How To Start A Blog

Blogging is a trend on the Internet that has become extremely popular and can be very profitable! A regularly updated blog can produce a constant stream of good leads from all around the world and lead to a full-fledged profession.

What is a Blog?

The word blog is derived from the combination of the two words web and log. The subject of a blog can range from personal diaries to music personal hobbies to consumer product reviews to tips & tricks on everyday-life topics like saving money or parenting …where users post thoughts, comments.

People all over the world have begun writing on a variety of topics. Basically, anyone can easily share their knowledge on the Web. Updates are often frequent and done on a regular basis.

Benefits Of Blogging:

Every business owner should be Blogging, Blogging is an excellent way to establish yourself as a leader in your niche, increase brand awareness, gain new clients and strengthen relationships with existing ones. By writing on topics of interest, you establish yourself as an expert and your followers also know as subscribers keep on growing, you will build your Brand, and will ultimately be able to make money with your blog.

Getting Started:

If your goal is to start a blogging business with the intention of making a profit, then having a great idea for a blog is not enough because there are so many blogs on the Internet, it can be tough to distinguish your blog from all of the others. In the long run, a great idea just isn’t enough to propel your blogging business to success. Every great blogger started with a great idea, you can’t build a successful site that will last without one.

If you can fill a unique need in a way that no other website does, you’ll be able to build a lasting readership among web surfers. There are many great blogging sites and competition for the attention of this growing demographic is fierce.

Whether you are starting up a new blogging site or looking to make your existing blogging site more distinctive, the key to building and maintaining a site that will capture the interest and attention of the blogging community is finding your niche.

What Is A Niche Blog?

A Niche Website or blog is a site that focuses on specific information.  An often-used technique is to create an Internet-based niche segment of larger markets. For example, a website about handmade handbag making is a niche segment of the crafting or the sewing Industry. Niche websites can be developed and promoted quickly to uniquely serve a targeted customer base.

The Niche Blog Tips:

01-The Niche based site you create should stand out from the crowd.
02- It should be something you have extensive knowledge of and are passionate about.
03-It should offer something that no other site is currently offering or the same thing that an already popular site does but in a more impressive or valuable way.

One way to discover an ideal model for your blogging web site is to look at the sites that have successfully captured a blogging audience already,  to determine if you can appropriate some of their strategies to help realize your vision. Of course, you will also need to add a unique flair to your project in order to stand apart from your competition.  

Many people agree that the web sites that do the best in today’s market are the sites that have the most personality. The fiercely individual surfers who are bloggers are a demographic that responds especially strongly to personality. Consider how you can give your site a unique and attractive feeling by lending your own voice and sensibility to your site’s design and content.

How To Monetize Your Blog

A popular way bloggers make money with a blog is with Affiliate Marketing, Affiliate Marketing is a partnership between you and a business owner with a product or service to sell! You don’t have to stock any products or actually sell anything in the traditional sense. The Internet is filled with ways to make money with a blog, none the less the idea is the same to make you and the affiliate money.

An affiliate pays you a commission for sending traffic:  potential customers to their website.  You as the Affiliate Marketer earn a commission, how much depends on your contract agreement with the Affiliate.

Establishing Credibility

The niche-based blog you create should be something you have extensive knowledge of, and /or are passionate about. The fact that you are knowledgeable and passionate about what you are writing about, gives you the upper hand on recommending certain products and giving input on the does and don’t s, based on experience, and therefore you establish credibility.

Think about this, you read a book and gain a lot of knowledge from it, the author recommends things to purchase to further your interest in the subject matter, you would be more likely to purchase those items knowing it came from a credible person because of the knowledge you have gained, through reading their book.

The idea is to pre-sell, recommend your affiliate companies as a place to purchase products in the course of educating your visitors on your theme topic.

For example: say your niche is bowling, you could recommend books, bowling equipment, and related products your affiliate offers. When the visitor clicks on your affiliate links and makes a purchase you make a profit. It is important that you believe in the products or services you refer to visitors, to maintain your credibility!

Common Mistakes New Affiliates Make.

# 1 Mistake

The number one mistake many Affiliates make, is, they put up a lot of banners and links expecting people to just click through and make a purchase, but that is not normally the case.

#2. Mistake

Putting up a lot of banner ads and links unrelated to your blog topic or subject matter is not a good idea. There are many Internet surfers who can go online line to purchase products if that is all they wanted to do.

If you plan to make money with your blog you need to establish a pool of potential customers. You need to give people a reason to visit your website or blog and a reason to want to purchase the items or services you are marketing.

Niche websites can be developed and promoted quickly to uniquely serve a targeted customer base, giving the affiliate a small but potentially continuous source of revenue. This technique can then be repeated across several other niche websites. Some niches may become saturated with marketers, increasing competition and thus reduce the slice of the pie available to each competitor.

Digital Products 

Another way to make money with a blog is by selling your own digital products. Blogging helps to establish you as an expert on particular topics and people love to learn and there is always someone around looking to learn what you are knowledgeable about. Once you establish credit-ability you can create and sell your own digital products through your blog such as:

-Online courses 

E-books

-Membership site

-Host Webinars 

-When your blog becomes popular you can sell ad space directly to advertisers.

What makes a win, win situation in the blogging business, is good content, using the right affiliate programs specific to your niche site, updating your content regularly, and generating ongoing traffic to your site. Put it all together and you are bound to make a good income in affiliate marketing.

Different Ways To Make Money In Affiliate Marketing

Make money Recommending Vendor’s Products! Affiliate Marketing AKA PERFORMANCE MARKETING is the single fastest-growing industry on the Internet. It’s also true that affiliate marketing is one of the most creative ways to make money and have a career on the Internet.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate Marketing is also known as revenue sharing, Affiliate marketing involves an online merchant (someone with a product or service to sell) and you as the Affiliate or web publisher.

Any company on the Internet with a product to sell can offer an affiliate program. Most if not all big-name companies online offer an affiliate program.

-It is Free to Join

-It is a partnership between you and the business owner with the product or service to sell.

-An affiliate pays you a commission for sending traffic:  potential customers to their website.

-When a visitor clicks on an ad you posted on behalf of the business owner, visits the business owner’s site, and makes a purchase you make a commission.

How much you would earn depends on the affiliate’s contract agreement. In some cases even if the visitor from your site did not make a purchase the same day of the visit, you could still earn a commission if they go back 30 days later and made a purchase.

As a member of an affiliate program, you will have access to their:

Banner ads, Product ads, Coupon Codes, and Deals banners, and in some cases based on approval, their data feed files.

Different Ways To Enter Into Affiliate Marketing:

There are different ways to make money in affiliate marketing but the purpose is the same, to make money for the affiliate and earn you a commission.

1. Content Publishers

Content publishers publish web content such as news, gossip, entertainment, sports, lifestyle articles, etc. Bloggers are content publishers who write articles about any subjects they have knowledge of. Facebook and forums are user-generated content publishers meaning their content is normally created by their users. They make money by posting affiliate banners and coupon deals. Besides affiliate marketing, content publishers can make money with the following popular money-making programs.

Pay Per Click Programs with Pay Per Click programs you make money when someone clicks on an ad or link you post. As a member of Google Adsense, Google will give you a code to post on your blog or website which will produce links to articles and/or ads based on your website or blog theme topic. When someone clicks on an ad or the link you post you make money.

Pay Per Impression with Pay Per Impression you would post Cost per Impression (CPM) ads on your site and when a visitor to your site sees an advertiser’s ad posted on your site you make money. No purchase is necessary. You would need a lot of visitors to make any substantial money with this type of program.

Sponsored ads and ad space
When your blog or website becomes popular generating substantial visitors to your site, you can sell ad space and possibly get paid sponsors for your site.

2. Coupon Affiliates

It is a known fact that the average person loves a bargain! It is no wonder Coupon or Deal sites are some of the most popular types of affiliate sites on the Internet.
Coupon Affiliates offer coupons or discount codes to their users and earn commissions on any sales that result from someone clicking through one of their coupon links to a merchant’s site and makes a purchase.

3. Data Feeds Affiliates

Data Feed affiliates use data feed files to upload and display their affiliate’s products on a website or blog. Comparison shopping sites are an example of sites using data feeds. If you visit a comparison shopping site in search of computers you will see various companies offering computers such as Walmart and amazon.com and many more listed in the results, these products would be linked through affiliate links.

4. Email Affiliate

Some email affiliates put out newsletters or collect an email list and send out regular emails full of their affiliate links and banners. Working with email affiliates can be risky, especially if they’re not CAN-SPAM compliant. The CANSPAM Act establishes requirements for commercial messages, gives recipients the right to have you stop emailing them, and spells out tough penalties for violations. … That means all emails – for example, a message to former customers announcing a new product line – must comply with the law. To learn more about email marketing check out our post on email marketing.

5. Loyalty and Incentives Affiliates.

These affiliates would offer an incentive, say, cash back or points or virtual currency.  They will share a part of their payout, a part of the payment received from the affiliate merchant. Cashback offers, donations to charitable organizations, and contributions to scholarship funds are by far the most popular forms of incentives used by this type of affiliate.

6. Mobile and Pay Per Call Affiliates

Mobile affiliates focus on mobile marketing or pay-per-call marketing specifically. Certain sites build affiliate links to their apps. That goes for coupons or data feed sites that have an app, but it also goes for standalone apps themselves.  Popular apps like Pandora use affiliate links to send users to Apple’s iTunes Store.

7. Social Media Affiliates

Social media affiliates use social media channels to market the merchant’s products that they promote.

8. Video Affiliates

Video marketing is a type of commission-based marketing. These would be affiliates that focus on video creatives, which are known to yield higher conversion rates. Affiliate video marketing is a type of commission-based marketing that is managed by affiliates. These affiliates create videos to endorse products and services for a specific business.

Working through an affiliate network offering videos to their affiliates you can select the Videos you want to promote. Using tracking software the merchant company can tell if someone clicked on the advertised product and made a purchase you would get a commission.

How To Find Affiliate Marketing Programs

A simple search of the Internet for Affiliate Marketing programs will produce hundreds of thousands of results! To start, enter “Affiliate Marketing Programs” in the search engine of your choice. Not all affiliate programs are legit,  do your research before joining an affiliate marketing program. To see if anyone has had a problem with the affiliate program you are interested in search online for reviews.or complaints about said company.

Do as much research on the company of your choice as you can and ask questions of concern. Another way to start out is to join an  Affiliate Network.

Affiliate Networks:

There are many companies that pay Affiliate Networks to manage their accounts including big-name companies. Some of the best affiliate programs can be found by signing up with an affiliate network. Affiliate networks house major companies such as Walmart, AT &T staples, best buy and hundreds of others too numerous to name, you get the idea. The affiliate network does all the work and keeps you updated on how much money you make through reports generated on their site.

To get started you sign up with an affiliate network as a publisher and provide them with all your information including the websites you will be posting affiliate’s banners and links to. Normally you are able to place links on multiple websites that you own. Before choosing an affiliate program it is a good rule of thumb to look over their merchant’s program agreement. Pay special attention to the commission percentage. Look out for how many days after a visitor from your site makes a purchase before you will be entitled to credit for it?

To sign up with an Affiliate Network you will be required to provide your taxpayer information and the method of payment you prefer. Once you are signed up and approved, you have the option of applying for the companies you are interested in becoming a partner affiliate with. You may have to wait a day or two or longer to find out if you are approved for the affiliate program you selected.

To be on the safe side affiliate beginners should select only affiliate programs that are apart of an affiliate network. The following is a list of well known Top Affiliate Programs not necessarily in the order I have them in.

Top Affiliate Networks

1. Rakuten Advertising

Rakuten Advertising, formally know as Linkshare, is reportedly the largest affiliate network, with over 10 million affiliate partnerships, Rakuten offers over 2,500 affiliate programs. As a publisher, you can partner with thousands of leading and emerging brands across a variety of industries

2. Commission Junction

CJ is said to be the largest affiliate marketing network in North America (though it operates globally) in addition to its regular pay-per-action affiliate program, the company also offers a convenient Pay  Per Call program to help affiliates “ensure they get paid commission for the leads they generate, thus further monetizing existing ad placements and having the opportunity to expand their promotional…online and offline campaigns.”

3. Shareasale.com

Chicago-based ShareASale has over 2,500 merchant programs and features brands such as HootSuite and PS Print. ShareASale has received excellent ratings, with the company’s reputation/security, ethics, customer service, and ease of commission payment receiving glowing reviews.

4. Amazon Associates

Placing fourth in the 2012 Blue Book of Top 20 Affiliate Networks, for a reporting system that “far surpasses other big networks,” this is one of the largest and most diverse affiliate programs available.

As most people know, Amazon.com offers such a wide array of products that there’s bound to be something to fit your niche. In fact, they offer over a million products from which you can choose to monetize your website or blog. Amazon Associates is a pay-per-sale affiliate program.

5. ClixGalore

ClixGalore is an Australian PPA (pay-per-action) affiliate network that also has offices in the US, UK, and Japan. The company offers various types of programs, including PPM (pay-per-impression), PPL (pay per lead), PPS (pay-per-sale), and PPC (pay-per-click). Many programs pay in US dollars.

Some well-known brands that use ClixGalore for their affiliate offerings are Bluehost, Time-Life, Trend Micro, Citibank, and Fox Sports Shop. While not as widely known as some of the other affiliate networks, ClixGalore is a solid network that offers thousands of potential merchant programs. The network also offers a two-tier network. By referring other affiliates to the network, current affiliates can receive a portion of their earnings.

6. PeerFly.com

PeerFly is a PPA network with its own proprietary software system. The network made the 2012 Blue Book of Top 20 Affiliate Networks, which stated regarding them, “They are courteous, helpful, and point you in the right direction.” PeerFly accepts publishers from all over the world and offers thousands of merchant programs.

7. ClickBank

A well-known affiliate network, ClickBank features digital products, such as e-books, software, and membership sites. The program reportedly offers up to 75% commissions on its tens of thousands of products. Commissions are paid weekly, and direct deposit is available to its affiliates.

Over the years, this network has remained popular, though some have questioned a few of its practices.

8. MaxBounty

MaxBounty came in sixth in the 2012 Blue Book of Top 20 CPA Networks, though it didn’t make a showing in the Blue Book’s top 20 affiliate networks. In business since 2004, the network was founded on the philosophy of paying its affiliates more.

How Not to Break the Law While Affiliate Marketing

When people read what you wrote about a particular product and click on the links and buy something from the retailer, as an Affiliate, you earn a commission from the retailer. It is the same as if you are endorsing the product and therefore you must disclose that information according to the FTC.

Disclosure: Affiliate link disclosures are a requirement of the FTC whenever a link is used on your website that results in a commission, you must disclose this information to site visitors. You are required to disclose your relationship to the retailer clearly and conspicuously on your site, the readers can decide how much weight to give your endorsement.

In some instances – like when the affiliate link is embedded in your product review – a single disclosure may be adequate. When the review has a clear and conspicuous disclosure of your relationship and the reader can see both the review containing that disclosure and the link at the same time, readers have the information they need.

Affiliate Marketing Disclosure

You could say something like, “I get commissions for purchases made through links in this post.” But if the product review containing the disclosure and the link are separated, readers may not make the connection.

Where Do I Have Place the Disclosure?

As for where to place a disclosure, the guiding principle is that it has to be clear and conspicuous. The closer it is to your recommendation, the better. Putting disclosures in obscure places – for example, buried on an ABOUT US or GENERAL INFO page, behind a poorly labeled hyperlink or in a “terms of service” agreement – isn’t good enough. Neither is placing it below your review or below the link to the online retailer so readers would have to keep scrolling after they finish reading. Consumers should be able to notice the disclosure easily. They shouldn’t have to hunt for it.

Is “affiliate link” by itself an adequate disclosure? What about a “buy now” button?

Consumers might not understand that the “affiliate link” means that the person placing the link is getting paid for purchases through the link. Similarly, a “buy now” button would not be adequate.

What if I’m including links to product marketers or to retailers as a convenience to my readers, but I’m not getting paid for them?

Then there isn’t anything to disclose.

Does this guidance about affiliate links apply to links in my product reviews on someone else’s website, to my user comments, and to my tweets?

Yes, the same guidance applies anytime you endorse a product and get paid through affiliate links.

It’s clear that what’s on my website is a paid advertisement, not my own endorsement or review of the product. Do I still have to disclose that I get a commission if people click through my website to buy the product?

If it’s clear that what’s on your site is a paid advertisement, you don’t have to make additional disclosures. Just remember that what’s clear to you may not be clear to everyone visiting your site, and the FTC evaluates ads from the perspective of reasonable consumers. For information check out the .dot.com disclosures.