Affiliate Marketing on Your Blog
We all want to make money on our blogs. I’ve run dozens and dozens of blogs where the ultimate goal was to make money. And I had quite a bit of success. But, one of the things that I learned early on was that I needed–and I stress that word needed–to have multiple streams of revenue.
Many people think that if they throw Adsense up on their website, they’ll make thousands. I’ve done work with people that do this, but for the most part, Adsense is an archaic and outdated business. You can use it for some supplemental income, but for the most part, it’s not going to mean much for you.
Therefore, how should you monetize your blog?
Naturally, I am an advocate for display advertising. But, you need other things. And this is where an example is really important. A colleague of mine runs a website about watches. He writes about watches and takes pictures of new ones to show them. He was getting about 5,000 visitors a day which, in that niche, was pretty competitive. He was approached by some watch resellers and asked if he wanted to sell advertising.
He did. So, advertising soon popped up on the site with ads for Fossil and WeWood. But, what he realized was that he was sort of hitting a wall. Yeah, he was making some money, but he wanted to make more. And he realized that if other people were making money advertising on his site and then selling watches, why shouldn’t he?
That’s where affiliate marketing came in.
He was able to get access to a bunch of different watch affiliate programs and he tripled his revenue. He was still able to sell advertising–he wanted the diversity–but he also had big calls to action that went to his own watch store.
The thing that is important to understand about affiliate marketing is that it pays the most, but it requires the most work from the customer. Advertising, if it’s CPM based, generates revenue all the time. But, if you run an affiliate business where the person needs to buy the actual watch, you’re going to make more per person, but the amount of people that buy will be reduced.
Affiliate marketing is a great way to diversify your revenue generating, but don’t leave it at that either. I like to have four or five and sometimes even six different ways to make money. On a basketball site I do marketing for, we have a store, a ticket store, sponsored posts, advertising and a fantasy league. The store is affiliate marketing. The ticket store is a mix of affiliate marketing and cost per click. The sponsored posts are flat fees. The advertising grows as more traffic comes. And the fantasy league pays for every person that deposits money.
The point I’m making is…I’ve got five different ways that the site makes money. If each aspect makes a few thousand a month (the advertising might make more to start with), then you’re making $10K+ a month. And that will always grow.
In the end, diversify your income and look into affiliate marketing. It definitely pays off.
Guest Post By: Jay is an Internet marketer who runs a coupon website that has the wewood coupon and fossil promotional codes. While watches were one example with WeWOOD and Fossil being some products my friend promoted, there are tons of other opportunities on the web where you can make money with affiliate marketing. Just remember that as the product gets more expensive, you get fewer and fewer people participating.
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About The Blog Author
Alex Sysoef is an IT Consultant, Internet Marketer and ProBlogger who shares his passion and knowledge of WordPress, SEO, Social Media and traffic strategies on his blog WordPress Howto Spotter. Connect on Twitter or Facebook
Alex said: “We all want to make money on our blogs”.
You nailed it there Alex.
But it such a pain making serious money blogging.
Twitter: mmmtroy
says:
What I like about affiliate marketing is that it is becoming to common that you don’t really need to sell watches at all on your blog. In Canada, Companies like Rona have an affiliate program, allowing construction companies who wish to blog, to promote the products they like to use most. It’s great being able to talk about your interested, and be able to find affiliate products that can fit your interests.
Hey Alex yeh I had to take a look at this post you have here. Thing is though the more revenue streams you have, the more pieced up and spammy the site may look. I had to take one down because it just wasn’t worth having in the end. Maybe high traffic pr blogs are different, but newbies starting out the story is a little different. That’s my 2 cents.
thanks for posting
You are correct, I don’t go too heavy on ads in new blogs either.
Yes. Adsense has lost most of its luster. I use it, but barely make any money from it. You really need a boat load of traffic to make anything, and that is my problem..getting a lot of traffic.
I try to do all of the usual things, but still have a hard time. I like the idea of display advertising, but then again, you really need to have a site that has a pretty good amount of traffic in order to anyone want to spend money on ads.
I wish that there was a one click option that I could use to get the traffic that I need to make money. I have purchased many programs selling one click or a couple of clicks wonders, but I have found out that they are all pretty much the same garbage.
I also include affiliate marketing like clickbank and Amazon, but because of the lack of traffic, these do not work either. I guess that I am just doing everything the wrong way.
Any way, I just wanted to drop a few words of my own.
I enjoyed reading the article.
Ron,
It still works for us, I think it greatly depends on the Niche and how well promoted / SE positioned the blog is. Although it doesn’t hurt to add some affiliate promos even to AdSense monetized blog.
Twitter: internetdreamof
says:
Affiliate marketing is starting to have me looking at it some more.
It is an art by itself. You will need more credibility as you make more and more sales with it.
The story in the article about watches is fantastic. Affiliate marketing helped him get even more cash. That is what it can do for you.
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