Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is currently the most popular revenue source among bloggers, but there are several forms of advertising. According to Daniel Sharkov of Reviewz 'N' Tips. "Affiliate marketing is whenever you promote some sort of product or a service and in exchange you are paid a percentage of its price once you make a sale."
Affiliate recommendations from three top-earning bloggers:
as three sites that allow you to promote a wide range of products in your
niche. Sharkov says he averages the most money from E-Junkie, with commission rates
ranging from 30 to 60 percent.
Darren Rowse, founder of ProBlogger,
recommends Chitika and Amazon Associates. Amazon's
commission structure varies, going as high as 10 percent. However, Rowse points out that Amazon has many high-dollar items and a huge
range of products. Back in 2016, he reported more than $100,000 in earnings from using the Associates program.
Jon Morrow from Boost Blog Traffic recommends creating "ad space" to promote a
top-notch affiliate partner, or to use for your own products, using Pat Flynn at
Smart Passive Income for an example. Flynn averages about $50 thousand in commission each month by promoting hosting giant Bluehost. Morrow believes that
having ad space set aside on your blog encourages people to click on the ads
and provides a set place for you to promote your own products or services.
Other Types of Advertising
There are several other types of Internet advertising available to drive revenue or traffic toward your blog.
Banner ads are
exactly what you might expect. You insert a banner with a catchy headline at
the top of a site relevant to your business -- if people click on the banner,
they come to you. In turn, you could put a banner ad for an affiliate product
on your site for readers to click. People have become fairly "ad
blind" in the last several years, and many bloggers feel that ad banners
are losing their effectiveness. Experts don't recommend spending a lot of
money on this type of advertising.
Social media ads are an easy way to target new readership. Sonny Ganguly at MarketingLand predicts an explosion of social media advertising over the next few years. Ganguly likes social networking "because of the advanced targeting options, reliable conversion tracking, and prevalence on mobile devices." Newsletter advertising allows you to capitalize on
existing subscriber lists. If a popular newsletter relevant to your business
offers ad space, this could be a way to drive readers to your site. As you grow
your own readership, you can in turn make money by selling ad space on your
newsletter.
As your site traffic grows, particularly if you have many articles posting per day or if articles are routinely going viral, you might choose to sell your own ad space with a CPM model. CPM stands for "Cost per Thousand" impressions. This model makes money from views, rather than clicks, and requires a high volume of traffic. To put this into perspective, if an advertiser pays two dollars for a CPM ad, it means that 200,000 views of a post will net you about $200.
Tip
Sharkov recommends writing actual product reviews over simply running banner ads. Not only are the product reviews linked and searchable, they are a blog post that can add to your search engine rankings. Additionally, they provide a service to readers, and prove to affiliates that you have tried the product.
Sharkov's must-haves fora product review. Your post should include an overview of the product, along with the features you like and dislike, plenty of images, and, if possible, an offer and call to action at the end.
