How To Monetize Your Blog – How I Really Make Money From My Website
Table of Contents
How To Make Real Money With Your Blog Right Now!
My post last week: 10 Reasons Why You’re Not Making Any Money Online Yet seems to have struck a raw nerve with many of you. It has been a while since I have had so many people say that a post really got them to take action – so I am very pleased about that.
I have to admit now I was in a bit of a ‘rage’ last week (in a good way) as I meet so many talented people who just don’t seem to get this blogging thing! I woke up and fired off that post very quickly and yes I was at my dyslexic best with lots of spelling and grammar errors – but I just had to RANT, let of steam!
I was speaking to a business coach recently who said that the biggest challenge is not that of getting people to understand what they need to do – but rather to get people to actually do it!
Every post I write is intended to get my readers to take action – clearly I am more successful at that sometimes than others.
Today I want to tackle a big subject:
How I Really Make Money With My Website and How You Can To!
Notice the word: REALLY – that is deliberate as I am sure some people still think I make money in a different way to how I explain it in all my blog posts. I REALLY am telling you as it is – all you need to do is follow and take action.
On first glance of my website, you probably wonder how I even make money from my website as there are no visible adverts like you would see on most other websites. In some cases I even have readers email me to thank me for all the great information and asked if there was any think they could buy of me to thank me. When you’re readers don’t even know your monetizing your blog, you are doing a real good job. Some of the following may be different from what you have been taught in the past, so it’s only right I reassure you with some figures:
I have two websites, both in the same niche, both with the same amount of traffic, one has advertising and the other promotes affiliate offers. The second blog with affiliate offers makes at least 5 times the amount as the other one.
Real quickly, I will tell you why you don’t want to sell advertising:
- Customers are hard work and they blame you for their mistakes
- Constantly adding/editing/deleting advertisers
- Paper work – trying to keep up with them
- Ugly and take away from user experience
- Most importantly… makes you less money!
In most cases I would say traffic is the most important thing for a website, without it you can’t make money – but if you don’t know how to monetize your website, then surely the traffic is pointless?
If you could only take 3 things away from this post, I hope they are:
1. Using a Lightbox optin I was able to significantly increase my daily email opt-in rate (304% +). I wish now I had used one sooner.
2. Test promoting different products, one product I promote out sells all others by at least 20 to 1 and I wouldn’t have know that if I had not switched around promotions on my site.
3. ASK! My conversions and sales continual to increase because I’m always asking my affiliate managers for more, a free trial, coupon codes, different landing pages – if it’s going to make you more sales, it’s going to make them more money and so they should at least make an effort to help you.
Finding Affiliate Programs To Promote
The majority of my income comes from promoting eBooks and online courses. Compared to other things I promote, I don’t sell as many eBooks say compared to services and software, however the commission is much higher, usually between 50% and 75%.
At this point, most “gurus” would tell you to search ClickBank and pick a product to promote on your website but it really isn’t as simple as that, depending on what you pick, your conversion rate will differ. Typically I will pick a product from a sub category such as eMarketing > Blog Marketing and choose a blog marketing eBook (for a blog like this), such as Blogging to the Bank.
Screen Shot From ClickBank.com
From the above picture you will see two things, on the left, the subcategory I chose and on the right, the stats of the top converting product, in this case, Blogging Espionage. When you go to any category or subcategory page, at the top of the page will be the highest selling product, note GRAV (Gravity!)- the higher the number, the more sales it’s making. Also you want to look at ‘future’ in the Stats, because this is the money you can make on top of the Total Sale if people who buy the product you are promoting then go on to buy other products from the seller – for example, they join a membership website. Apart from this, you also want to make sure the product is a good match for your site, would it add to what your offering? Would you buy it yourself? These are questions you should ask yourself, if every box is ticketed then click Promote and you will be given an affiliate link to use. One thing I would also add, is to ask your readers and followers what products they have bought in the past? This has helped me understand better what products interest my readers. (For those of you who are wondering the %/refd: STAT above refers to the percentage of sales that have come from Affiliates – in this case, 89% of the sellers sales have come via affiliates)
Depending on what type of products you want to promote, you may also want to try Commission Junction for services, Amazon Associates Program for physical products and E-Junkie has a few good things to promote, however I never find their sales pages convert as high as the previous mentioned sites.
Promoting Affiliate Products On Your Blog
This is where a lot of people go wrong, they simply add a couple affiliate offers to their blog and cross their fingers, hoping someone will buy from them. There is a lot, a lot more to it than that!
Promote Things You Use
This works because people can actively see you using the service or product, for example with IncomeDiary I recommend my hosting company, domain registrar and my designer. This can be used for any niche, for example a Cookery or Restaurant review blog could promote cookware from their favorite celebrity chef via an affiliate link to the Kitchen & Dining store on Amazon. I actually am at the moment transferring my website over to VPS.net because of a recommendation on a sidebar of another blog – I did this because I respected the guys opinion and could see it was working well for him.
Below we have an excellent example from ChrisBrogan.com showing how he is promoting a product (a wordpress theme) that he actually is using himself. If your readers see you using a product then they are more likely to respond to your offer.
Here's an Example of Chris promoting the blog theme he uses.
Promoting Recommended eBooks
I have found that two things that convert really well – the first being the ‘Offer Box’ below. In the past I have used banners provided by affiliate managers and also had some really snazzy boxes designed however this real clean, simple box with a green stop sign converts the highest.
My Top Converting Offer Box:
Recommended Reading Box Used On IncomeDiary.com
The box above is one of my best converting strategies and because of that, I will allow any IncomeDiary reader/fan to use it on their blog, dozens already are! I like to promote two offers in the box, one low priced and one high price. Fortunately for my higher priced offer above, I was able to secure a $1 trial and that has seen conversions go even higher. (Top Tip: If you are promoting a higher priced offer – try and get a special rate or introductory offer to get people interested in taking action. I do this with AWeber also and it works a treat)
The second thing that converts really well is adding a text advert at the top of my list posts, such as on my Top Earning Bloggers post. I add a link saying, “Want to follow in their footsteps? Check out this product”. This works because as the read the post the reader is highly motivated and inspired and wants to see themselves – on this list one day.
Comparison and Resources Page
These pages are usually to reinforce and to monetize other blog posts you have on your site. When you are selling any service or product, there are always other products to compare to and on most occasions these other products have affiliate programs also. I personally promote web hosting, domains etc.. but you could choose anything from computer games to house insurance. (Anyone notice how successful Price Comparison websites are these days? – I am just using the same principle)
You can see my website hosting comparison page here: Website Hosting Comparisons
The goal of the comparison page it to do two things. First to make it clear that the original offer that you mentioned in your post is the best priced and the one they should choose. The other is to increase conversions. It is quite likely that your visitor will want to shop around – it is natural and the right thing to do. You are giving them the opportunity to compare offers without having to go and search Google – and the longer the visitor is on your website the more chance there is you will earn a commission, either with your No 1 recommendation or via some of the comparison offers. Special Note: It is also OK to put in some comparisons that will not earn you any commissions – if you are being authentic and creating trust, which you should be, then your visitors, especially your more ‘internet marketing aware’ visitors will appreciate your ‘impartial’ approach.
Email Marketing Funnel
Getting people to Opt-in is perhaps the most profitable thing you can do with your blog – especially if you then followup with quality information and interesting offers.
If you ask any big internet marketer, one of the main things they would tell you is that they wished they had started to build their list earlier. Done right (which means first delivering quality information — not some load of spammy offers) than email marketing to a Strong List of followers is about as close as it gets online to printing money.
A brief overview of how my funnel works:
1. Opt-in boxes are displayed through out my website – for this I offer a special free gift to entice people into signing up. I also add a well designed eCover to give even more value to this FREE product. I display opt-in box’s in 3 ways, a squeeze page, a sidebar box and the highest converting, a lightbox advert, which increased my conversions by over 200%!
2. Visitors sign up and confirm their email address.
3. When I find good quality offers related to my niche (for example on Clickbank) I email subscribers. Sometimes I can earn several thousand dollars from just one mailing by doing this.
When it comes down to email marketing and autoresponder software, I believe there is only one you should use and that’s AWeber which is who I use and pretty much all my competitor, if you order today you can have your first month for only $1. Apart from AWeber, you may want to consider iContact.
Content Orientated Blog Posts
This has started to make me more and more money as I test different affiliate offers. Their are 3 main types of blog posts that make me money. They are Interviews, Guides and Reviews.
I shall point out the advantages of each below:
The easiest way to get affiliate sales with blog posts is to find out when a new Clickbank product is being launched, or even an old one for that matter. As long as the sales page converts (view the stats as I pointed out above) – you are going to make money provided it is targeted correctly for your niche / list. Contact the creator of the Clickbank product and email them requesting an interview. I recommend you do the interview over the phone (I use Skype) and record the call and get it transcribed. You then add the call to your site as an MP3 / Podcast and add the transcription for those who prefer to read rather than listen. (The transcription also gives you lots of valuable search engine content). When conducting interviews you can also review the interviewee’s products, ask them questions about it – and then at the end of the interview you can add if you wish your own mini-review of the product and the reasons why visitors should buy it.
Typically your interview will only touch generally on the strategies the interviewee uses but done correctly your listener / reader will be left wanting more. This is when you promote the Interviewee’s product as away for your followers to followup / learn more and grow their own business. Depending on the interviewee and the product, you can easily walk away with dozens of sales and continuous future sales depending on how often future readers find the interview.
Below is an example of the offers I was able to provide to my readers after I interviewed: Adam Horwitz
Promoting an Interviewees Affiliate Products at The Top Of His Interview
Another tactic I use is producing “How to’ or Guide Posts – just like this one. You give away great content that really helps your readers and at the same time you promote affiliate products. Visitors can see you using the products so they can decide if it’s for them or not and those who do notice you are promoting an affiliate product don’t mind because you are helping them out for free. Very Important: This is very important – do take the time to produce good content / how to posts. Despite what some gurus try to imply — there is no such thing as Free Money – you need to work at providing real value to your readers — do that and the money will follow via affiliate sales. So often I see bloggers making ‘half efforts’ at producing guides – frankly you may as well not bother if that is what you are going to do. Readers can tell your passion and commitment in your posts!
Review Posts: Just about every post you do can be a partial review post if you are doing it correctly. This is the essential bit here — no one is really going to pay any attention to your review posts unless they respect you, believe in you, have rapport with you. In other words they feel you can be trusted. As mentioned in previous posts this is why pages such as the ABOUT PAGE and the MY STORY PAGE are so essential.
To start building that trust and rapport you must first provide good content, valuable content. So often readers tell me they cannot believe how much good content I give away for free – if you start to get comments like that then you are doing it right. Build rapport and anything your recommend will stand a far better chance of being sold. I don’t do that many purely review only posts – but one recent example is: My Review Post For MarketMeTweet
Increasing Your Conversions
Although the following may seem like small things, the increase in conversions can be as much as 1000% in some cases so do pay attention.
Ask For a Coupon Code
Most companies will have the ability to create custom coupon codes, all you have to do is ask for them. These are great for increasing conversions as the coupon can make a huge difference such as making it a trial offer or get something free.
Offering Coupon Codes Increase Conversions
Ask For a Special Offer
Some of my best converting affiliate links convert so well because of the special offers I am able to offer my readers. For example a $1 Trial or a Bonus offer only available to my readers.
I could go on – but as I said at the beginning, the most important thing to do is TAKE ACTION. I appreciate you reading this of course, but ultimately unless you put these strategies into action they count for nothing.
Take Action Today
And just in case you have not already done it – do check out my Blogging eCourse – it is the Blueprint I followed myself to get where I am today.
About Michael Dunlop
I'm Michael, I created this site back in 2009 and since then it's received over a million visitors from all around the world. We offer tutorials and inspiration for online entrepreneurs wanting to achieve more.
41 comments so far… Leave a reply
Nabeel | Create Your First Website
Very valuable info you give there Michael. I really like how you gave some detailed info regarding multiple income sources. "do take the time to produce good content / how to posts. Despite what some gurus try to imply — there is no such thing as Free Money – you need to work at providing real value to your readers — do that and the money will follow via affiliate sales." I totally believe in this statement, because its true and it works! The days of hard selling are gone, you must provide value first. When you provide great value first, then your subscribers/visitors will be a lot more responsive. Regarding GRAV (Gravity) in Clickbank, I thought it meant how many competitors you will have (i.e. how many affiliates are promoting the product). Nabeel PS: When you’re (your) readers don’t even know your (you're) monetizing your blog, you are doing a real good job.
Michael Dunlop
Hello Nabeel, Gravity is a score that Clickbank assigns to each affiliate product according to their secret formula. It has to do with how many sales and how recently those sales have occurred. Michael
Clive at BlogBriefing.com
Hi Michael, this is very much my strategy too and I was surprised how amenable many vendors are to letting you have discount codes etc. if you only ask :-) Good to meet you at the IM Millionaires Summit in London the other weekend :-)
John Paul Aguiar
Michael, again some great tips.. I do most of these, now I just need to drive big traffic lol
Dev | Technshare
Hey Michael, Another Awesome Post. Those are some great Tips. I think adding offer box after posts is one of the awesome way to make money. Thanks for sharing this great Post man. Really awesome stuff. ~Dev
Michael Anderson
Hi Michael I love it when you are at your 'dyslexic best' as you put it. It has an impact. A bit like some poorly produced videos that I see people making to market themselves - sometimes they are deliberately 'ugly' as these too can have a big impact. I was also wondering about adding a lightbox opt in to my blog - you have persuaded me and I'm going to try it. By the way does it have installation guide or do I need to code it myself? Guess I'll find out... Thanks for the post Michael
Michael Dunlop
Hello Michael, Always good to hear from you, yes I do believe it comes with an installation guide, quite simple really. Then you set all the options in Wordpress, quite a bit of fun. Michael
Tommy Roussos
Two great points you noted out. Something most marketers are saying but not enough affiliates are doing. 1- Take Action Today. Simply, the best day is the one you're in. "When times are good, rejoice. When times are bad, learn." - Jim Rohn 2- Promote Things You Use. These are by far the best kept secret, if there ever was one in Internet Marketing. Is there something out there that's working for you. Great, tell people about it. Great post Michael, keep it up mate.
Michael Dunlop
I completely believe in both of these points Tommy, thanks for the kind words. Michael
Owen McGab Enaohwo
@Michael, I like you popup, I know you used actionpop up, who design the optin form for you? Which method do you prefer when using the actionpop up, pop it when the user is about to leave the site or pop it several minutes after they get on the site? What happens if the user signs up for you newsletter through some other means besides the actionpopup form, would it continuously show up?
Michael Dunlop
Hello Owen, A friend designed my pop up, his name is James Deer. I prefer to show it to them when they arrive as they are usually most interested then. You can set it to stop showing, show every so often or just once. I show mine once a week. Michael
Shaun
Hi Michael, I was thinking about buying that opt-in box (With your affilaite link of course) but was wondering if it can be customized so I can change the full look of it (Not just the colors, more to design levels equal to your one)? Also is your opt-in box from actionpopup or it from another place (As I like the way it looks, not that I'd copy it though lol). Thanks for your time, hopefully I can get this working the way I want with my G Lock code...
Musa
I agree 100% with your thoughts. It still does sound too good to be true - monitizing isnt easy at all.
Moon Hussain
This is great stuff Michael. Definitely print worthy so I can re-read and apply some of these suggestions.
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Alice
great tips :) just want to mention that i am using E-junkie to make my earnings and update myself related to small business through www.e-junkie.info
Physician Assistant
Awesome post. I just started my new blog and I am going to implement the plan that you shared. Thanks.
Aaron Darko
Wrapping affiliate links around great value means money. Its all about the value you offer - whether it helps your readers get further to where they want to be. Also packaging that value in the best way possible is something that I am working on continuously. Its all about interacting with your readers and giving them what they want.
Fauzi
Nice Article Michael,
James K
This was excellent. Just what I needed. I actually print this post and put it in my library. Thanks, I will read more of your posts soon.
Kevin at MarketingCusp.com
Fantastic content. You are absolutely right - if you don't put work in, you don't get the return. First, give to your visitors, provide them with great content, and they will reward you with opt-ins and more. Can I ask for a follow up? If possible, I'd love to hear how often you change offers, and anything you can say about list management. You definitely made my day with this one. Kev
Dean Saliba
I make about 90% of my income from writing sponsored posts. I know they are not popular with a section of blogers but my readers don' complain about them. :)
Chadrack
This is really a reveal-it-all post. Many bloggers will not do this. I've been conscerned about offering ads on my blog but concerned with my readers sensibility. I'm just working on putting up an optin box. I think these tips will definitely help me out. Thanks a million.
StrategicBusinessTeam.com
Michael, you are an inspiration to youths and you never disappoint with your content. Your article on blog monetization is really down to earth. Please keep it up.
Felicita Vazquez
I'm just astonished by the way you teach these steps. I can waith to put it into action to try to get No.1 on Google for a Mobile Monopoly Web Marketing campaign and for several affiliate program I have. I really loves all those tips. I signed up for your training too Thanks for sharing.
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asittingduck
Hi there!, I've really pushed to step up my list with your tips, I'm past 5,000!!!!!... Thanks!... PS. I'm interested in going to a live event in 2011...:]
thedevelopertuts
I really thought advertising is the best way to make money, you opened my eyes with the affiliate products, I will try this too in my upcoming webdesign tutorial blog. Thanks for sharing!
richescorner
Hi Michael, I started a blog about a month ago. In the beginning I put up a bunch of ads, but I realized all the points that you made about ads. I found they were ugly and distracted from the content, plus they slowed down the loading time of the site. Also, I feel like promoting a quality product gives more tangible benefits to the people who visit the site. So, I gradually moved more to affiliate products instead of ads. Even then I'm trying to just pick a few of the best products instead of going scattershot. I really like your offer box. I will try it out on my site and tell you how it works out. Thanks for letting us use it.
Paul Hinds
Great post Michael, I think that there are so many avenues out there from which you can monetize your online business,that its a great time to be online. For real sustainable income and growth creating info products and building a community around the knowledge and value you provide is truly a great model to follow, your a prime example. Its alll about the value you offer. The game is all about interacting with your readers and helping them get to where they want. Thanks for the info, Paul H.
Sherri
Michael, I just found your website yesterday & I love it! I'm amazed at how much valuable content you provide...it really gives you credibility. It has really inspired me with my own blog. I can't believe you say you're dislexic. You would never know it. You are a blessing to the blogging community! :O)
mk akan
very interesting and practical steps here Mike...thanks for sharing...
John Bakken
Awesome post, thank you very much! Your really putting all the cards on the table, i like that! You share some really good stuff in this post!
Sharnee
Excellent post as usual. Congratulations.
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Tyronne
Does clickbank show the percentage of items returned?
Kim
Wonderfully informative post, as usual, Michael! Keep up the good work! You are a true inspiration! I just referred another young man to your site for inspiration. Thanks for everything! ~Kim
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