This is the 1st in an ongoing series about making money by starting your own blog or website. Please let me know by either leaving a comment or sending me an email if you have anything to add or have questions. I am not any sort of expert but because I do have some experience in this arena I will do my best to either answer or point you in a direction that you can find the information you are seeking.
I know that there are probably more than a few of you who aspire to be WAHM’s (or you work outside of the home and are looking to bring in extra income) and make at least some sort of income off of blogging or creating a website. Blogging is definitely a hot trend that looks to be around for quite some time. One thing you should know is making a blog or a website is no guarantee of any income. It takes hard work and dedication to marketing, writing, researching, networking and other time consuming activities. But if you are committed to all those things it can also be rewarding both monetarily and with connections with like minded people you can make.
So that said, while making money from home was not the sole reason behind creating FF and D, it was definitely in my mind when I started this site April 15, 2008. I had been blogging for quite some time for my photography business, so I was pretty adept at the world of websites and blogs. What I did not know was the business side of making any sort of income off of a blog. And let me tell you – I am still learning!
Here are some of the things I have learned..hope they are helpful to your endeavors.
Affiliate Marketing
What I learned when I started doing my research is that most blogs make money off of what is called “affiliate marketing”.
It basically works like this: There are companies out there that want for you to promote and sell (and sometimes give away) their products. But many of them are large companies (say for instance Wal-Mart) and do not want to deal with a bunch of little websites and blogs promoting their products. So they go to a middleman called an “Affiliate Program”. These middlemen manage the relationship between lil’ old us and the big guys (like Wal-Mart). And they end up taking a cut of our commissions but that is OK. Commission are either generally earned through a percentage of sales made through your site or through leads. Leads mean that you may get paid just by your reader completing an offer that has no purchase requirement. There is also a small amount of pay per click opportunities available (you get paid a small commission if a reader simply clicks through a link)
Here are some of the affiliate programs I use and have found success with. If you do a Google search you will find many, many more:
Larger more popular affiliate programs- The below have been around for quite some time and feature a lot of name brands you will recognize as well as smaller companies you may not be familiar with.
–Commission Junction
–Link Share
–Google Affiliate Network
–Google Adsense– Google Adsense is not an affiliate program but a pay per click program. When you install the code on your site it automatically shows ads that are related to your content. When you viewers click through you get paid a few cents on up.
Smaller Programs- This a list of some of the smaller programs I have or do work with. While you can find name brand offers with in these companies many of their offers are from smaller companies.
–My Savings
–Cpa Storm
–Logical Media
–Market Leverage
I always recommend researching the affiliate companies that you deal with to make sure that they are legitimate and pay promptly. You also need to research the companies whose ads you are running. There are many companies who offer affiliate partnerships that are more than questionable. Generally large brand name companies are safe (again like Wal-Mart) but I would recommend a bit of research before running off brands. It’s not that many of the lesser name brands are not OK- you simply want to confirm that they are.
Next time we will talk about what you can sell and how to start your blog.
This Post Contains Affiliate Links - Disclosure Policy
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