Advanced Affiliate Marketing Strategies For Bloggers
Affiliate marketing is, and will likely always remain, my favorite method for making money online. At the risk of repeating myself, here’s why every blogger should get into the affiliate marketing game -
- You make a margin per product sale that is often as good or better than the person or company that produces the product
- You don’t have to do any product fulfillment, handle cancellations or any customer service whatsoever
- You have a huge range of products to choose from in most mainstream product categories
- You can enter new niches any time you like with zero switching cost, simply by finding a new product to promote as an affiliate (this is for those of you who like variety)
- If you have a product of your own, one of the best ways to get affiliates to promote your product is to make sales of their product as an affiliate first (this is a big one!)
I could go on, but let’s state the obvious and most important aspect: Affiliate marketing is great because you can make very good money for very little effort.
Don’t get me wrong, it requires effort to get to a situation where you can make money as an affiliate, but once you are there the actual process for making money is very, very simple. It’s as easy as writing a blog post or sending an email.
It’s Like Printing Money
I remember about four years ago reading all those hyped-up sales pages from Internet marketers, and I come across the phrase “it’s like printing money”.
I’ve never been a hater of sales copy, although obvious hype agitates me just like anyone else. I certainly believed that some people were enjoying a situation where they could just send emails and make big money, but I was personally very far away from that. Jealousy mixed with depression about my own results, were the dominant emotions I felt at the time when I read what other people were achieving apparently so easily.
My first attempt at “printing money” as an affiliate was with my blog when it was about six months old. I put in a couple of hours to write a blog post about Perry Marshall’s Definitive Guide To Google AdWords and managed to print about $20 in commissions - one sale.
I was disappointed given it had taken me six months of consistent work on my blog to make that $20, however I was also encouraged. I could see given enough time and energy, that $20 could be $200 and then $2,000 and even $20,000. Today I have the audacity to believe it could be $200,000 one day too.
Fast forward to the year 2009 and the first six month’s of affiliate promotions have gone like this…
Reading The Problogger Book On The Toronto Subway
I’m in Toronto living in the suburbs at the moment, trying to find a sublet somewhere downtown.
That means I have to catch a long subway ride to get into the city and whenever I have a commute I like to use my time productively.
Thankfully, Darren Rowse and Chris Garrett were kind enough to send me a copy of their new print book, titled Problogger - Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income - which I have been happily devouring on my train rides.
Initial Thoughts
The Problogger Book is like a condensed version of the Problogger.net website. The style and language is the same and let’s face it, the Problogger website is so darn huge since Darren is so productive and produces crazy amounts of content, it’s nice to have the essentials put into a book in a logical sequence.
I enjoyed the personal anecdotes and background story from Darren and Chris, but unfortunately there wasn’t much of that, which makes total sense of course - the book is about problogging, not the life story of the authors.
If you are new to blogging, enjoy the paper back book as a study format, you won’t find a better book out there on this subject from two guys who know problogging very well.
You can grab a sample chapter and find links to purchase the book from http://probloggerbook.com/
Podcast: Darren Rowse and Yaro Starak Talk Blog Design
Download the MP3 [ 41 Minutes - 9 MB]
It’s time for podcast episode #40. It’s hard to believe I started podcasting more than two years ago now!
This episode features myself and Darren Rowse and our topic of discussion is blog design. Darren talked about his recent Problogger redesign and how he worked with his designer, Ben Bleikamp. Then we talked about the different professional blog designers currently available (listed below) and how you should work with a designer to minimize the risk of problems.
We went on to discuss how bloggers who have limited financial budgets can go about sourcing a unique blog look, including modifying free themes and why you would want to have a custom design for your blog. We also talked about what a new design can do for you in terms of blog traffic, demonstrating your professionalism and infusing yourself with new energy if you are feeling blogger burn out.
Here’s a list of the resources mentioned in the podcast.
Blog Designers
- The Blog Studio
- Chris Pearson [ pearsonified ]
- Ben Bleikamp
- Nate Whitehill [ Unique Blog Designs ]
- Michael Pollock [ Solostream ]
- Phil Hartle
Freelance Sites
Darren’s Logo Designer
- Mike Rohde [ Makalumedia.com ]
Free WordPress Themes
Podcast: Advanced Blog Monetization and Traffic With Darren and Yaro
Darren Rowse and I did a special one hour podcast discussing advanced blogging strategies to generate more traffic and make more money from blogging.
The podcast has just gone live at Problogger.net and you can get it now from here -
Free Blogging Tips Podcast with Darren and Yaro
Here is the timeline of what we discussed in the podcast, which goes for just over an hour:
- Yaro on the convergence between the Internet marketing and blogging world
- How to build buzz and traffic by releasing a viral PDF report
- Tips on how to build relationships with other bloggers
- Darren talks about techniques to capture more repeat readers using your blog archives
- Customizing pages based on where your traffic comes from
- Why adding an email list newsletter to your blog is critical
- Tips to monetize your blog or newsletter using direct sponsorship
- Testing how your ads convert on your site to increase your income from sponsors
- Using split testing software (openads) to improve the performance of ads on your blog
- Testing different elements of your blog using crazy egg
- Buying sites with the profit you make from blogging
Surprise Offer
At the end of the recording Darren and I talk about a special offer I’m making just for his readers who are interested in joining Blog Mastermind. It’s a limited time offer, ending this Friday and the link for the special offer page is only available in the podcast and at Darren’s blog.
I explain why I made the offer in the podcast too, so if you are curious you will have to listen to the conversation right to the end.
You can get the podcast direct from Problogger.net in this link -
Do You Have What It Takes To Be A Professional Blogger?
In the first part of this series on professional blogging as a business model I explained the content = traffic = money equation as the root formula for nearly all currently successful professional bloggers and those who are working to replicate their success.
If you have not done so already, please read the opening article here -
Is Professional Blogging A Sustainable Business Model?
Darren Rowse, A Leading Professional Blogger
I first came across Darren Rowse in 2004, and his Problogger.net blog appeared to be well put together and intriguing, but at the time I was beginning my research into blogging and was far from making any money from my own blog - in fact I didn’t have any intentions of doing so. If it wasn’t for one unique thing, that Darren was an Aussie from Melbourne and I am from Australia too, I would not have spent nearly as much time studying Darren and his blog as I did.
Darren has a lot to answer to in the professional blogging world. It’s partly his fault that so many people currently do or are attempting to make money from blogging. If it wasn’t for events like this slashdot news post in July 05 about Darren earning between $10,000 and $20,000 per month from blogging, and the countless articles, blog posts and offline newspaper features on Darren’s success (he’s probably seen cheques and payments at double or triple his 2005 monthly income average since then - Darren?), not quite as many would know that this whole professional blogging thing was possible.
If it wasn’t Darren then no doubt some other professional blogger would have risen to spread awareness of the potential of blogging for income. No matter who did it, the outcome was always going to be the same - professional blogging rising in popularity as a new hit online occupation available to the average person with a computer and net access.
