How to Make Money Using a Blog
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When you hear the phrase “make money using a blog”, many people think of adsense ads or blatant sales pitches in every post. Some people will think it means doing paid reviews or having advertisements all over the place. This couldn’t be farther from the truth.
Let’s take a look at a simple case study.
There are two websites selling beach toys. One website is what we call a static site. It has pictures of the toys and descriptions. The site look professional enough and there are quite a few pages of products. There is a link to the about us page to let people know who the people behind the company are. There is a contact page and a few other pages. It is a standard retail website.
The next website is a blog. This site has posts where the blog owner (retailer) talks about how he has used the products and even shows photos of him and his family actually using them. There are personal stories that let you feel like you know the seller and his family. In the sidebar of the blog you see buttons with pictures of the best selling products that link to a page where you can purchase them.
Everyone knows that people are more apt to buy from someone they know, like and trust. When someone goes to this particular blog, they feel are beginning to form a relationship with the seller with each post they read. They are reading about his family and how his family uses the beach toys. This puts the reader right in the middle of the seller’s life. It helps the seller build a relationship with his readers and potential customers. When you buy from someone you feel like you know, you are more apt to become a repeat customer.
The site most people will be more apt to buy from is the blog. This is what blogging for profits really means. You can find good products to promote (sell) all over the internet. First think of a product or group of products that you could use and could write stories about.
Second, you will want to see if there is a market for your particular product choice. Go to a search engine like google or yahoo and search for that product. See if there are already people selling these and look at the “about” section of the sites to see how long they have been in business. If you find hundreds of static sites selling the product you have chosen, and if a lot of those sites have been in business for a few years, you may have a winner.
Next do a search to look for wholesalers of the products that you would like to sell. See if you can find a wholesaler that will either give you an affiliate link to the products or will allow you to drop ship the products directly to the customer with your name as the sender. You do not want to have a garage full of inventory if you can avoid it. You will want to buy at least one of each item you are promoting so you can have photos and personal stories on your blog. Remember – it’s the personal stories that bring in the customers.
Once you have picked out your products, done the research to see if this product line is selling, and found a wholesaler you can work with, you are ready to set up your blog. This can be done in any number of ways. You can find many free blog platforms that are relatively easy to use. You may want to opt for a more professional look and use blogging software hosted on your own site. If you are not technically savvy, you can find people who are willing to help you set it up for a fee. Look for someone who will set it up and teach you how to post with photos. They should be able to set it up to automatically ping the search engines. Make sure you ask if they can do that. This way, whenever you write a post, the search engines will know about it. When people search for what you are talking about, they will find you.
You will need to add tracking code so you can see when visitors come and where they come from. Get a few posts up and you will start seeing visitors coming from the search engines in a relatively short amount of time if the blog was set up properly. Focus on allowing your readers to know, like and trust you by telling them personal stories of your experiences with the products. You want them to come back to read more stories.
You are now well on your way to making money using a blog.
