Category: Blogging

Blogging is a trend on the Internet that has become extremely popular and can be very profitable! In this example we are focusing on a craft blog but the same methods we will use to start a craft blog are the same methods you would use to start any type of blog. 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.

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.

What Is A Niche Blog?
A Niche blog is a site that focuses on specific information.  An often-used technique is to create an Internet-based niche segment of larger markets. Niche blogs can be developed and promoted quickly to uniquely serve a targeted customer base.

For example, starting a craft blog can be a fantastic idea for several reasons, many craft bloggers find fulfillment in sharing their knowledge and expertise with others, helping them learn new skills and discover the joy of crafting. The sense of community and connection that comes from interacting with readers can be incredibly rewarding.

A craft blog can serve as an online portfolio of your work. You can share your projects, tutorials, and techniques with a global audience, establishing yourself as an expert in your craft niche. This can be particularly beneficial if you’re looking to attract clients for custom commissions, freelance work, or collaborations with brands.

You also have the freedom to express your creativity and pursue your passions on your own terms. Overall, a craft blog can be a valuable platform for turning your passion into a profitable full time business venture.

How To Start A Craft Blog:

Choose Your Niche:
Decide what type of “Craft Niche” you want to focus on for your blog. Consider your interests, expertise, and what you think will resonate with your target audience. You could specialize in a specific craft, such as knitting, sewing, woodworking, or paper crafting, or explore a variety of crafts.

The Niche Blog Tips:
1-The Niche based site you create should stand out from the crowd.

2- It should be something you have extensive knowledge of and are passionate about.

3-It should offer something that no other site is currently offering or the same thing that a popular craft site does but in a more impressive or valuable way.

Choose a Blogging Platform: Select a platform to host your blog. Some popular options include:

• WordPress: A versatile and customizable platform that powers a significant portion of the internet. You can choose between WordPress.com (hosted) or WordPress.org (self-hosted).
• Blogger: A simple and user-friendly blogging platform owned by Google.
• Medium: A platform focused on writing and publishing articles, which can be a good option if you prefer to focus on content rather than technical aspects.
• Wix: An easy-to-use website builder that offers blogging functionality.

Pick a Domain Name:
Choose a domain name for your blog that reflects your brand and is easy to remember. Ideally, it should be related to crafting and available as a .com domain. You can use domain name registration service to check availability and purchase your domain.

Set Up Your Blog:
Sign up for your chosen blogging platform and follow the instructions to set up your blog. Customize your blog’s design and layout to reflect your style and branding. Choose a clean and user-friendly design that makes it easy for visitors to navigate your site and discover your content.
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.  

Create Compelling Content:
Start creating content for your blog. Write blog posts that showcase your craft projects, share tutorials, tips, and inspiration, and provide valuable information to your readers. Use high-quality images and multimedia (such as videos) to enhance your posts and engage your audience.

Engage with Your Audience:
Encourage interaction and engagement on your blog by responding to comments, asking questions, and inviting feedback from your readers. Foster a sense of community by encouraging readers to share their own craft projects and experiences.

Attract a Targeted Audience: 

People interested in crafting often search online for inspiration, tutorials, and tips. By publishing valuable and engaging content on your craft blog, you can attract a targeted audience of craft enthusiasts who are interested in what you have to offer.

Optimize for SEO:
Optimize your blog for search engines to improve its visibility and attract organic traffic. Use relevant keywords in your blog post titles, headings, and content, and optimize your meta tags and descriptions. Regularly publish high-quality content and build backlinks from reputable websites to improve your blog’s search engine rankings.

Promote Your Blog:
Share your blog posts on social media platforms like Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, and Twitter to attract visitors to your blog. Join online communities and forums related to crafting to share your content and connect with like-minded individuals. Network with other craft bloggers and consider guest posting on established blogs to reach a wider audience.

Audience Engagement:
Credibility and authority help you build a loyal audience that actively engages with your content. Engaged readers are more likely to interact with your blog, share your content with others, and participate in discussions, which can increase traffic and attract potential customers.

Partnerships and Collaborations:
Brands and businesses are more inclined to collaborate with bloggers who have established authority and credibility in their niche. They see value in partnering with influencers who can authentically promote their products or services to a targeted and engaged audience.

Monetization Opportunities:

Establishing authority and credibility in your niche is essential for making money with your blog for several reasons:
Consistently sharing high-quality content on your craft blog can help you establish authority and credibility in your niche. As your blog gains traction and followers, you’ll become a trusted source of information and inspiration within your community. 

When you’re recognized as an authority in your niche, your audience trusts your expertise and opinions. They’re more likely to value your recommendations and be receptive to the products or services you promote on your blog.

As an authority in your niche, you have various monetization opportunities available to you.
This could include display advertising (using ad networks like Google AdSense), affiliate marketing (promoting Other Businesses products and earning a commission on sales), sponsored content (collaborating with brands), brands are willing to pay a premium to reach your audience because they trust your recommendations and expertise. You could also sell your own digital products including eBooks, offer premium content or courses, offer consulting or coaching services, and more.

Higher Conversion Rates:
Credibility and authority can lead to higher conversion rates for your monetization efforts. When you recommend products or services that align with your audience’s interests and needs, they’re more likely to convert into paying customers. Your reputation as an authority gives your recommendations added weight and persuasiveness.

Long-Term Success:
Building authority and credibility in your niche is an investment in the long-term success of your blog. It sets you apart from competitors, establishes your blog as a go-to resource for valuable content, and positions you as a trusted voice in your industry. This can lead to sustained growth, increased opportunities, and greater earning potential over time.

Overall, establishing authority and credibility in your niche is crucial for building a successful and profitable blog. It lays the foundation for trust, engagement, partnerships, and monetization opportunities that can help you achieve your blogging goals and generate income.

Track Your Progress:
Use analytics tools like Google Analytics to track your blog’s performance and understand your audience’s behavior. Monitor metrics like traffic, engagement, and conversion rates to identify what’s working well and where you can improve. Use this data to refine your content strategy and grow your blog over time.

By following these steps and staying consistent with your blogging efforts, you can start a successful crafting Blog Business.

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 and is a partnership between you and the business owner with a 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, and 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 the Affiliate Companies:

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 , 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 CAN–SPAM 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.

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.

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.