Minimize your affiliate marketing efforts and maximize your gain by delivering content that is informative and entertaining and use tools to automate the process.
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Ever wondered how you can replace or at least supplement you income? Many internet enthusiasts have considered affiliate marketing, and with good reason. Affiliate marketing is one of the easiest yet effective ways to make money online.
Now that claim may sound all too familiar, and for the jaded among you who have been burned by more than one “get rich quick” scheme or another, but affiliate marketing has been a huge money maker for a lot of people.
But don’t misunderstand; while there are plenty of ideas on how to make a decent living with affiliate marketing, there is a fair amount of work that goes into being successful. Yes, while affiliate marketing isn’t rocket science, as they say, it still takes a firm commitment to being as productive and as efficient as possible.
Becoming an affiliate marketer for various products or services means more than simply signing up for an affiliate program, building a website and placing your affiliate links and ads on your site. It actually requires researching new offers from different companies, writing product endorsements, creating landing pages for those products and placing advertisements, whether in the form of pay-per-click ads or some other forms of advertising. Sounds simple enough, right? However, if you multiply that scenario with the number of products or services that you are promoting, things can become quite expensive, not to mention, time consuming.
If you are striving to make some serious money with affiliate marketing, your ad campaigns could easily run to the hundreds or even thousands of dollars. And each of those will require product ads that you continually have to monitor and revise, which means countless hours of work every single day. As you can see, the potential to make money is there, but you will have to work a lot harder and longer.
There is a better way however. By adopting a few simple content publisher strategies, you can drastically reduce the time you spend on your campaigns and still rake in the big bucks, possibly even more.
Don’t get me wrong, you will still have to research offers, create landing pages and all that other good stuff, but by focusing your efforts on building relationships with potential customers through informative and entertaining content, you can experience a much better return on your efforts in far less time. Think of it as the “narrow and deep” approach versus the “wide and shallow”.
Content publishing allows you to deliver content in a far more effective and entertaining manner than publishing plain old ads. You have at your disposal much more efficient and cutting edge avenues for your marketing such as podcasts and videos, all delivered easily, and at a much lower cost via things like email, RSS feeds and blogs.
Managing campaigns that run these types of dynamic ads are far more rewarding and less time-consuming than placing thousands of ads that require constant monitoring.
Additionally, using the tools that put your business on autopilot is one of the great advantages of working online. The email autoresponder is one such tool. Creating messages using an autoresponder puts your email campaigns on autopilot. You can deliver effective informational tidbits to viewers simply by having them fill out a form on your website enabling them to receive a series of emails, all of them sent automatically from your autoresponder.
Here’s a common scenario demonstrating the value of autoresponders. Begin by reworking a few product review articles or informational items and load them as a series of emails into your autoresponder. Then set up an email capture form on your blog or website, a good autoresponder will come equipped with instructions on how to do that, then queue your emails up for delivery at the rate that you specify and “Ouila!”, you’ve now got a way to continuously keep your subscribers updated on your products while periodically bringing them back to your site. The best part is it’s done automatically, freeing you to spend time on the other business tasks at hand.
Finally, if you find yourself struggling to provide fresh and original content, you can always enlist the services of a ghostwriter. The cost of having good, quality articles written for you on a continual basis is extremely low compared to the amount of traffic and additional sales you will receive.
Affiliate marketing offers outstanding earnings potential but as with any business it could be at the expense of your time and hard work. Make the best use of tools and strategies that help you maximize gain and minimize effort.
The great thing about blogging is that you can show your expertise to all the people around the world. It is as easy as writing an article for your school work. And what makes blogging more amazing is that you can even make money out of it. So, make full use of the 4 tips inside to help you add some money to your pocket…
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Blogging used to be a platform for you to talk about any topic and share your opinion about what you think. Today, blogging has become more common as a tool for you to make a living with. You can run your affiliate marketing business with your blog and if you are not interested in marketing, you can still make money with blog by advertising on your blog.
So, read on for more tips to profit with your blog and to make extra cash for your pocket.
1. Be visible
Whether you are running an affiliate marketing business or advertisement campaign, it is crucial that your readers can see your link easily. This is the same reason why merchants are displaying their product at your eye level in the supermarket.
However, this doesn’t mean that you need to stuff your blog with affiliate links or advertisements; you are going to annoy your readers and force them to go away. What you can do is to anchor your keywords or simply display your affiliate link under your signature.
2. Building a base
Successful bloggers understand the power of returning readers. They are like your repeat customers whom you can sell over and over again to. Imagine you are running an advertisement campaign. You can’t expect your readers to respond to your campaign the first time they see it. You need to warm them up and get them to see your point only then they will respond to you.
And since most blogging platform nowadays come with the RSS feed feature, it will be good that you can activate it for your blog. Although it might take you sometime to get it done, but it is well worth the trouble when you see money coming to your blog.
3. Marketing
Just like any successful business, you need to market your blog so that you can make money with it. And to some of you, marketing might feel like asking a donkey to go against its way.
Actually, it doesn’t need to be that difficult. What you can do is to start commenting, sincerely, on other blogger’s blog and leave your blog address below your signature. Bloggers are interested to know how they can improve their blog and when you help them on that, they are willing to link to your blog when you ask them to.
4. Tracking
Some of you might think that tracking is a waste of time and as long as you have quality post, you will make money with blog. Unfortunately, money never comes so easily.
Let me ask you this, do you know how many clicks you have for your affiliate links? Then, do you know how many visits you have when you publish a new post? If you don’t have the answer to those questions, how do you know which past of your blog is helping you to make most money?
By the way, tracking codes nowadays are easy to use and you can even make them invisible if you want. And when you have the figure from tracking, you will know where to focus your energy so that you can get the best return.
Have you ever gone a trip to a new city or state and found a great little store? Or perhaps, you love to fish or hunt and on your travels you found the perfect place to indulge in your favorite sport? Maybe, you visited a great little restaurant that had all the ambiance you want for a weekend getaway?
Many of us have experience scenarios like these. However, we can’t always remember exactly where it was that we found this great location. In times past, this could be frustrating and even if we had it written down somewhere, we had to be able to find the paper the notation was made on. Other times, we may be looking for somewhere that may be slightly off the beaten path. Sure, you can talk to friends and family to get their input, but now thanks to Web 2.0, you can find many great places to visit. In fact, you can search for travel locations anywhere in the world and get input by real people about the location’s pros and cons.
Whether you love to explore the highways and byways across America or perhaps you have traveled extensively in Europe, Asia or the other continents, you probably have found some travel locations “dos” and “don’ts”. Today, many people are sharing this knowledge by hosting a travel blog. While this may seem like bragging to some, in reality it is a great service to others who love to travel the open road.
Travel blogs not only help others find those hideaway and getaway locations, but they are also a great way to store your pictures and memories. In addition to having a place to store your travel experiences, you can also send links to your friends and family to let them know what you are up to as you explore the open road. They can then comment on the pics and perhaps share experiences or recommendations of their own. In fact, when you set up a travel blog, you might be amazed at how much web traffic, and not just from friends and family, you have as well.
Travel blogs are also a great way to plan a family reunion. Since many of us have family living all across the country, it can be difficult to organize an extended visit. So rather than everyone using hours of cell phone minutes, participants can just leave messages on the blog letting others in the group know what their travel plans are.
So where is that you have traveled? Did you find a place off the beaten path that simply must not be overlooked? Maybe, you stayed somewhere that should have been overlooked? Was a particular road especially scenic? Travel, in particular when done by auto, is one of the great American pastimes. It has been one of the primary means of transportation for many years, and is likely to remain so for the days to come. Make the most of your travel experiences by passing on the delights and highlights of your trip on a travel blog.
Do you love to travel? Do you love to write? How about tax deductions for doing something you enjoy? Would you like submitting those to the IRS. Combining the three in a travel blog is one way of achieving all three. What do you enjoy doing and writing about that you could turn into an on-line income stream?
Setting Up Your Blog
Blogs, an on-line journal, are easy to set up. I’ve done it before although I haven’t kept to it for any length of time. The primary reason being that I not only want to write, I’d like to make some income while I write. There are a number of programs out there that give you step-by-step instructions on how to blog in such a way as to get income. Just do an internet search and you’ll find a number of them.
What’s your topic going to be? For instance, if you want to develop an income stream, you want a focused blog that will attract readers and have opportunities for affiliate or pay-per-click income. The readers will get to the blog, be interested in the products or services listed and click on the link. If you get paid because they click, then you’ve accomplished your goal. If you receive affiliate income (a commission) then the reader has to do more than click, but whether or not they buy is beyond your control.
Your blog will have several sections. You can get your own URL and hosting company. You don’t need these to get it set up, but this gives you full control over it. “Free” sites put in their own advertising and they get the income. This is why you want your own URL and hosting company.
You can set up a few pages to start your on-line journal. For instance, in a travel on-line journal, sections on food, housing, various attractions and your experiences traveling will be great additions. As you work on your blog you might add other sections. These are the “static” pages that might not change often… just give a taste of what people can look forward to. Then there are you on-line journal pages. This is where you add your thoughts.
An Income Stream with Deductions
Are you committed to turning what you love into an avenue for making money? For instance, travel doesn’t have to be just a hobby. Neither does making model cars, motorcycle riding, knitting or anything else. If you make it into a business, your expenses are deductible. You might want to join a trade association for your niche to demonstrate your commitment to your new venture. You have a few years to work at it to make a profit so it stays in the business category and not the hobby category (which is not deductible).
Cathy Chapman, Ph.D., LCSW takes time off from her busy schedule of helping people achie