartedly stand by.
• Be transparent and come right out and tell your readers that you’ve been
asked to write a post.
Over at Birds on the Blog we frequently get pitches from Brands and PR people
who have not taken the time to get to know us or the site. They ask us to review
children’s shoes, kids toys and if they had taken two minutes to look through the
site they would see we are not the right site for them.
Occasionally we do review the odd item that’s not suited to Birds and that’s
because the blogger reviewing has requested the review. An example of that
would be Skeanies Shoes. I asked the bloggers if anyone was interested and
Lilach said she was. Skeanies sent her a pair of shoes for her daughter, and Emily
duly tested them out and Lilach wrote the review and we published it. We are also
doing some work with Disney, and this time we are reviewing games. Again it’s not
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what we usually do, but we get to write about how we feel as parents
of daughters and how Disney products work (or don’t work) for us.
Make sure that the brand doesn’t tell you what you have to say. They should
encourage you to write your views and in your own style. They may issue
guidelines and they may ask site stats, Twitter followings and how you plan to
promote the post. It should be totally up to you to make either positive or negative
comments about that brand’s product, but if you are not suited to the Brand, you
should think twice about taking the money and then writing about something that
you and your audience are not going to relate to.
Ultimately blogging with Brands means both your goals being met and what you
write being of benefit to your readers.
Day six: Boosting your blogging income
– repurposing content
The content on your blog isn’t locked there forever and it doesn’t have to stay
exclusive to your site. If you’ve been blogging for some time you’ll have archives
full of original, high quality posts and these can be monetised.
You can do lots of things with your blog content – repackage and reuse posts for
lead generation (free reports), use them for free giveaways, or they can form the
base of information products you can sell. But let’s overcome the main objection
first…
Why Do People Pay for Free Content?
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Let’s get the objections out of the way… We discussed this in a Facebook group
last week– If your old blog posts are free and available online, why would
anybody pay for them? Your repurposed products offer a serious advantage.
They make it easy to find all the information in one place, people pay for
convenience, it’s why you use the more expensive corner shop for a pint of milk
over an cheaper supermarket.
Your readers don’t have to search through old blog posts to find what they’re
looking for or search through their bookmarks. By putting your information into a
new, easier to digest form, you save your readers time. Anything that gives
people more time is of great value.
Readers come and go from your blog all the time, and you never quite know what
they’ve read and what they haven’t, and yes you can deep link to older posts but
that doesn’t mean they will read them. New readers can be attracted to your blog
through your re-purposed content and it’s a great way of them “catching up” with
all your content in one place.
Let’s take a closer look at re-purposing your blog
content:
• Reports. Take a group of blog posts on a common theme and combine
them into short reports that you can give away free for lead generation. A
free report that covers a group of related topics is a great incentive for
people to sign up to your list.
• Ebooks. This is the same approach as for reports, but an ebook is longer,
more detailed, and contains a table of contents, cover etc. A bit more
structuring is involved, but you can sell your ebooks through your site or
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through Amazon’s Kindle store. (Note: You must add to the posts to put
them on Kindle since Amazon doesn’t allow content that’s already freely
available online.)
• E-courses. Take several blog posts on a common topic or problem and
turn each into a �lesson.’ You can add value to your e-course by creating
activities, worksheets, and chapter summaries. This is a valuable tool for
you and your reader – it helps them put into action the strategies that you
share, so they can get the best possible results.
• Podcasts. Create audio files where you read content and expand upon it.
These can be submitted to podcast directories or added to information
products for increased value.
• Videos. Use your blog posts as scripts and create videos to post on
YouTube. Video production is easy; you can film yourself talking or make a
simple slideshow using PowerPoint.
• PowerPoint Presentations. Turn your old blog posts into PowerPoint
presentations. Put them into a logical sequence and use written content
from your posts to make slides. Then share these slides on one of the
sharing networks, such as SlideShare.
• Cheat Sheets / Quick Reference Guides. Take the information you’ve
blogged about and make simple, easy-to-digest, one-page reference
sheets for your audience. These are nice supplements for e-courses and
videos.
• Infographics. Infographics are extremely popular. You can use the text
from your blog posts and turn them into infographics using free online
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infographic creation programs such as PiktoChart and Visua.ly.
Infographics make excellent social media content and can often go viral as
they are incredibly shareable.
• A combination of the above makes a great product to sell and will come in
formats that your reader can relate to best.
But how are we boosting our blogging income if we are
giving all this away?
You are not giving everything away, in your free reports you can include some
affiliate links that are relevant to the reader. You can have a call to action that
promotes your services and of course you can have a special offer just for readers
of your free report.
You can partner with You Tube and show Google Ads on your videos, if you
create a lot of videos this could provide a steady stream on income. You might find
the Videos make a great course and unlist them and distribute them via email as a
paid option.
You can use a tool like Premise to create a paid membership site and share your
re-purposed content there.
Of course, you can reach out to those with membership sites and offer them the
content – membership sites suck up a lot of time and content, so if you have
something really useful then you can use this technique to expand your audience.
Podcasts and radio – you get a feel for what’s popular and you can take the audio
and add the worksheets and within a few hours you have an additional product to
sell, and this can be the upsell in your free giveaways.
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Don’t Be an Idiot with Your Repurposed Content
It’s completely ethical to reuse your old content. But there are some guidelines…
Avoid offering the same content to the same people. For example, use your
repurposed free report to draw new readers to your blog don’t offer it to your
current readers as a promotional offer. Yeah, I know it’s obvious but there’s always
one that will try it. Your reader may have read the content already and you’ll look
silly. I know, because I did it. I’m lucky my readers are very tolerant of my
experiments to find out what works and what doesn’t…
The best way to use re-purposed content is to reach new audiences. So
create videos and add a link back to your blog in the description. Create a slide
deck and only have it on Slideshare, invite those who view your slides to your
blog. Expand your free report and invite your subscribers to forward it to a friend.
Set up a radio show on Blogtalk Radio, just like video, your posts form an excellent
script and of course you are free to explore tangents as you speak. Try out
podcasting using Podomatic.com. Remember your audio should contain a call to
action as well
If you guest post, offer a free giveaway as part of your bio. Invite other bloggers to
share your free reports with their audience, if you are in compatible niches this
works incredibly well.
Adapt your blog posts and upload them to Scribd. Get an account
at EvanCarmichael.com and offer the reports as free downloads with your articles.
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Distribute the reports via Twitter as a gift without the need to optin. Offer them in
niche Facebook groups, again as a gift rather than boosting your list – new
readers are always worth having
If you’re offering repurposed content to the same audience, update it in some way
so that it’s fresh and provides new perspectives that that your reader or viewer
hadn’t thought of before.
Make it worth reading and sharing.
Day Seven: Remarkable Reviews
Product reviews are one of the best ways to earn
money with through your blog.
You write honest, warts and all reviews about products that your target market
would love, and your reader buys the product through your blog, earning you
affiliate payment.
You can find the reviews I’ve completed here:
• Dynamik Theme (part review part interview)
• Content Lockers (with explanation of a successful marketing stratgy)
• Bring my Blog Visitors Back
• Scribe SEO 4.0
• Product Creation Pro (A tool that I found to be a great time saver)
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Your reviews are not sales pitches or promos, but in-depth guides to products that
your reader wants to know about before they buy. It’s not about choosing a
product and then slapping up some screenshots, and your thoughts – you need to
be remarkable to earn more from your reviews. Adding a little creativity to spice up
your product reviews can go a long way in increasing your income from your blog.
Remarkable Video Testimonials
Personally I hate these with a passion but two things spring to mind… They are
hard to fake. People can spot a fake video testimonial a mile off, and secondly
they take a little time to get right and people appreciate the effort.
For a remarkable video testimonial you need to take a little time to create a script
and get your lighting right, and then practice what you are going to say. Then all
you need to do is get in front of the camera and tell your viewers about this
exciting new product you’ve experienced or are trying out.
One great advantage of video testimonials is that they add a personal
touch and viewers can visibly see your enthusiasm. It’s also a different way for
your fans to consume your content, in two locations – your blog and You Tube.
Some people would rather watch videos than read, so you may get a better
connection with your audience. Video reviews are relatively easy to produce and
social media sites offer wide-scale distribution. Remember to add your affiliate link
into the video description and add review to the title. People search for reviews
If you post the video to your blog, remember to use the hReview plugin so you can
take advantage of the rich text snippets aspect. Or upgrade your theme
to Thesis 2.0
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Remarkable Video Demonstrations
Even better than just telling people about the product, give them a look at what it
can do. Demonstration videos are better than a simple “talking head” because a
demo shows viewers the benefits they can get from using the product. Tutorials
are very useful to your reader, showing them how to achieve a specific goal using
a tool you are affiliated with converts very well.
You can use a tool like Snagit to record a simple “look over your shoulder” video
and then upload it to You Tube. Snagit has a free 30 day trial so you can get a
good few screencasts under your belt before you have to pay anything.
Remember you can also show your reader the product’s value by demonstrating
other ways it can be used.
Interview the Product Creator
An easy and effective way to create reviews is to interview the creator of the
product. This is often overlooked by bloggers, but it something that magazines do
all the time, and authors are used to doing. Ask them the questions your readers
would want to know before buying their product. One nice thing about interviews is
that you don’t have to create the content yourself; you only need to come up with
some key questions and let the creator do the talking. For the interviewee, it’s free
publicity, so it’s a win-win.
You can make interview videos, record a Skype audio and then create an article
from them. Yes, interview material can easily be repurposed
Add Your Own Bonuses
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Along with your product review, make your readers a valuable bonus offer. Tell
them to send you a copy of the receipt and you’ll give them a bonus. If you don’t
want that hassle, look to promoting a product from JVZoo.com where adding
bonuses is easy to do – all you have to do is market the product.
The bonus can be a digital product that’s easy for you to produce or you
can repurpose old content from your blog into something new. The best bonus is
one that helps the buyer use the product, like a cheat sheet, resource guide or
better still a tutorial video.
Check out the Competition
Read reviews on other sites of the same or similar products to the ones you are
promoting. Write your reviews so that they mention different aspects of the product
and how they benefit your audience. Another way to make your reviews stand out
is to give the reader more detailed information about the product than what your
competitors discuss - you can tell a remarkable review from one that’s in place
for search traffic.
Honesty in Reviews
• Make your reviews open and honest – declare if you have a free or
advance copy of the item
• Mention the weak points of the product as well as the features you like –
add a wish list of how you would like the product to develop if you can’t find
any real faults.
• Give people a fair and balanced picture of the product’s real pros and cons
to help them make an informed decision.
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These 3 points will help you better establish trust with your readers, and your
reviews will have a much more remarkable quality than those on other sites. Too
many bloggers are frightened to review honestly for fear of offending the product
creator. If you want to write remarkable reviews you have to get over that, if you
don’t you’ll look like a company puppet and you don’t want that to happen! More
importantly your honesty allows the product creator to improve the product.
When you have the best reviews, people will buy through your link first, so make
sure your reviews are Remarkable.
Selling physical products
A lot of bloggers monetize their blogs by selling digital products such as ebooks,
courses or software via affiliate links or by creating their own products to
download. If you’ve followed my blog for some time, you’ll be aware that I believe
you can sell anything from a blog – including physical products, consulting and
other kinds of services.
From books and Amazon affiliates to promoting online retailers like EBay, there is
something for everyone. You only have to look at Skimlinks and their 17,000
products to know this is a big marketplace. But a better, more profitable option is
to create your own products. You will have a higher profit margin and you retain
complete control, and of course you deal with the support and customer service
aspect, so you get to know how effective your product really is.
At certain times of the year, gifts are popular and there are a number of sites
through which you can sell your own designs. All you need to do is create the
design and these sites handle the production, shipping and customer service for
you.
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Etsy
Etsy is tailored toward crafts and vintage goods, but has a great international
audience. Etsy works slightly differently to CafePress and Zazzle (two other sites
that help with physical products). You pay the site to list your items and then pay a
small fee on each item sold instead of getting a commission or royalties, similar to
eBay. This means that you generally make more profit for your products on Etsy
as compared to Zazzle and CafГ© Press. The downside? You have to do your own
packaging and shipping.
Zazzle
Zazzle lets you upload your own designs which are then put onto physical
products of your choosing, like t-shirts, mugs, bags and shoes. My
friend Anita Hunt has a fab Zazzle store where her botanical prints are put onto
tote bags and ipad cases, as well as items of jewellery. The tote bags are robust
and easy to use, just don’t let your children see them or they will steal them!
You can create your own Zazzle store and promote those goods on your blog, in
the sidebar or in posts. You can even put the store directly on your blog using
Zazzle’s API capabilities. Not only can you earn royalties on goods sold, you can
also earn a referral income when people set up their own stores through your link.
If you’d like to set up a Zazzle Store please use Anita’s link here, thank you
Products are created on demand within 24 hours, so you don’t carry any surplus
stock. And the site accepts credit cards and Paypal making it very easy for
customers to order from your shop.
CafГ© Press
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CafГ© Press works in much the same way as Zazzle. You only have to create an
image and upload it, and then Cafe Press does the rest. You get a commission on
all products sold through your shop. CafГ© Press, like Etsy has an international
market; you get the added benefit of a global marketplace.
Red Bubble
Red Bubble is a free site where you can upload your designs to T Shirts,
Calendars and Wall Art among other things, and has a nice range of kid’s clothes
too. You can create your store and start promoting your products straight away;
out of all the sites I’ve mentioned, Red Bubble appears to be the most social
media friendly with Like and Pin buttons on every item that’s for sale.
Kunaki
Kunaki specializes in print on demand CDs and DVDs which can contain audio,
video, ebooks, games, or data. Video and audio courses can be burned to DVDs
and sold through your blog and dispatched by you or dropshipped by Kunaki. The
costs to set up are low and a test product can be created free of charge. All that’s
missing is the market place, but you can still sell through your blog and your
newsletter.
Print on Demand Books
Sites like Lulu, Amazon CreateSpace and Blurb all offer Print on Demand. This
means you can take your ebooks, reformat them and then promote them. When
you have sold a book, it will be printed and dispatched. Again you hold no stock
and have relatively low costs – all you have to do is market the product.
Your site or theirs?
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These sites are a good place to test the marketplace before setting up an
ecommerce site, ordering stock and selling directly to the public. If you cannot
promote physical products and make sales through a third party, you’ll struggle to
do it on your own site.
Another thing to consider is, the things you are selling might be seasonal. You
may not want the costs and marketing associated with running your own site all
year round.
What you can’t do on a third party site that you can on your own is build your email
list.
Day Eight: How to Sell Physical Products Through
Your Blog
• Approach selling physical products in exactly the same way you would with
digital products. Do market research and keyword research. Make sure the
products you’re offering are things your market wants and can use. Focus
on solving problems and making life easier for customers with your
products.
• There are many other marketplaces for your designs besides Zazzle,
RedBubble and CafГ© Press, but before you sign up and start selling on
any, make sure the company is professional and reliable. Check forums
and review sites to see what people say about those companies and then
make up your own mind. You should pay especially close attention to the
customer service aspect, because it can make or break your business.
• Use your blog to drive traffic to your shop. Although sites like Etsy
make selling physical products easy, you need to have an aggressive,
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continual marketing campaign in order to get people to your shop. There
are many sellers offering similar products so you shouldn’t expect a great
deal of search engine traffic.
• Use Pinterest to drive traffic back to your shop – pinning your products
on boards that are search engine friendly will give the products a better
chance of being found, and your items always have the potential to go
viral.
Digital products offer a few big advantages. There’s no shipping to deal with and
they’re easy to produce. But with the services offered by the above sites, it’s easy
to produce your own physical products, and many of the sites handle the shipping
aspect for you. Like digital products, physical products can be sold online with low
overhead to maximize your profits.
Day Nine: How to sell your expert
services with your blog
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Marketing your services via your blog is a great way to monetize it. If you’re a web
designer, SEO expert, content writer, or other service provider, your blog is an
essential tool for boosting traffic, getting clients and live product R&D – you get to
see what your audience really wants. However, you can also use your blog to
attract coaching (like I do here, this series has helped me scoop up 3 great clients)
clients and mentoring / tutoring clients.
Let’s Start with Your Ideal Client
Before you start writing, take a minute to consider your target audience. Picture
your ideal client and write strong, actionable content that they can use. Define this
person as specifically as possible. What are their interests and problems? Use
your blog to speak to them and discuss topics in which they’re interested.
You don’t have to explicitly sell your services on your blog. It’s a bad idea to make
every blog post about why people need to hire a web designer, SEO expert, writer,
coach, etc. Don’t focus on selling, but provide information your reader can use.
What you’re doing is demonstrating your expertise in your field. When they need
your services, you’ll be the one they ask since they’ve already seen what you can
offer.
Blogging Consultant
If you’re a blogger with a high-traffic blog and an engaged audience, you can sell
your services as a blogging consultant. What a blogging consultant does is to help
businesses that are struggling with their blogs. If you’ve done well with yours, this
shows that you’re an expert. But you should not be a one trick pony. Go set up
another site and replicate your success there so you know what you are teaching
is tried and tested. Do not try to be the blogging consultant with one success
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under your belt. You will fall flat on your face. Success once is luck. Success twice
is skill.
You can target other small businesses in your niche or a similar niche; for
example, if you’re a food blogger, you can focus on helping restaurants with their
blogging.
For the record, I have a portfolio of my own successful blogs (One on the Forbes
top websites for women, another syndicated by the Guardian and another that
attracts high paying corporate clients), as well as a stable of successful clients.
When you come to me for blog mentoring and consulting you do not get wishywashy, light and fluffy ”oh you must try this“. You get action packed advice and
worksheets and resources, and yes, you are expected to work. Just to scare you
some more, I charge a fortune (reassuringly expensive I believe is the phrase) and
I get incredible results. If you are a tyre kicker, or want someone to do the heavy
lifting for you, go elsewhere. If you are prepared to work, and want to get results
then I’m your gal.
Offline Business SEO
Search engine optimization for offline businesses is a lucrative field. Offline
businesses today realize they need a strong online presence, but a fair number of
them are completely lost about how to go about it. On your blog, you can write
about SEO, social media, traffic strategies, and everything else you’ve done to put
your blog on the map. Your content will give them the help they need to get started
an, when they need further help, they’ll hire you.
Not from me…if you can’t be found for what you want to be found for… then why
would the offline business hire you? Yeah, this post is crammed with some tough
love today. Keep reading if you dare
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Coaching
For some bloggers their one and only goal is to attract coaching clients through
their writing.
A coaching consultancy is fairly simple to set up – you offer coaching sessions that
are conducted through Skype, email or phone for individuals or groups, and record
the sessions using Pamela, then send the client the recording and additional
feedback with assignments. Coaching doesn’t have to be face to face.
With coaching, you share your expertise in a specific area with people who are
new to it and less experienced. Coaches are able to charge high hourly rates for
sharing their knowledge, skills and experience. It’s important to find the right one
with the right skills to propel you forward.
See my comments above about reassuringly expensive. I’ll say this. If you have a
client on a call and you cannot answer their questions and you fudge with them,
whilst you frantically Google the answer… give up. Give up now. You don’t have to
know everything, but you do have to know more than your clients, if you don’t then
you are pitching at the wrong market.
See day one about the ideal reader and go back to the first section in this
guide and download the free marketing worksheet.
Seminars and Webinars
Another way to share your expertise is to offer seminars and webinars. Announce
your webinar on your blog and explain the benefits to your readers. Then promote
it in other arenas, like social media, your email list and so on. Your first webinar
may be small, but webinars have a tendency to gather momentum, snowballing
into more participants each time you hold them. Plus you can re-purpose the
content
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Traffic and Engagement
• In order to use your blog to successfully sell your services or
expertise, you need to have a great deal of traffic, reader
engagement and really strong, useful content.
• Post content regularly and interact as much as possible with
readers when they comment, ask questions, or email you.
• Post in forums where your ideal clients hang out and share
content on other sites to get exposure.
Your visibility online is what will drive your success in
getting clients for your services.
Once you’ve decided your service you now have to be relentless in marketing
them – you have to let people know you are available to do the work. This week
I’ve taken on 5 new clients after not taking any new ones since July. How did I do
it? This series of posts attracted in people who wanted my skills, saw that I know
what I’m talking about and rang up and booked me.
You can’t say better than that, can you?
Day Ten: Is it time to sell your blog
Over the last 9 days I’ve shared a variety of ways to boost your blog’s income over
the short, medium and long term and if there was nothing there to inspire you or
make you site up and go “yes!”, then it’s time for that difficult conversation – Is it
time for you and your blog to break up?
It could be that you’ve lost your passion for your blog. It could be you’ve become
so successful that you don’t have time to write anymore, it could be that you need
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the time spent blogging to do other things, it could be that you no longer have the
same online lead generating objectives.
Whatever the reason (and it should be a good one) don’t just let your blog wither
and die alone in the blogosphere, don’t abandon it so that it dies of a broken heart.
There could be an opportunity to sell your blog and make money that way. If you
have good traffic, good reader engagement and a monetization strategy in place,
your blog will be very attractive to buyers and it may fetch a good price.
Steps to selling your blog.
Make It Saleable from the Start
If you think you might someday sell your blog, set it up from the start so that it can
be easily transferred. Choose a domain name that doesn’t mention you
specifically. Avoid names like www.yourname.com you will struggle to sell a site
that’s branded you and the new owner has the hassle of rebranding the entire site.
Try to keep from making your content overly personal, sure they must have a bit of
your personality involved but not so much that if you stopped blogging the site
would collapse. The person who buys the blog from you will need to be able to
take it over and keep on blogging on the same topics and grow the site. That can’t
be done if your site would die without you.
Your Blog’s Competitive Advantage
When selling your blog, you need to know its competitive advantage. What makes
your blog unique among all of the other ones in your niche? Make
your differentiation clear in your sales presentation. The uniqueness of your blog
will add to its value. This aspect is quite tough, Birds was unique yet each month
another copycat emerges from the woodwork. Not only does it make it difficult to
sell my site, it makes it harder for them to sell theirs. The one thing in my favour is
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we’ve won lots of awards, proving the original is always more valuable than the
copy
Make Your Blog Attractive to Buyers
Work on building traffic and earnings with your blog and keep track of all analytics.
The value of your blog is determined by several factors, including earnings, traffic,
age, links, design, quality of content, and rankings.
Often blogs are valued at ten times their monthly profits, adjusted using the other
factors mentioned above. When you have the data, analyse it and decide whether
you would invest in the site, if you wouldn’t… then you have some work to do.
Start building your list actively – use a pop-up and set up an autoresponder to
maintain contact with your readers. Marketing to your email list is another way of
increasing revenue, but there’s a fine line between boosting your income and
burning your list to zero. If you burn your list, you’ll struggle to sell your site.
Explore Flippa.com and see what sites are selling and for how much,
what functionality they have etc. Research what blogs are selling and what buyers
are looking for.
Content Rich
Don’t bother trying to sell your blog if it’s just a few posts that were written 100
years ago, update your content and make it relevant and if you can’t be bothered
to do that, get someone in to do it.
The content on your blog needs to be high-quality, a ghost blogger or editor will
help tidy things up for you. Make sure you get someone with experience in
blogging and online sites to help you or you will waste hours training them how to
format posts, add images and so on.
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There should be a track record of frequent posting and make sure you own and
have accredited all the images correctly. Make sure your content is original and
isn’t scraped from other sites or spun using one of those tacky pieces of software
– if anything isn’t as it should be, then edit it and make it better or remove it.
The amount of quality content on your blog adds to its overall value. If you are
starting out with the aim of selling your blog then these tips are essentials and
ways of keeping your blog on track.
Engagement Is Key
Reader engagement is one way of determining a higher price tag for your blog.
You need as many comments, shares and other interactions (signs of life as I call
them) as possible.
Lots of subscribers? Then you have the advantage over other blogs for sale, there
is an existing, committed audience for the blog, and that’s a great sign. The new
buyer don’t have to build a brand new following from scratch, they only have to
build on the existing following.
You may also find a new buyer among your following, one of your readers might
like the site and wish to buy it. Don’t keep the sale of your site a secret; word of
mouth can help you reach the right buyer.
Keep Developing your Blog
If you can’t get the price you want for your blog, you need to consider investing
more time in building it and then readying it to sell in the future is always better
than abandonment. If it’s going to require too much of your time or you just don’t
want to, then outsource your content creation and focus on building traffic and
monetizing. You’ll then be able to put your blog out on the market for a higher
price.
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Summary:
Making money from your blog can be done very easily with a little time and
preparation. If you are looking to make a full time income, you’ll need to work
full time on your blog and the products you are selling.
You also need to invest in your own education and the right tools for you to
complete the job.
But it’s not beyond your reach and you can achieve an income from your blog
and boost it significantly with a bit of action, time and effort.
Good luck and remember to find me on Facebook, Twitter and my blog to tell
me how you’re getting along.
About Sarah Arrow
Sarah is the author of several successful social media marketing guides for small
businesses that want to “DIY” their marketing. Search “Sarah Arrow” on Amazon
to find them.
She has several award winning blogs, including the three times listed by Forbes as
a top website for women; Birds on the Blog. She’s is the blog coach to some of the
UK’s most influential bloggers and marketers. She’s also a Sage Small Business
Expert.
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Link Disclosure: Some of the links in this guide are affiliate links. Some are there
to make your like easier ie a reference link. Sarah only ever recommends
something when she’s used it and when it does the job it should do.
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