Making Money

Aug

This post was written as part of the Blog Hop Conference at Home and you can check out the other 2 dozen + conference sessions being offered at Blog Conference Newbie’s Blop Hop Conference Agenda!

Something that has been coming up a lot recently is whether affiliate sales is useful for bloggers, or is a waste of time. My answer would be – both! (So helpful, I know.) Affiliate sales via a single banner stuffed into a crowded sidebar is probably not going to do you any good at all. However, affiliate links as part of an overall blogging plan (you have one, right?) can be highly successful! Even for “mommy bloggers” or lifestyle bloggers or whomever the black-sheep of the blogging community is this week.

Affiliate sales may seem small at first but can quickly grow.

Here are some tips for increasing your revenue using affiliate sales wisely, without spamming your readers or junking up your sidebars.

1. Link in the Sources or Recommended Reading Section of a Post

This is especially helpful when covering a health, technical or scientific type of topic. For example, this post about relieving back pain during pregnancy is something I felt the need to source my information on. Notice the links in the book titles at the bottom of the post? Anything where you would source your information or include additional resources for your readers to confirm or expand on what you’re telling them. Just add the affiliate link to the book title anytime you mention a book as a source or recommended reading. Quick, easy and can add up over time.

2. Find Affiliates for What You’re Already Talking About

Are you a foodie? Then look for affiliate programs from kitchenware companies, coupon sites and cookbooks. A pregnancy website will have affiliate links to maternity clothes, baby diapers and cord blood banking. This website has affiliate links to WordPress Themes, ebooks and educational stuff for bloggers. That’s what I’m already talking about so those are the links my readers are most likely to click and most likely to ultimately purchase.

3. Only Use Affiliate Programs That Represent Products You Can Talk About

I would never affiliate for basketball equipment. Why? Because I know nothing about basketball. My husband, a point guard in high school, is a basketball freak and even with that it took me 5 years and marriage before I realized there were plays in basketball. (True story.) If I started representing basketball equipment it would be the biggest sham in the world, for reals. And I’m just not willing to go there. Especially where there are so many other affiliate opportunities that ARE things I actually care about.

4. Use Affiliate Links Within the Text of Your Posts

I touched on this already but I will tell you – a banner ad for me has about a .8% conversion rate. That means 100 people have to click the ad before anyone buys. And my click through rates on banner ads are pretty high on this site, but still not THAT high. Not compared to posts with the link actually put right into it. For a good, recent sample you can see the post I wrote about the Savvy Blogging Summit Recordings Special. See how I put a link right on the words of the post? That converted so much better for me because people reading the post were more likely to click that link, and also more likely to buy. They were automatically interested in the topic because they took the time to read a post about that topic.

Selecting the right affiliate program is like the selecting the right tool.

5. Choose Affiliate Programs Wisely – Get the Most For Your Link Value

I know I mentioned Amazon earlier and I just want to say – it’s one of the worst affiliate programs out there. There are no cookies attached to your affiliate code so your readers have to click your link and then purchase immediately in order for the order to “count” for you. In addition to that, the sales percentage you are given is minuscule, only 4% or so, compared to many of the other affiliate programs available.

Price and Revenue Share Considerations - Look for affiliate programs with either a high percentage of revenue share or higher priced item (or both). After all – 40% of an $11.99 ebook is much better than 40% of a $5 ebook. When comparing two similar products, price and percentage should be taken into account when making a final decision.

Cookies on the Affiliate Link – Look for a longer cookie on the affiliate link. This just means that if someone clicks your link, checks out the product, but then leaves, will you still get credit if they buy later? With cookies, the website will know that YOU sent the reader first so when the reader goes back a week later and finally purchases, you will still get credit. I like to set up my affiliate programs with a 30 day cookies because that gives a full month for a purchase to take place. Longer is better.

6. Share Affiliate Deals and Specials When They Have Good Value for Readers

Some affiliates spam you with weekly “deals” and coupons that never seem of high worth. But other times those specials are really of value and a timely savings for your readers. The Savvy Blogging Summit Specials I linked to in #4 is a really good example of that. Got the email, thought hey 50% off is a great deal, it was time sensitive, I checked it out, I bought the recordings myself and wrote the post while I was downloading my own learning lessons. It was a high value for my readers.

7. Resources Page or What You Need Page

EricaSays has a great example of this on her Resources for Bloggers page. It’s a great place to link up many of the most common tools or books or items that you use personally, or that you often recommend to clients and friends. I love that on this page she lists not only what the item is, but what she loves about it, who it will help, when you should get it, etc. The page looks nice and her readers consider it HELPFUL…a useful tool to bookmark and come back to, not a hard-sell-car-salesman feeling thing.

8. Don’t Duplicate Your Affiliate Programs Within Topics

You can't color with every pencil at once - and you can't sell every affiliate program at the same time either.

I have two WordPress Themes I do affiliate programs with, Genesis and Headway. Those are the two themes I use all the time. Those are the two themes I love. Those are the two themes I can answer questions about when readers ask me questions. Why would I promote other themes I’ve never used, can’t help my readers with, don’t know anything about. Besides that there is the trust factor.

When I tell my readers, try Genesis or Headway, they can trust that I’m familiar with those two themes and have used them. If I say try Genesis, Headway, Thesis, Woo Theme, Elegant Themes, ……..etc, etc they will lose trust in me and my affiliate sales will be lower overall. It might feel that giving more options will lead to more sales but that simply isn’t true.

9. Don’t Be Afraid to Talk About Your Affiliate Programs

None of you thought I was “out to make a buck” when I mentioned Genesis and Headway Themes. You understood that it was part of the discussion to illustrate a point. It provided value to you as a reader, and a link on the title of the theme didn’t seem out of place (everyone who wants more info can click the link and if a reader doesn’t care for more info they simply don’t click the link.) It’s all very low-key, however you HAVE to actually mention an affiliate product and include an affiliate link in order to make money with affiliate sales.

I was so afraid of this at first but once you start getting the hang of it you learn your audience. For example, I had two very affiliate-oriented posts this month because two of the programs I’ve been with for awhile had time-sensitive specials. I was a little afraid at mentioning both in the same month. But you know what happened? My readers thanked me. Why? Because I’ve been here a long time and they know I’m going to give them value. And I did – even with two affiliate posts….both of those posts provided items of value that I myself invested in.

10. Affiliate Sales Will Build up Slowly but Continue Over Time

The best time to start generating revenue through affiliate sales is 2 years ago. But since you missed that deadline already, the next best time is today. There are some large affiliate networks that make it easy to sign up with big-box stores or large companies. These include LinkShare, Share-A-Sale, EJunkie, Commission Junction, Pepperjam and others.

What you’ll also find is that many small business owners, ebook authors and bloggers have affiliate programs as well. I have affiliate programs for my ebooks. Don’t like my ebook? There’s an entire ebook library you can become an affiliate for. I know bloggers who offer affiliate programs for menu planning services or blog design referrals. Check around your local circle of influence and see what is available!

Aug

Blogging As a Business or As a Job?

By AngEngland | Making Money

4 Comments

I heard an interesting comment on a Clay Collins mentorship call the other day. He said that many bloggers come online with a “job” mentality. They want to know if they work X number of hours and do X amount of tasks what will they make. That’s a job.

Blogging for Yourself is a Business

Like any new business sometimes you put a LOT of work in on the front end. When I began my massage therapy business I got the education, the equipment, found a place to set up shop, spent an entire weekend cleaning, organizing and arranging. And that’s before the advertising began! Then came all the marketing efforts and actual per-hour work with clients.

Once I had a place to work (ie a website and blog), and clients began coming in (readers), I still didn’t actually KEEP every cent I brought it. Some of my income went to rent my space from the owner of the shop. Some of my income went to replenish supplies that were used. And some went in as an investment to help the business grow even more.

When you are working for yourself, the money you bring in is not 100% yours. That’s a huge difference between a job and a business.

Working Online as a Job

The benefits to this approach are clear. It’s safer. It’s easier to calculate into the family budget. I know upfront what the returns on my investment will be and there’s a lot less risk. If the website breaks – the owner of the website is the one up until 2 am trying to fix it. If a coder needs to be hired, that doesn’t come out of my paycheck – the owner of the website is the one footing that bill.

Having Said That….

I love that I have a business of my own! I love daring myself to beat my goals. I love pushing myself to do more this year than I did last year and to expand. To redesign. To tweak. Does that mean I don’t have any “jobs” in this industry? No of course not! I work at Blissfully Domestic as their Editor-in-Chief and I work at Babble in the Being Pregnant Columnist.

Those jobs support my business and are things I’m passionate about. They allowed me to outsource some things and free up time to devote to redesigning Untrained Housewife and AngEngland.com. But that’s not all I’m doing, nor will it ever be.

After all – if I can take a simple ebook about how I made money online and create an additional five figures of income for your family, why would you NOT want to be in business for yourself! It’s certainly more than I would have been paid to write that book for someone else.

Sure there are risks – but the rewards can sometimes far surpass what the job revenue would have been all by itself. You have to assess your own situation and ask yourself what your family can risk, what your personality can tolerate (the uncertainty will absolutely kill some personality types), and what you’re willing to put up with.

Can you live without the equation of X hours doing X, Y and Z = $XXX? Because in a business it isn’t always that simple.

Jun

Worthy of Hire – Pay or No Pay for Bloggers?

By AngEngland | Making Money

2 Comments

A blogger's value has worth when a blogger brings value to the table. Photo by Carl Dwyer

“The laborer is worthy of his hire.” ~Luke 10:7

There has a lot of conversation in the past few months about blogging as a business and what bloggers can charge for various things. Whether they SHOULD charge for things. How much they should charge. Why some bloggers don’t make money and whether bloggers who “work for free” will impact the ability of other bloggers to make money. Oiy!

So what is my philosophy about it all? There are two main points that I think this verse highlights and I agree with.

A Blogger Can Have Value and Worth for a Company and Deserves to be Paid for That

Yes! When a blogger is performing a duty or task for a company, whether advertising, outreach, writing copy, putting together video ads or other public relations and marketing promotions, a blogger deserves to be paid for those efforts.

I will be honest with you…while I absolutely LOVE writing, website creation, etc. I love being home with my children even more than that. Which requires enough money to keep them out of daycare. Pure and simple.

Having said that, there is another implication in this verse that I think bloggers need to be willing to examine and truly OWN. An implication which I wholeheartedly agree with.

A Blogger Should be WORTH the Hiring

In this verse we hear about a laborer who’s work was worthy of hire. If you are not a good writer, you will never be hired to write copy. And you cannot be upset about that.

If you only have 15 followers on Twitter, you are probably not WORTHY of the hiring for a Twitter Party. If you only write on your blog once a year, don’t be angry that advertisers aren’t knocking down your door (or inbox).

So the idea is a two-fold look at the same coin. Have something of value. And then no one will complain about paying the price of that value.

Take my big “Making Money” ebook for example – it is priced at $25. Rather pricy for an ebook. Yet in all the copies I’ve sold since it’s release in December, I have never had a single person say it wasn’t worth the price. In fact, the number one comment I’ve heard back was “It was worth every single cent.” The laborer was worthy of the hire.

Have an excellent “product”. Expect a quality price. Deliver above expectations as much as you are able.

Feb

Is Your Blog Ready For Advertising? – Blissdom 2010 Session Recap

By AngEngland | Making Money

Content is King

What are you writing? What is your information? What are you presenting? Is your blog cluttered? Clean? If advertisers are paying for real estate they need to be seen.

Clean up Your Act

Make it EASY for advertisers to want to advertise on your blog. Clean looking. (Angela’s Note – this is important I think. If your ad space is one of a million it isn’t as valuable. On Untrained Housewife, for example, I limit the side bar image ads to four. That’s it. Advertisers know that their ad will BE SEEN.)

Be Careful What/How you Review

Be picky and stick to your brand image. If, for example, I were to review Merry Maids service on Untrained Housewife, that might spoil the whole point of the entire site which is to empower moms with the knowledge they need to be succesful on their own.

Know Your Site Stats

Know your blog, audience and tag-line/elevator speech.

Know Your Blog or Site Statistics for Advertisers photo by Dominik Gwarek

Be able to speak to your “influencer” status – Not just page views, also loyalty and influence in some way. In some ways you present yourself as an influencer and then you BECOME one. Look beyond *just* your blog stats.

Key Phrases you need to know to speak to advertisers -The Advertising Vocabulary

CPM – Cost per thousand pageviews. It can be anything from $1-$15. Usually the CPM goes up the more focused your niche is. If the CPM pay is $5 and you get $5 for that month.
Market averages
Unique vs Pageviews – Unique is one person who comes to your site, they are counted ONCE PER MONTH and that’s it. Pageviews is the number of page views.
CTR – Click Thru Rate – it’s how many times your audience clicks through from your site to their site. With a very low click-thru-rate you might contact the advertiser and suggest a new image.
CPC – Cost per Click – You get paid only if/when someone clicks on the ad.
Comscore – The Gold Standard among ad agencies.

Increase page views with “Linked Within”

Are your readers interested in your reviews or not? Not every site is an appropriate venue for product reviews and descriptions. Angela’s Note – You’ll notice I do very, very few reviews of any kind here on this site. But on Untrained Housewife the review articles can sometimes be some of the most popular pieces as readers are looking for helps and solutions for a particular problem.

An Ad Network or On Your Own – Which is right?

What is an ad network? Groups together a bunch of sites within a certain category and sell the sites together to create a larger base and then sells those sites advertisements collectively to advertisers.
BlogHer, Glam, JuiceBoxJungle, Lifetime, RGN (real girls network) (Angela’s Note – Did I miss any? If you know of a blog-friendly ad network please leave it in the comments section)

Pros and Cons – Pros, you have a team of seasoned ad sales executives selling your site FOR you. They collect the money. They pay you. They market the ad sells.
Cons – You don’t always have control over ads that are showing up.

(Angela’s Note – While Google Adsense was specifically mentioned as being an ad network that throws up inappropriate ads I contest this observation. Using even the minimum keyword research and basic SEO principles, as described in my Making Money Blogging ebook and on this blog, a website and blog owner can greatly increase the number of appropriate ads in a piece – and thus the number of clicks on those ads – and thus their revenue via Google Adsense.)

What does the network expect from you? Communication, timely placement, etc. Exclusivity usually.

Different ways to make money – through editorial postings on your blog about something.

How will ad networks pay you? About half of the income will be yours. You give them 50% to be your business manager.

When will they pay you? 90-120 days out. You won’t get a check right away.

READ THE FINE PRINT – what is your plan for the next two years. Compare some various networks to see which is most appropriate for your particular site, statistics, readership and situation.

Try to do two – above the fold and below the fold.

Compare multiple ad networks

Going it on your own – Setting up and Selling Ads on Your Own

- Where do you find the advertisers?
Find blogs similar in niche and readership and look at their advertising. Contact the advertisers about your blog and present your pitch. PITCH YOURSELF!

Develop a relationship with your client. – Easier to keep an advertiser than to FIND a new advertiser.

Make sure you have a page set up for them to find information about advertising.
Length of contracts to propose and how you price is.

She charged $1 per CPM to advertisers based on the past month. Offers 10% discount for three months or more or does buy three get one free.

Offers a small-business discount.

Cons – You do it yourself. Doesn’t take as much time as she thought that it would. Angela’s Note – I have found this to be true with Untrained Housewife as well – the actual installation of the ads and links, etc takes very little time for the return on investment. And I keep 100% of the ad revenue instead of splitting it.

Angela’s Summary – The one thing that I disliked about this session was the implication that Google Adsense is a waste of time and always throws up the wrong ads. If a blogger is getting unrelated ads on their blog posts it’s because they are not writing good quality SEO and using keyword research. In this case, you probably are not only getting unrelated Google Ads, but also getting unrelated READERS from Google. Your bounce rate will probably be very high because people are coming to your site expecting one thing, and getting another. Personally, my bounce rate is relatively low and my adsense account pays quite well as a residual income stream for me.

The solution? Not to self-promote but my ebook does cover this information in depth, including screen shots of a keyword research session I went through so you can see very step-by-step how to tailor your keyword research for your particular situation.

Also, I will be posting the session outline from Kelby and I’s SEO Wisdom Workshop for those of you who didn’t attend Blissdom or missed the workshop day. So subscribe on the right hand side by typing in your email, and stay-tuned for that post.

Jan

7 Day Focus To More PR For Your Business – Ten Habits Day 11

By AngEngland | Making Money, Ten Habits

10 Comments

Angela’s Note - John Sternal (@SternalPR) is a veteran PR practitioner who’s helped many small businesses obtain media exposure on a national level. He’s the co-founder of UnderstandingMarketing.com, the #smbiz Twitter chat for small business, and has authored The PR Toolkit for small business. This is a blog post to print out and tack on your memo board for future reference!

John Sternal Shares Public Relations Wisdom

When I travel to speak with small businesses and entrepreneurs to learn about their companies there are two things I constantly hear. They want to learn to use PR to build more awareness of their business. And although they want to save on costs by doing it themselves they just don’t know where they’d find the time to become their own PR person.

Here I’ve put together an action plan that can help entrepreneurs and small business owners easily grasp the fundamentals of PR along with steps they can do each day to minimize their investment of time. It’s very true that in PR the more you put into it the more you’ll get out of it. But let’s be realistic for a second and remember what a day is like for a typical small business owner that has his/her hand in virtually every aspect of the operation. Time is of the essence.

Here’s my 7-Day Plan to help you get more PR for your small business (each step should take only 30 minutes):

Day 1 Brainstorming Ideas: the first thing you have to do is come up with a story. For many this is the most difficult part because it often involves a lot of creativity. So let me try to make this as easy as possible. If you think all you have to do is think about something cool about your company, load that into a press release and send it to a reporter, you couldn’t be farther from the truth. Reporters will tell you your story is “too narrow.” So how do you broaden a story to make it appealing? Here’s an example:

One of my small business clients is in car leasing. A narrow story would be to approach an editor and pitch an angle on how the company was helping small businesses get rid of unused car leases to save money. Many of you may actually think this is a timely story given the current economic climate. Doesn’t matter what you think; it matters what the reporter thinks. So instead we found other similar trends, i.e. getting rid of unused IT equipment, office furniture and even real estate, packaged it all up into one “larger” story and sent it to The Wall Street Journal to see if they’d be interested. Read the story here.

Everyone Has a Story to Share - Are you Sharing Yours? photo by typofi

Day 2 Write Your Story:

Again, stop thinking of how great your company is and start thinking of writing for the reporter. This means writing pitch letters that capture their attention. If you’re in a technical industry you better find a way to dumb-down the pitch so that it doesn’t include industry jargon and buzzwords, unless you’re actually pitching an industry trade journal. Offer up lots of interesting anecdotes, customer stories and perspective. “PetPain Tablets Now Available In Minnesota” is a headline that won’t capture much attention, but “Older Dogs Now Learn New Tricks In Minnesota” will capture the attention of a company that offers arthritis supplements for pets.

Day 3 Research The Media: One of the most important steps in the entire process, you must know who you’re pitching. Read your local newspapers to see who’s writing stories of similar topics. Watch the local television news. If it’s in a different market, log on to the Internet to research reporters at a different newspaper or media outlet. As an added tip, start emailing them every now and then to comment on their stories. Don’t pitch your story just yet, but do let them know what you liked or disliked about a story they did. Make it so that they know who you are as this will pay off later. There also are resources to help you find what reporters are looking for when writing their stories.

Day 4 Ask Customers For Help: Customer stories can often seal the deal for a story since it adds the perspective many readers are interested in and it takes away from your story being too promotional. Talk to your customers and find out why they buy your product. What’s their situation? How do you help them? Use this information in your writing and pitch letters to again capture the reporter’s attention. And ask the customers if it’s ok for a reporter to contact them. This always gets a reporter’s attention. If you’ve done a good job developing quality products with a good reputation then this should be an easy step. If not, then you’ve got other things to worry about first before going after PR.

Day 5 Email Reporters: Today it’s time to send your pitch to the reporter you have targeted. If you don’t have their email address, simply call the paper or television station and ask for it. It’s easier than you think to get their email address. Write a few paragraphs of why your story is interesting to their readers and click send. Don’t worry about being too formal; they’re people too and can have normal conversations.

Have You Been Putting Off a Necessary Phone Call? photo by kgreggain

Day 6 Phone Calls:

First, take a deep breath. You can do this. A lot of reporters will list their email and phone number at the end of their stories. Use this checklist to double-check the strength of your story, call up the reporter and ask them if it’s a good time to grab a minute to tell them about a story idea you have. But do this AFTER you’ve already sent them an email so they may already be familiar with the story. Oh by the way, it won’t be such a cold call if you’ve already established a little relationship from commenting on other stories. They’ll remember you. And they won’t bite. The worst that can happen is they say no, which means you either move on to the next reporter or you go back to step one and develop a different story. But don’t be afraid of getting no for an answer. Babe Ruth once was the home run king of baseball but he also struck out a lot, too.

Day 7 Follow News Patterns: If a reporter says they’ll keep your story on file, you now are tasked with reading the news each day. Reporters like to do stories on items already in the news so monitor what’s being reported on because you never know when something breaks and your story is relevant. For example, a company that makes portable radios may have a hard time getting a story in the news – until a hurricane hits a certain area.

Following these daily action items won’t turn you into the next PR powerhouse, but it will give you an honest chance of getting your story in the news.

Angela’s Follow Up – Think you don’t have a story? Think again! Most of us have definite news-worthy things happening in our lives – whether it’s connections we’re making, businesses we’re starting, books we’re releasing, campaigns we’re working on with our blogs….whatever. Think about one newsworthy story in your life and see what happens if apply this seven day challenge to that story!

Jul

How Fast Can I Make Money Online

By AngEngland | Making Money, Web Content

4 Comments

“Make $100 per hour in a week or less writing online. Just purchase this ebook telling you how for only $19.99!” Look familiar? Freelance writers, or even just honest folks trying to make a few extra dollars each month during tough economic times, have probably stumbled across multiple scams that look similar to that. The get-rich-quick writing schemes are partially responsible for more than one of these common myths about web content writing.

The tough part is that it IS possible to make a very good income writing online articles, but the truth is that doesn’t happen overnight. So let’s talk about what is possible in terms of making money online, and what is not possible.

Writing Online Won’t Make You Rich Immediately

Writing articles for the web will not make you a million your first week. Chances are you won’t even make a hundred dollars your first week unless you are producing a lot of content that pays upfront. I tend to prefer writing my content for residual or revenue share type of payment set ups because I have found that I can earn more in the long-run for these pieces. But that’s only helpful if you don’t need the money that second. Otherwise you would be better off considering some of the websites that pay you upfront for your work vs creating your blog site or contributing to content sites.

Writing Online Can Pay a Significant Amount of Money

I have written hundreds of articles over the past three years and one thing I can say with certainty: Online content production can most definitely pay off for you and make a stream of income that pays you month after month. That’s why I appreciate the residual pay models so much since I can continue to get paid “forever” for articles I wrote two or three years ago. Mind you, when I began I thought it was great to get $15 for a single article. Now I require $40 minimum for private contract work.

Affiliate Links, Revenue Share and Even Upfront Pay Take Time

Yes, you can make money quickly, especially by taking private contract jobs. But even using affiliate links, smaller upfront pay jobs and revenue share websites take time. However, they often continue to pay out over a long period of time, making you money for an extended period of time. Last September when I took a month off work to have a baby, I was able to have enough coming in from what I’d done in previous years to pay the mortgage! But it didn’t happen overnight.

The Magic Number

Usually it has been my experience at Suite101 that writers begin to see a decent return on their effort at 50-100 articles. Whether that takes you two months (one per day) or a year (one per week) is completely up to you!

Jun

Making Money Online – Upfront vs Residual vs Affiliate Pay

By AngEngland | Making Money

5 Comments

Photo by Dani Simmonds

So – there are different types of payments when it comes to writing for the web.

Upfront Payment for Making Money Writing Online

You write an article and get paid X amount of money and that is that. If you want more money, you must write another article. On the other hand, you know that if you need a certain amount of money, you must write a certain number of articles.

Let’s say you need to make $150 extra each month. Demand Studios pays $15 for assigned articles and $5 for submitted titles if approved. So you can say, “OK – I have to write 10 articles each month in order to make $150″, write 10 articles, and get $150 bucks.

The downside to writing for upfront payment is that if you want $150 again the next month, you must write 10 articles again. And the month after that. And the month after that. Because you got all your money upfront.

Demand Studios and Associated Content are just a couple of the many sites that pays writers upfront – other blog posts will cover other sites.

Residual Pay for Writing Online

Residual pay or revenue sharing type payment models mean that you write the article, it gets published, and you slowly collect a share of the revenue the article creates for the website. So if you write an article for Suite101.com you might only get paid $.26 that first month. But each article you write, you continue to increase your payment. You also continue to collect money on that first article – the first ten articles – the first twenty articles.

So while you will not get rich from only having 10 articles in place, you will continue to collect every single month for any revenue that comes in. At Suite101.com, I now make enough to pay the mortgage payment every month. And when I took a month off to have a baby I STILL made enough to pay the mortgage. Because I didn’t just get $15 upfront and then never make another cent…I made a few pennies one month, a few more the next, and the next, and the next. I actually average between $1-4 per article per month on Suite101. Every month. Whether I write a million new articles or not. I no longer average 10 articles a month there, as I did at one time, but still make a healthy income.

Most of the sites I write for are residual pay or revenue share model websites including Type-A-Mom, Examiner.com and Suite101.com

Affiliate Pay on Blog Posts and Articles

Affiliate payment is when you share income not with the website, but with retailers. One of the most familiar affiliate programs out there is Amazon.com. For example when I reviewed the book “On Writing Well” you will see a little ad to buy the book from Amazon.com. When someone clicks “MY” special link and makes a purchase, Amazon can see the buyer came in from my referral link and will give me a small (very) percentage.

Many – MANY companies have affiliate programs, and web writers should ask whether a website will allow affiliate links or not. Some, like Suite101, do not. Others, like Examiner, or Hubpages do. So many posts on Examiner.com include affiliate links – last month I made $30 from a single post because the swine flu scare had people purchasing some herbal remedies. Even though the post was written for Examiner.com, and I made money from Examiner for the article, I also got paid from Mountain Rose Herbs Company from the affiliate sales.

Hope this makes sense. If you have any other questions, let me know. Yes, there are more ways to make money from your website, but these are the three main ways most people I know choose monetize their online writing efforts.

Mar

Make Money on Blog or Website Without Google Adsense

By AngEngland | Making Money

4 Comments

While I do use Google Adsense on my site, I wanted to share with you guys another option for making money on your website or blog in an inobstrusive way. Exit Junction is an advertising revenue company that will pay you when readers exit your website.

For example, if you search “Effective web writing tweets” in google, the first search result that appears is my SEO Tips from Twitter post. When someone clicks on a search engine result to enter my blog, then uses the back arrow to exit my blog, ExitJunction will bring them automatically to an ad page with related ad results. If the reader clicks the ad, you earn revenue.

I love that there is a potential for earning revenue without having too much clutter and business on my site! Google adsense is ok – but this gives me a unique way to earn revenue without having to add link ads (which I cannot stand) or even more sidebar clutter.

Additionally – ExitJunction rewards referrals, so once you check out the program please use my referral link if you decide to join. As with everything else I’ve tried on the web, nothing is going to make you rich “quick”, however I have earned more through ExitJunction than I have through Google Adsense so far, so it’s definitely been worthwhile for me personally. And since you aren’t using up valuable real estate on your website to test it out, what have you got to lose?