e-bloggers.comLearn How To Monetize Your Blog And Make Money Online

Affiliate marketing is a form of marketing where you promote someone else’s product on your blog or website. So, all that you are doing here is that you are informing the potential customers of a company, about its products or services and then guiding them to the company’s website. And every time somebody from your blog reaches the company’s website, you get paid a percentage of the sale amount or an amount based on pay per click basis.

But how lucrative is this affiliate marketing work? How do I decide what product or company to market on my blog? What do I say?  How do I promote a product?

Affiliate marketing is a very lucrative business because it requires almost no capital and starts giving returns much sooner than any other conventional business. The commissions that you can earn through Affiliate Marketers like ClickBank, Commission Junction, Paydotcom, etc can range anywhere between 5% and 75% of the sale value of the product. 75% sound too good to be true, doesn’t it? Well yes, it does and there are several products on which you’ll be paid so generously. Why? We’ll show you here why.

Imagine an eBook worth $200 is being sold online by somebody called Tom. Tom makes 5 sales each week which means that he makes $1000 each week selling his eBooks through his website. But what would happen if his eBook was being promoted by 50 blogs and each blog made a sale of one eBook every week. He would then be selling out eBooks worth $10,000. And even if he pays out commission of 75%, he is left with $2500 which is more than double of what he earned earlier. But of course, if you affiliate with a physical goods company it’ll pay you lesser commission like 15-20%.

So what all can you sell to make money? You can sell just about anything that can be sold and billed online like eBooks, Software, electronic goods, books etc. Basically all that you have to have is good writing skills and passion to promote the product with all conviction. Quite often you’ll find that there are products which people want to buy every week or month. You get a monthly commission for that too.

So how do you decide what product to choose? Well, look around and see what niche of products give the best commissions for every sale. The highest paying ones are probably the least selling ones and might prove difficult to sell. Those giving away the least are probably the ones that are there on hundreds of other blogs and therefore your chances of making a sale is low again due to heavy competition. So pick a product that you know a little bit about and offer commission in the range of 25-50%. These are either new products or those with medium conversion rates. But at the same time these would be on fewer blogs which would mean less competition.

Affiliate marketing is the call of the day and anyone who is missing this flight is definitely going to repent later. So go ahead and get your own blog today and sign-up with an affiliate network to start making money right away.

Affiliate marketing is one of those terms that you must have read and come across more often than not. Newspapers and magazines feature interviews of people who made their millions on internet and mostly through affiliate marketing. Some of you or people you know must have also tried their hands on affiliate marketing but did not get the results that the ‘internet millionaires’ got.

Well, the point that I am trying to make here is that there’s no denial to the fact that people have made millions from affiliate marketing, but you have to understand that they have done the right things at the right time. There are hundreds of affiliate marketing programs out there that promise a lot but deliver little in terms of value. You must understand a few things about affiliate marketing before you jump into it.

Affiliate marketing is not something that’ll make you rich overnight. You will have to treat it like your company, the only difference being that you don’t have to store anything or ship anything to make profits. So what is it that you have to do? Well, you have to promote a product that someone else wants to sell and you’ll get a commission based on every sale that gets executed due to your efforts. Sounds simple, doesn’t it? Well it’s not so.

Internet is like an ocean and your blog like a fish. So unless you make sure that you have certain qualities that set you apart from others you can you’ll have difficult time making money through affiliate marketing and surviving. So what are these qualities? Well, firstly you should be able to identify which products you can effectively promote or take the help of a professional or company that’ll guide you through this jungle.

But why would somebody pay you for affiliate marketing? Well they will be ready to pay you because they are far more busy producing the goods for sale that they cannot manage marketing themselves. Apart from that search engine rules keep changing every now and then and stale content keeps getting pushed behind every day in the search results. So as an affiliate marketer you ensure that you keep the content updated and keep the matter from getting stale. And above all the seller has to pay you no upfront fee for marketing.

Affiliate marketing works on the basis of pay per click or pay per impression. So if you want to strike it big in the affiliate marketing world, the best way to start is by taking help from the professionals. So if you want to blog about something tie up with Google AdSense where they will place ads on your website relevant to the content that is there on your blog. So you will have to select some of the topics that you either know inside out or something that is really hot and selling like - affiliate marketing.

Another form of affiliate marketing could be tying up with companies like ClickBank and then directly marketing the particular product that ClickBank recommends. These are all online stuff like eBooks, software, manuals etc. basically everything that can be transferred instantly online. And every time that somebody buys the product through your website you get a commission on the sale amount which varies from product to product.

The basic difference between the two types is that if you tie up with ClickBank you know what you are promoting whereas the case with Google AdSense is a little different because you just supply content relevant to a niche and Google decides what ads are shown.

Blogging is the latest craze all over the internet universe. I call it a ‘universe’ because there seem to be endless opportunities in this virtual world for just about everybody. It’s like the American dream. If you have a genuine idea and you are willing to work hard, then nobody can stop you from becoming rich and famous, no matter what age, what religion or what nationality you belong to. But how have blogs helped so many people make so much money in such a short time? Well, you’ll have to read and find out.

While blogs were initially started as just a place where somebody could express their feelings about something or just as a webspace to write something down, very soon people realized that a blog was more than just a scribbling pad or a personal diary. Blogs can be said to have been rediscovered as a great marketing tool and then there was a sudden explosion in the number of blogs and the things that people were doing with them.

People started using blogs to market their products. Companies started using blogs as a place where they could get their consumer’s feedbacks. In fact companies like Ford Motor Company, Honda etc. even asked people to give suggestions as to what they would want to get changed in an existing model and what they would like to be different in an upcoming model. Thus blogs suddenly became so famous that hundreds of people could be found discussing at the same time and making it a really lively place.

But where there’s such a crowd, there’s also an opportunity for generating revenue out of advertising. This is where the monetary benefit of running a blog comes into play. If you run a popular blog, one where you have a loyal visitor base and where people have a lot of fun and get some value for the time they spend, then you too can make a lot of money. You want to know how?

A popular blog is like a popular website where you can always make a lot of money through advertising. There are various methods by which you can make money out of advertising.

1. Sell your advertising space to an advertising company for a fixed amount (this is particularly favorite amongst the more famous and active blogs). This way you get your money every month or in lump sum for a fixed period of time. You don’t have to worry about the advertising anymore.
2. The second method which is the most widely used is tying up with companies like Google Adsense which place ads on your blog and pay you on Pay Per Click basis. So every time somebody who visits your blog and clicks on any of the ads placed by Google AdSense, you get a small commission. The more the visitors, the more the clicks. The more the clicks, the more the money that you make.
3. The third way and the least practiced is by finding advertisers on your own and placing their banners and ads on your blog. While in this way you don’t have to share your advertising revenue with anyone, you’ll have to do all the running around. This is preferable only if you have some solid contacts and a long term contract for advertising.

One of the things that you must always ensure while seeking advertisers is relevance. If you are blogging about health and fitness, then an ideal advertiser on your blog would a company that manufactures or sells health products or fitness equipments.

And to ensure maximum number of visitors, keep your content absolutely to the point while using appropriate keywords to help the search engine locate your blog.

Also if you have decided to find sponsors for your blog on your own it would be wise to not put too many ads for two reasons. The first one is that too many ads may distract and irritate the visitor and keep him or her from coming back. Also if your blog is popular and the advertising space is less, you can charge your sponsors more.

What is a Tag?

A tag is a keyword or a descriptive term associated with an item as a means of classification.

Tags are typically used in a dynamic, flexible and automatically generated internet related environment and do not follow any specific defined classification scheme.

Illustration

Let’s try to understand the concept of tags with an example. For instance, a blog server which supports tagging might have the tags Broadway, Tickets, Phil Colner and Premiers.

A reader will be able to tell the purpose of the page quickly by scanning the list of tags. The server would list the tags in a list on that page, with each tag being displayed as a web link. This link would lead to an index page listing all web pages which use that tag. This process, in turn allows a reader to quickly locate all pages which are associated with the term Broadway.

In case the server supports tag searching, a reader would be able to find all pages that use a specific set of tags, such as Broadway and Premiers. To further reclassify the page, all that will be required is to change the list of tags and all the connections will be automatically tracked and updated by the software.

Forms of Tagging

There are two types of tagging patterns for blogs. The form of tagging you decide to implement in your blog depends on your blog and its goals.

However, it should be noted that whatever form you opt for, do it carefully, because once implemented, to change the form of tags later involves a lot of complicated exercise.

Here we discuss the two main types of tagging for blogs to facilitate your decision-making:

• Internal Tagging - This form of tagging capitalizes on the content on the

site and provides internal linking which is basically good for both, search

engines and your readers.

Internal tagging fundamentally uses the flow of conversation approach. The approach highlights that the flow of conversation is not only linear, but is also multi-topical and interspersed with other aspects of conversation.

• External tagging: External tagging is implemented by outside services like Technorati, Flickr or del.icio.us and gives the process an edge of external exposure. Bloggers who use this form of tagging do so because they already have categories for internal use and meanwhile tagging allows them to feed the subjects to such external tagging services.

External tagging facilitates a lot of broad exposure on individual entries but carries the risk of being unable to tie similar conversations together internally.

How to Implement Tags?

Most of the blog platforms do not support out-of-the-box tagging services. However, most of them provide support for plugins or extensions. Here we list a few examples:

• Ultimate Tag Warrior (WordPress) – This plugin provides a wide set of options for internal and external tagging both. This service allows the blogger to display tags in a lot of ways and is thoroughly documented. External tags have the provision to get linked to Technorati, Flickr, del.icio.us, Wikipedia and the like.

• Jerome’s Keywords (WordPress) – This plugin is the easiest to reverse mid-way as it implements tags as keywords.

• Simple Tags, (WordPress) - This particular plugin carries the basic Technorati tagging capability on a per-post basis. However, it does not carry the internal tagging functionality.

• TechnoratiTags (Moveable Type) – Similar in nature to the above two, this plugin feeds keywords to technorati as tags.

Introduction

The world of blogging by its very nature demands dynamism and innovation in its output.

From the style to language, tone and the forms of posts; bloggers are expected to incorporate an element of variety in their posts on an ongoing basis. It then becomes the need of the hour to experiment with the various forms of genre.

Forms of posts

The famous ‘Bloggers Block’ haunts almost all bloggers at some point in their blogging course. Here we list the 10 best types of posts intended to tackle the concern of variety faced by the blogging community.

1. Informational – These are the blog posts that carry information on a topic. The knowledge provided in the post could range from a simple definition to a longer explanation of some aspect of the category you are addressing in your blog.

2. Instructional – The instructional posts are typically the ‘how to’ posts. These posts provide guidelines on how to do something. The ‘Tips’ posts are the most common form of instructional posts. Such posts are a huge attraction both for long term readers as well as first time visitors.

3. Lists – Lists such as ‘Top ten ways to….’ Or ‘5 most common mistakes by……’ might be quite difficult to put together, but are a sure hit with the readers. These also get some of the maximum links from other bloggers.

4. Reviews – The review posts cover feedbacks and opinions on almost every product searchable on the Internet. Reviews are one of the very few types of posts that can be very powerful in their impact and also have a great longevity.

5. Interviews and Profiles – To provide your readers with a whiff of fresh air, it is always a good idea to post an interview or a profile of someone famous, whom your readers will like to read about.

Alternatively, profile posts also talk about famous personalities, except for a single difference. While in a profile post the blogger writes on his own about the individual, in an interview post, the blogger actually publishes an interview with the person concerned.

6. Link Posts – One of the favorites of many bloggers, a link post is all about finding a quality post on another site or blog and linking up with it. The post explains why the link was setup and what was it that made the blogger do so.

7. Comparison Posts – These are the posts that present a comparison between two or more products or services. The post outlines the negative and positives of the concerned products and services in detail for the reader’s benefit.

8. Venting Out – These posts are highly subjective in nature and are used by bloggers to say just what is on their minds. The nature of such ranting posts can become quite volatile at times, with the bloggers blurting out quite intense emotions in the heat of the moment, leading on to a burning conversation.

9. Motivational – The inspirational or motivational posts normally tell a story of success or a series of good news. Readers are generally pleased with such pieces as these motivate them to persist in their respective pursuits.

10. Research – Authentic research oriented posts take a long time to write due to the amount of study and analysis it requires. Nevertheless, if done well, these posts can earn a lot of links for the bloggers’ posts.

The Basics

The underlying principle of the design of a weblog is utility and functionality, aimed to contrive for a specific purpose, through planned and systematic graphic representation.

Contrary to the common definition of design, blogosphere defines design as a method to make things work to their best ability, instead of merely enhancing the visual effect.

Design Guidelines

Here we list a set of key guidelines to follow and implement when designing a weblog:

1. Goals and Aims – It is of utmost importance to keep the basic purpose and goals of the weblog in mind. Every aspect of the design, ranging from the frames to colors, is influenced by the basic aim of the weblog.

Whether the purpose is creating awareness or rebuilding an existing weblog for better SEO results, the designer will have to decide on the key elements keeping these objectives in mind.

2. Target Audience – All the factors related to your planned targeted audience play a crucial role in deciding the basic ingredients of the blog design.

Factors such as ethnic background, educational levels, professional aspirations, financial abilities and geographical locations of your target audience should ideally be kept in perspective while finalizing the blog design.

3. Bloggers’ Needs – The blog designer needs to be aware whether the blogger in question has some specific needs such as flexibility to revamp the look for freshness or add some vital updates in future.

In such a scenario, the designer has to provide in-built features allowing scope for further amendments to the design, as per the need.

4. Rough Layouts – It is important for the designer to first draw out wireframes in order to experiment with element placement and layout.

Several programs and software can be used for drawing these wireframes or rough sketches, including the likes of OmniGraffle (mac only). Infact, most of the new weblog designers often commit the blunder of treating this step as redundant and hence skip it. This ultimately adversely affects the whole concept in turn.

5. Build a vision chart – Develop a collection of imagery and put it up all together on a board to see what the visual ideas look like.

Such a mood board should carry an amalgamation of images, colors, type etc. that seem to be in sync with the project in hand. An ideal mood board

should reflect the summary of the idea of the weblog’s design, according to the blogger as well as the designer.

6. Elementary Design – Having dealt with the entire above requirement, it is easy to put together the basic outline of the blog’s design as visualized.

An important requirement at this stage is to ensure that the designer leaves adequate ‘white space’, which refers to the empty space around the individual elements.

7. Take a print – Once you’ve put together an initial draft, take a print and see what the basic design looks like.

At this stage, it’s worthwhile to think how you are going to structure the html of the planned design.

8. HTML and CSS – This stage entails actually working out the HTML code and laying out the CSS guidelines of your design.

Once you’ve done this, you will have a clear estimate whether the original concept of the weblog’s design has a practical viability. Otherwise, a certain amount of tweaking and alteration can be brought in to achieve the desired results.