Every aspiring marketer should repeat this mantra every day; “I can only make money when I sell!”
It’s one truth that often gets overlooked. Marketers get caught up in the details of running a business, losing sight of the most important thing. They work hard to provide value, aiming to build trust and credibility with their audience.
They’re constantly creating content, trying to outdo their competition. Amidst all these efforts they forget the aspect – selling.
Unfortunately, many marketers fail to prioritize selling and end up with failing results. They have blogs filled with content that are useless when it comes to generating income. To avoid this problem, it’s crucial to monetize your blog
Selling becomes the driver of profitability. How else will you earn money? Even if you display sponsored content on your blog, you’re essentially selling ad space.
There are ways to make money through your blog. Ultimately, you need someone to make a purchase or click on an ad for the funds to reach your bank account. That’s what this article focuses on – teaching you five methods to turn your blog into a machine that works tirelessly for you.
Selling Products As An Affiliate
This is perhaps the easiest way to monetize because all you have to do is promote other people’s products and earn commissions from the resulting sales. You don’t have to worry about finer details or customer service; your main focus is on pre-selling and creating reviews.
There are various platforms for affiliates to promote products, such as Amazon, ClickBank, ShareASale, Rakuten, and more. Once you’re registered with these platforms, it’s a matter of adding affiliate links on your blog that align with your niche.
It’s crucial to maintain consistency between your niche and the products you endorse. For example, promoting a herpes cream on a toy blog simply because it offers payouts wouldn’t be appropriate.
Ideally, you should promote a combination of digital and tangible products. It’s also wise to diversify the platforms on which you promote these products. This will safeguard you against any ill effects.
Many marketers rely solely on Amazon Associates, which has low commission rates. If they were unexpectedly banned, their earnings would stop without explanation. This would be a disheartening experience.
So, what can we learn from this? The key takeaway is to diversify your income streams as much as possible. Diversify!!!
Sell your own digital products
Selling your own products through your blog can be a profitable endeavor. However, it may require some technical knowledge, such as setting up sales pages and funnels, creating compelling sales copy, and developing a high-quality product.
The key is to ensure that your product and sales copy are top-notch and have high conversion rates. While it may require some effort, the potential rewards can be substantial.
To streamline the process, you can leverage page and funnel builders like Thrive Themes, ClickFunnels, OptimizePress. These tools are designed to simplify the workflow while still allowing you ample control over the creation and management of your offerings. Platforms, like Fiverr and/or Upwork allowing you to focus on your strengths.
Remember that although it may require effort, initially diversifying your product offerings and exploring avenues beyond relying on third-party platforms will enable greater stability and potential for financial success in the long run.
The reality is that you don’t have to handle everything on your own. The great news is that you can delegate aspects of the process to freelancers on platforms like Fiverr and/or Upwork, allowing you to focus on your strengths.
Once all the different parts are completed, you simply piece them all together, and Presto! You’ll have your own unique product that you can sell through your blog. Considering the content you regularly share, and the trust and credibility you’ve built with your audience, selling a product created by you will likely be much easier than selling someone else’s Product.
Your audience already trusts you. By creating and selling your own products, you’ll enjoy flexibility and control over other factors such as pricing, if it’s a one-time fee versus recurring monthly/yearly memberships, the extent of your sales funnel (including upgrades or down sells), the subject matter of the product itself as well, and customer service.
It may require effort. From a business perspective, it also offers more freedom and potentially significantly higher profits if done well.
Selling Tangible Products
This point is similar, but now we’re talking about selling actual tangible products. To do this, you’ll need to set up a store with a shopping cart that can handle tasks like calculating shipping costs. It’s a bit more complex because you must also fulfill the orders.
You’ll have some decisions to make here. Will you be selling print-on-demand products? Will you be using dropshipping, which is a more hands-on approach? Perhaps you’ll prefer to maintain your inventory and handle shipping orders yourself. Another option could be utilizing Fulfillment By Amazon (FBA).
There are choices, so it’s important to research and determine which method best suits your business. You don’t want to generate many sales and spend most of your time at the post office.
Email Marketing
It seems like no online marketing discussion can be complete without mentioning email marketing – and that’s because it truly works.
Unlike social media marketing, where your message can get lost or blocked by your audience, most people regularly check their emails. That’s where you want to make an impact… For selling purposes and to Monetize Your Blog!
Yes! Remember, the ultimate goal is selling… But always keep in mind the importance of delivering value through your emails. Striking a balance between promotion and providing content is crucial in this aspect.
First things first, you should start by creating a list from your blog. The convenient method to achieve this is by utilizing software like Thrive Leads. With Thrive Leads, you can easily incorporate opt-in forms, pop-ups, scroll mats, and more. It’s a tool that many marketers find beneficial.
Another great plugin to consider is Post Gopher. This plugin allows your site visitors to download your blog posts as PDFs so they can access them later in exchange for providing their email addresses.
Once these tools are set up, the next step is connecting your opt-in form to an autoresponder platform like ConvertKit. ConvertKit is widely regarded as one of the best autoresponders in the industry.
What sets it apart is its feature that enables subscribers to double opt-in with one mouse click when they want to download a product or similar offerings. This eliminates the need for a two-step confirmation process required by autoresponders, often leading to losing subscribers who don’t follow through.
However, let’s not get too caught up in technicalities – remember that it’s crucial to have a means of collecting emails on your blog and implementing an autoresponder sequence to engage and nurture your audience.
Lastly, remember to leverage your email communications by promoting any products you may have or affiliate products that align with your audience’s interests.
Why? Because selling is crucial! That’s the reason!
Offer Your Services
I saved this point for last because it has one drawback. When you provide a service that requires your involvement, you exchange your time for money. This means there’s a limit to how much you can earn unless you have arrangements in place, such as royalties or commissions from those who hire you.
Common examples of services include content writing, copywriting, graphic design, video creation, and more. These tasks can be time-consuming. While you may earn well from them, it’s important to note that they still require effort and are not income. However, the decision is yours.
Alternatively, you could offer software as a service. Generate income without extensive involvement.
You may also act as a middleman by utilizing service arbitrage to sell services others provide. You can charge a rate. Hire a freelancer at a lower cost to do the job on your behalf.
After ensuring that the freelancer has done a job you will deliver the work to the person who hired you and keep the difference, as profit. Naturally maintaining your reputation requires delivering quality work.
Arbitrage is completely legal. Individuals engage in it frequently. To sum up the five approaches mentioned earlier are genuinely all you require to generate a six or seven figure income, with your blogs. You have the option to implement two or three of these strategies and witness an increase, in your earnings within a couple of months. Begin working on them today…. Keep in mind the importance of marketing and selling!
