Chances are that if you’re blogging on a niche (and let’s hope you are if you want to make money), there are products related to your niche that you could write about (yes, even basket-weaving).

You’ve probably already tried some of those products yourself. After all, you wouldn’t start a blog on the joys of home brewing unless you’d actually brewed something, right? At the very least, you’ve surely read some books related to your niche (and, yes, it’s okay to make money reviewing books you didn’t actually buy–libraries are our friends, especially when we’re still in the willing-but-not-yet-wealthy blogger category).

These products you’ve tried, have you reviewed them yet for your readers? And have you inserted affiliate links so you can make money?

If you answered, “no,” “uhm,” or “I meant to…” to those questions, then there’s money missing from your bank account, even as we speak. It’s time to take action to increase your earnings. It’s time to get reviewing.

How to make money reviewing products on your blog

Why reviews?

Before I go into the nuts and bolts of how to make money with reviews, let’s talk briefly about why reviews work so well.

In short, reviews sell products.

Reviews attract the right kind of visitors from the search engines (people who are already thinking of buying a product and are looking for more information on it), and they also offer social proof. People see that someone else has tried out this product, and they assume it must be better than this product over here that nobody has written a review about. (That may or may not be true, but that’s how we gregarious human creatures tend to think.)

Writing reviews for products with affiliate programs

Okay, reviews sell, but how do you make money writing them?

This is where affiliate programs come in. Here’s what you do:

1. Find an affiliate program in your niche — Products in just about every niche are for sale somewhere online. Look around and you’re bound to find a merchant who offers an affiliate deal.
2. Sign up — Once you sign up for the program, you’ll be able to create links with your personal tracking ID embedded in them.
3. Write the review — Write a blog post reviewing the product. You don’t have to hype up the product. People are more likely to buy something after reading an honest review that points out the pros and cons (we’re suspicious of products that sound too good be true).
4. Insert the affiliate link in the review — Text links usually convert best, so insert a text affiliate link right into the content of the review. Feel free to use it a couple of times over the course of the review. You don’t want someone to forget to click after all.
5. Get a link or two to your review post — If your blog is already popular, you’ll probably make money just from posting the review, but for newer blogs (or if you just want to help things along), it’s useful to get a few outside links to the specific review page.
6. Sit back and wait to get paid — No explanation needed!

Finding affiliate programs

Okay, you’ve got those golden steps printed out and stuck to the refrigerator with a magnet. But how do you find the right kind of affiliate programs?

The most obvious way is to go to merchants you already know and like and check their site for links that say “affiliates” or “affiliate program” or the like. They’re usually down at the bottom. A lot of bigger companies offer affiliate programs, and even mom and pop stores often do.

If you’re reviewing books, you can sign up for the Amazon affiliate program (other booksellers have affiliate programs too so choose your favorite). Amazon is nice because they have a lot of non-book products as well. But if you’re blogging about products in a certain niche, you may get a better deal (higher commission) signing up for a niche-specific affiliate program.

For example, on my home & garden blog, I occasionally promote lawn and garden products from the Gardeners’ Supply Store. They have an affiliate program you can sign up for through LinkShare. I actually just ordered some raised garden bed kits from them, and you better believe I will review those products when I get them.

When products pay for themselves

The best deal is when you review something you would have bought anyway and your commissions end up paying for the product. It may take me a while to pay for those raised garden bed kits since the Gardeners’ store doesn’t offer terribly high commissions (with shops that sell physical products, it’s rare to get paid more than 10%), but I’m sure that if I work at getting a couple links to that review, the beds will be paid for within a couple years.

If you happen to find online courses or digitally delivered information products in your niche, commissions can be much higher.

When I reviewed Yaro Starak’s Blog Mastermind program for this site, someone asked why I–someone who already makes a nice living from her blogs and websites–would bother taking a $500 blogging-for-beginners course.

For one thing, I was familiar with Yaro’s blog and knew he had a lot more business acumen than I do (I am much more of a writer than an entrepreneur), so I was sure I’d learn something from the course. But the real kicker was that Yaro offers a 50% affiliate commission for his program. If two people purchase the course after reading my review (and clicking the links), then I’ve made my money back. Anything after that is gravy.

It definitely pays to do reviews for products in your niche, especially for products you would have bought anyway. It’s always great getting something for free, and if you can make some extra money, it’s even better!

Post from: Writing for Your Wealth

Increase Your Blogging Income with Product Reviews

There are tons of ways to make money online. Tons. And making tons of money is certainly doable with affiliate marketing. One of the people quoted later in this article is thought to generate roughly $15 million in annual sales! But this is not a business for the inattentive, lazy, or faint of heart. That’s the message I got from attending the recent Affiliate Summit conference held in Las Vegas.

An absolute newbie in affiliate marketing, I’ve been a writer for years and will be launching a blog and a couple of article sites later this year that I want to monetize. Having “won” one of the 20 Gold Passes that Brian Clark gave away on copyblogger.com, I attended the 3-day conference to learn as much as I could about this method of making money online.

Learning the Basics of How Affiliate Marketing Works

There’s no consistent vernacular in the industry. If you have a website, you’re a publisher, affiliate or reseller. The products and services you promote through banner ads, text or product links, are known as your advertisers, merchants or retailers. You’re paid commissions from advertisers, according to an agreed upon formula, and that’s how you make money from affiliate marketing.

For beginners, it makes the most sense to join the large affiliate networks that offer hundreds (or thousands) of products/services and handle all the business details for you. The largest networks are free to join: Commission Junction, ShareaSale, LinkShare, ClickBank, and Google Affiliate Network.

Finding What Works and What Doesn’t

It’s virtually impossible to know what will and won’t work all of the time. There’s no secret formula. Throwing everything against the wall to see what sticks is said to work best.

eBooks about getting rich with affiliate marketing are usually a waste of money.

Nick Koscianski of nickycakes.com, who’s famous for his bluntness, said during a panel discussion, “If you’re not tracking, you’re stupid.” He recommends Tracking202 and Prosper202 pay per click (ppc) tracking software.

Track everything by split-testing (evaluating variations) your copy, pricing, offers, etc. to see what’s most profitable. After a week, if it’s not working, get rid of it.

Google’s free Website Optimizer was also mentioned several times for testing, optimizing and increasing conversion rates (percentage of visitors who do what you want them to do, i.e., click through, subscribe, buy, etc.).

Working Smart in a Way that Works for You

Geordie Carsell of www.revenuewire.com cautioned that there are costs for everything you do, so you need to find out what’s worth your time, balancing what’s fun to do with what makes money.

It generally doesn’t work to try and do everything yourself. Exchange services with someone who has the skills you need, i.e., writing for coding in a revenue-sharing partnership or barter arrangement. When you get big enough to need administrative help, www.virtualhires.com can link you with a virtual assistant.

Complacency and laziness kill. Some of the work that needs to be done on an ongoing basis gets boring, and those who get lazy get left behind. But if you do what’s necessary and keep at it, you will make money.

Marketing That Works

During his Keynote Address, Gary Vaynerchuk, Director of Operations of winelibrary.com recalled one of his favorite expressions, “Content is king, but marketing is queen, and the queen runs the household.” Gary spends less than an hour a day creating content and the rest on marketing and monetizing by interacting on social media, leaving comments on blogs, making phone calls, tracking what people are saying about him, etc.

LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter are considered the premier social media and can be extremely effective marketing tools. Be smart about interacting on these networks, though. I understand you can spend hours “tweeting” with very little return on investment (ROI).

For marketing wisdom and guidance, marketingsherpa.com was praised.

Gathering Nuggets from the Experts

I asked several experts what advice they would offer beginners just getting into affiliate marketing:

One of the best ways to make money with affiliate marketing is to teach people how the product or service benefits them with a tutorial or demo. You’re ’selling’ to people without making them feel ’sold.’

~Brian Clark www.copyblogger.com & www.teachingsells.com

It takes a very dynamic person to be successful in affiliate marketing – someone who always embraces change and market trends and responds to those trends.

~Jeremy Schoemaker ShoeMoney.com

Do something different, non-traditional and unexpected.

~Peter Shankman helpareporter.com

Imagination, research, common sense, trial and error and implementation followed by a review of the results, will work best in the long run for anyone.

~Billy Kay mailordershoppe.com

Learn how to use PopShops as quickly as possible. It’s a free, easy way to add a datafeed to any site, making it easy for customers to shop. Just make sure to review the text before publishing it – frequently there are typos in the datafeed you’ll want to correct. Better still, slightly rewrite to make the copy original and fresh.

~Jeannine Crooks DigitalInstructor.net

There is a wealth of valuable information contained in the ABestWeb.com forum – and all for free. So I suggest joining and reading, beginning with “The Magic Bullet” thread.

~Bill Swartwout OCtheBeach.com

Don’t be afraid to reach out and connect with other people. You never know where it might take you. It seems the more people I meet and connect with, the larger my income grows. 

~Miles Baker MarketingWithMiles.com

The key qualities for success are focus and consistency.

~Chris Molnar halloweenalliance.com

And my favorite because it’s exactly where I am –

You have to know when to stop learning and when to start doing.

~David Cunningham antiques-sos.com

I don’t know if I have everything it takes to make a ton of money online. But I do know that I left the Affiliate Summit with a ton of great information and a number of good contacts – all of which have me headed in that direction.

Today, Laurie Stoneham writes “anything but fiction,” and will be launching several profitable sites in 2009.

Post from: Writing for Your Wealth

What it Takes to Make Money with Affiliate Marketing

At the beginning of November, I spent about 20 minutes writing a post for my home improvement blog and in the eight weeks that followed it made $220.64 in sales through the Amazon affiliate program.

I’m sure the super affiliates making $500,000 and up a year would scoff at such a pittance, but I doubt those guys are reading my little blog anyway. I thought it might be useful to share what I did to make that amount, considering I put relatively little effort into the post. Also, you can see that writing about something as prosaic as space heaters can be profitable!

(And, for those who are calculating the amounts in the screenshot, no it doesn’t add up to $200. The DeLonghi brand just happened to be the most frequently ordered, so I had a nice group of them together in my Amazon reports page. The other brands were mixed throughout the rest of my “kitchen & housewares” orders.)

Anyway, let’s get to the nitty gritty…

Where I got the idea for the post

Since I blog on home and garden topics, I subscribe to a handful of home-and-gardeny magazines, and one of the fall issues had a chart showing which types of space heaters work well for which types of settings.

I decided to translate this into a written blog post on space heaters, and I included Amazon affiliate links to examples from each category. I don’t usually stick multiple affiliate links in a post (*cough* spammy *cough*), but it seemed appropriate in this case.

Keyword research

As long as I was going to try and make money, it made sense to do a little keyword research so the post had a shot of ranking somewhere in the search engine results.

I figured the main term (space heaters) was going to be competitive, so I didn’t want to target it specifically. Since I was only writing a blog post, and not a whole site, it didn’t make sense to go broad and pit my post against whole stores that sell space heaters. So I hunted down longer terms that searchers looking for more specific results might use.

It’s much easier to get a blog post to rank for a “long tail” or less frequently searched phrase.

I used the free Keyword Discovery Tool to check these keyword derivatives out. (This site is one of many alternatives to the Google Adwords Keyword Tool I’ve mentioned before, and it goes narrower instead of broader when delivering suggestions.)

As you can see, the number of searches drops off significantly after “space heater,” so it’s less likely people are putting a lot of effort into targeting those lesser terms. That makes them perfect for a blog post. Any one of those would be fine to target, but “best space heater” made most sense for my post.

Using the chosen keyword in the post

Once I picked “best space heater,” it was simply a matter of using it in the title and a couple times in the text of the post. Some of the SEO folks say it’s best to use your keyword closer to the beginning of the title if possible, so I could have simply made mine something like “Best Space Heater?”

I decided How to Choose the Best Space Heater would be more informative and might get more clicks from people. In the end, it’s usually a better bet to put humans before search engines when there’s a question.

One place I did screw up is that I failed to use my keyword phrase in the file name:

www.luxuryhousingtrends.com/archive/2008/11/how-to-choose-t/

Until last month, this blog was running on an old version of Movable Type that automatically picked short file names, based on the first couple words of the title. It was possible to override the suggested titles, but the spot to do it was way down at the bottom, and I never remembered to. (I’ll be sure to use that if they ever make an SEO Excuses t-shirt.)

Alas “how-to-choose-t” as a file name doesn’t help me at all in the SEO department, but it turned out okay in this instance anyway.

For search engine optimization considerations, one other place you might want to use your keyword is in the name of whatever pictures you may be uploading (if it’s appropriate).

Adding affiliate links

This was pretty simple. I’m already a member of the Amazon affiliate program, so I just surfed through their space heater offerings to see if I could find examples of each kind I was mentioning in the post.

I usually try to pick products that have lots of positive reviews for two reasons. First, I don’t want to recommend something that sucks. Second, you’re more likely to make a sale when there’s “social proof” that it’s good. If lots of people are buying it, it must be the thing to buy! (There’s a reason the QVC people tell you multiple times during the 15 minute spiel how many units have already been ordered.)

I remember that I had trouble finding heaters from all of the example categories, though, so I believe some of the ones I mentioned didn’t have reviews. But I’m sure it’s no coincidence that the models I sold most of had lots of customer reviews.

The Results

I made a couple sales right away, probably from folks who saw the post on the front page and needed a heater anyway, but soon after, my blog post began appearing in Google for “best space heater.” I’m sure it’ll drop over time, but as I write this, it’s still #5 in the results list.

The following weeks brought many more sales, and I’m sure the post has actually earned more than $220. Though the Amazon reports don’t show you who ordered what, I know people often get more than one thing at a time (there are probably tracking programs out there that can tell you this, but it’s not something I’ve cared enough about to look into). Also, Adsense is on the post, and it’s a foregone conclusion that some folks clicked on those ads instead of surfing through to Amazon.

Future earnings?

It’s likely that earnings will gradually drop off (though probably not disappear completely), unless I put some work into building links to this specific post from outside sites, because over time blog posts become less fresh and get buried deeper in your archives.

Also, in this particular case, I wrote about a seasonal topic, and we’re probably to the point where people who needed to order space heaters for the winter already have. The nice thing about seasonal topics though is that they become relevant again a year later. Last winter, I wrote about a snow removal tool in a blog post, and I have had 8 or 10 sell through that link again this year.

In the whole affiliate marketing scheme, $200 isn’t anything to brag about, but when you consider that this simple post paid for the entire operating costs of the site for two years, it isn’t too shabby.

Can you duplicate (or better!) these results?

I admit that I had an advantage coming into this: I wrote this post on a blog that is more than three years old and has enough links pointing to it that Google sees it as something of an authority site. It’s certainly not on par with a Gizmodo or (in my genre) This Old House, but it gets indexed frequently by Google and it is possible for posts to rank for less competitive keywords without a lot of extra effort.

That said, if your blog is somewhat established, you should be able to do this sort of thing with affiliate marketing too.

Figure out what products you can promote in your niche that people need to buy anyway. If you write about gardening, and you’re not promoting your favorite gardening tools, you’re missing out!

But don’t just think about selling to your existing readers. Figure out what keyword phrases people in general are using so you’ll attract search engine users, folks who may never even have visited your site before. They’re actually more likely to make a purchase than your existing readers, because they got online specifically to look up information on a product.

If you think about it, you’ll see why sales came so easily through my post. Anyone looking up “best space heater” is probably about to order one and is just trying to figure out what kind they need.

In order to give yourself more of a chance to rank for those keywords, try to get links to that specific blog post after you publish it. A lot of folks make the mistake of only trying to get links to their home page, but you can–and should–use all the same link building techniques to get links pointing to your category pages and individual posts.

Finding a program and choosing products to promote

If you’re new to affiliate marketing, Amazon is a nice place to start.

True, Amazon isn’t the most lucrative affiliate program out there (their commissions aren’t that high, and they only have a 24 hour window where you’ll be credited for sales made to folks who clicked in through your links), but since just about everyone who shops online has an account there, it’s pretty easy to make sales with them. People don’t have to worry about filling out credit cards and personal information since it’s already on file–it’s always easier to make sales when folks don’t have to jump through any hoops.

Amazon also has so many products, either that they sell directly or that are sold through their marketplace partners, that you’re bound to find something niche-related that you can promote.

As far as price goes, I like the $50-$200 range a lot myself. This gives you products that pay a few dollars in commission, and yet they aren’t so expensive that people are going to hem and haw and put things in their “wishlist” instead of their cart.

Once you’ve figured out the system, you can always go on to other more lucrative affiliate programs. Good luck!

Post from: Writing for Your Wealth

How I Made $220.64 from One Short Blog Post