BLOGGING FOR CASH PART TWO: HOW TO MAKE MONEY FROM COMPANIES USING YOUR BLOG OR
WEBSITE
STEP 3: MONETIZING YOUR BLOG/ WEBSITE (HOW TO MAKE MONEY
FROM ONLINE COMPANIES USING YOUR BLOG/ WEBSITE.)
·
Reviewing and promoting products and services of companies using
your blog/ website as a platform (e.g. Affiliate
marketing).
·
Using your blog/ website to provide Internet advertising
services for companies (e.g. Google AdSense).
REVIEWING AND PROMOTING PRODUCTS AND SERVICES OF COMPANIES USING
YOUR BLOG/ WEBSITE AS A PLATFORM (AFFILIATE MARKETING)
This is a
situation where you (as a promoter/ affiliate agent) will send a specific
action/ task to another company’s (affiliate network) website for an agreed
upon compensation. Your task can range from simply generating and driving
traffic (prospects) to another company’s (affiliate network) website or to a
more complex task such as lead generation (acquiring newsletter sign ups or
email addresses of prospects) or to the highest task which is an acquisition
(the prospect buying a product/ service from the affiliate network/ company or
signing up for membership registration). You will be paid according to the
value of the conversion through different pricing systems such as
(a)
Cost per click
(b) A
percentage of sales transaction
(c) A flat
fee per conversion
The affiliate
network (companies) are in most cases free to join and will provide you with
all the promotional tools that you will need in promoting/ marketing their
products and services. The affiliate network handles processing of payments,
shipping and delivery of products, so you will not have to worry about these
things as your job will basically be to send them buying customers (traffic/
prospects). The following are some of the characteristic to look for when choosing
an affiliate network/ company to work for
·
High payouts: choose a company/ product that offers high commission preferably
from 30% and above. For example would you rather be paid $2 or $15 dollar every
time you make a conversion/ sale.
·
Payout dates: also make
sure that you choose to work with companies that pay every 1 – 2 weeks or at
the most monthly. Don’t work for companies that take too long for them to send
earnings to their affiliates/ workers, chances are they are either scam companies
or the long delay may affect you financially.
·
Payout minimum: most
affiliate networks have minimum payout level of between $5 -- $100 dollars.
What this simply means is that you should be able to earn up to the minimum
before you withdraw your money. Don’t go for companies that require you to earn
up to $300 or $500 dollars before you can withdraw your money. The lower the
payout level the sooner you will get paid.
·
Payout methods: choose a company whose method of payment is compatible with you.
As a beginner don’t work for companies whose method of payment makes it
impossible for you to receive payments, after all what is the purpose of
working when you will find it difficult to receive your money. For example some
affiliate companies like clickbank.com does not include Nigeria in their
participating countries, so if you work for them that means you will experience
difficulty in having access to your money unless you change your computer I.P,
get a U.S address and telephone number e.tc. While suffer yourself
unnecessarily when there are other better options available to you.
Having seen
what to look out for when choosing an affiliate company to work for, please
browse through the list of companies below and work with the ones that have
products that are compatible with your blog/ website topic/ theme e.g. if your
blog/ website is on home business there are many products from the list of
affiliate companies below that will match your blog/ website.
LIST OF AFFILIATE COMPANIES.
The above
list is not exhaustive, there are thousands of more affiliate companies online
that you can work with, to get other companies you can do a search for them
using the following keywords i.e. “affiliate programs” or “associate programs”.
To monetize
your blog/website today Sign up as an affiliate with any affiliate network of your
choice. Once you have finished checking out the websites of the affiliates
companies listed above and find a product that fits your website theme/ topic,
the next thing to do is to sign up as an affiliate/ associate with the company
of your choice.
The sign up
process is simple and free and the various affiliate companies will walk you
through the process. Not only that they will also in most cases provide you
with all the promotional tools and resources that you will need (like web
pages, autoresponder messages, sales tutorials e.tc.). After registering, you
now have an affiliate account. This will enable you to log unto the affiliate
program choose a product(s) and incorporate it into your blog/ website. You can
then write a brief review for the product, describing its advantages/
disadvantages.
Remember that
your primary job is to pre-sell your website/ blog visitors by sending them to
the website of the affiliate company. You can succeed better at this if you can increase the number of
visitors (traffic) to your blog/ website. To increase your website traffic you
will need to aggressively promote it using several methods such as article marketing,
forum marketing, press release, social networking, search engine optimization,
pay per click advertising e.tc.
USING YOUR BLOG/ WEBSITE TO PROVIDE INTERNET ADVERTISING SERVICES
FOR COMPANIES (GOOGLE ADSENSE).
This is a
method you can use to generate hundreds/ thousands of dollars monthly into your
bank account through blogging. In this method all you do is to advertise
companies, high yield investment programs, cosmetics, drugs, electronics and
other products through your blog/ website. Unlike in the method of monetizing
your blog/ website through affiliate marketing where you are paid a commission
when someone buys a product or sign up for a service/ product, you can generate
money from this method even if no one is buying things through your blog/
website.
You generate
money using this method by partnering with online search engine GOOGLE, using a
program called GOOGLE ADSENSE. This is a process in which you own a website
/ blog and Google places advertisement on your website/ blog and pays you by
Cheque at the end of every thirty days. Google sends your Cheque to you
monthly through the use of courier services and you can cash the Cheque in most
banks anywhere you are in the world.
Making money
with Google AdSense is simple and does not require any complex or complicated
process. All that you need to do to earn money from Google.com using this
method is simply to design a blog/ website that caters to a specific human need
or help to solve a particular problem, then publicize it in order to get many
visitors and then apply to Google, to have their clients display their adverts
on your website/ blog.
Google-AdSense
is divided into two stages:
(1)
Pay-per-view: This is a process in which you own a blog/ website and Google
places advert with the domain name (i.e. adverts that are related to the domain
in name). For example if you have a domain name like www.electronic.com Google places adverts
that relates to the field of electronics on your blog/ website. With this
arrangement, you are paid two commissions, one for visitors to your site and
two if the person visiting clicks on any of the adverts.
(2)
Pay-per-click: the process is similar to the first process but the only
difference is that you only get paid for each visit only if the person clicks
on the adverts.
Signing
Up with Google AdSense Made Easy
First though,
you have to sign up before you can make money with this program. Here’s how you
do it. The sign-up page asks for a relatively small amount of information, not
all of which is as obvious as you might
like.
First, you’ll have to tell Google whether you want an “individual” account or a
“company” account — whether you’re a company with more than twenty employees or
practically a one-man show that’s just you and up to nineteen others. That’s
important for just one reason: it tells Google where to send the money. Take a
business
account and the payments will be made in the name of your company; take an
individual account, and they’ll be paid directly to you
You’ll also
be able to choose between three different ways of receiving your money:
Electronic Funds Transfer, local currency check or Secured Express Delivery.
What you won’t be able to choose is whether you’re paid per click—on a “CPC”
basis—or for every thousand times you show an ad—on a “CPM” basis. Google
decides that for you. Some ads will be CPC and others will be CPM.
The next
piece of information that Google demands is your URL. Once you’re
approved, you’ll just have to copy and paste a small piece of code into your
website and you’re done! Below is a summarized action step that you can take to
kick-start your Google AdSense campaign
AdSense Quick
Start Guide #1: Building a Blog
Blogging is
probably the easiest way to get online with AdSense fast. The sites are already
online, you don’t have to worry about graphics and the domains are all set up.
All you have to do is sign up, write and
earn!
1: Surf
to www.blogger.com: complete the
registration page, choose a name for your blog and pick a
template.
2:
Apply For AdSense through Blogger: Once you have
signed up a blogger account you can now apply for Google AdSense program. It
will take a day or two before your application is approved. In the meantime,
you can play with Blogger’s AdSense preview tool.
3: start
Writing Your Blog Entry Not sure what
to write? Start with your family, spout off about a story in the news, and put
up pictures for your friends to see... it doesn’t matter. Everyone has
something that occupies their mind, that interests them or that they’re good
at. Put up anything. You can change it later but for now just get in the habit
of writing to the Web. Once you’ve done it once you’ll see how easy it can be —
and how
addictive.
4: Play
With Your Ads: Once AdSense has approved your application; you’ll be able to
start playing with your ads. You can change the colors, fix the font size,
remove the border and move them into the sidebar if you wish. You can get
everything geared up and ready to go.
5: Bring In
the Traffic: It’s taken
you minutes to get your site set up. Now you have to let people know you’re
online. The next section 9.5 (how to send traffic to your site) will tell you
how to bring in the traffic but for now you can start by telling your friends,
swapping links with your favorite sites and submitting your site to the search
engines. Hold off on the paid advertising though until you’ve got enough
content to make it worthwhile.
STEP 4: HOW TO SEND TRAFFIC
(VISITORS) TO YOUR BLOG/ WEBSITE.
Now that you have your blog/ website all setup and
ready to go, you need to get visitors to visit your blog/ website regularly, so
that they can either click on your adverts or buy the products/ services that
you will be promoting. There are many ways to do this and the good news is, you
don’t need to spend a fortune to get traffic to your website.
Here are a few ways for you to start getting
traffic right now.
Article Marketing – write a series of
articles based around the topic of your blog/ website.
At the bottom of the article you can add an author
resource box with a link to your blog/ website. If anyone uses your
article on their site or in their blog, they have to include the resource box,
which gives you another link to your site. You can submit articles to the
Article Directories on the Internet to get more
traffic to your site and to help increase the link popularity of your site,
which in turn helps your search engine rank.
Forum Marketing – find some online forums
related to your blog/ website. Join the forums and
start
participating in them on a regular basis. Most forums allow you to create a
signature that is automatically appended to any posts you make. Ensure that
your signature contains a link to your website and this will increase your
site’s link popularity and the chance of forum members visiting your website.
Press Releases – Write a press release
about your new blog/ website and publish the press release on online press
release distribution sites. This will get you a burst of traffic and links to
your website.
Social Networking – Use social networking tools
such as www.Twitter.com, www.facebook.com, www.myspace.com, www.Hi5.com, and other social networking sites
to build a list of targeted followers and publish periodic articles/ posts with
a link to interesting and relevant content on your website.
You can also
bookmark your blog posts using social book marking services such as www.StumbleUpon.com and www.Digg.com, Or try www.OnlyWire.com if you want
to bookmark pages in multiple book marking services at the same time.
Search Engine Optimization – Create blog posts on a
regular basis around different keywords that you have found from the Google
Adwords Keyword tool as explained earlier in this guide. If you do this in
conjunction with building links to your blog/ website, this will help your site
to rank well in the search engines. The combination of high quality content
based around keyword phrases and links from other websites will improve your
search engine ranking.
Pay Per Click Advertising – Use Google or Yahoo’s
paid search engine advertising to drive targeted traffic to your blog/ website.
You can bid on specific keywords and you will only pay
Free
Classified Advertising– Create short classified ads about your blog/ website and post
them on classified ad websites. There are thousands of free and premium ad
websites online
