When I first started blogging I was spending 30-50 hours a month creating content, converting visitors into email subscribers, and selling products and services (none of which I created myself – I focused entirely on affiliate marketing. More on that later).

While I eventually outsourced most of my content to skilled writers, I still spend time evaluating advertising options, reviewing products that I can promote, building my mailing list and creating ad campaigns to boost traffic and keep my blogs in the forefront.

While you can delegate many tasks to a team, such as content creation and even marketing, you will want to be directly involved in the initial building phase.  This is your brand, after all. You need to make sure every piece of content has your voice, carries your message and represents your business in the best possible way.

No one will ever be as careful and professional with building your blog as you will be, right? So, dig your heels in and commit to spending the first few months building your blog from the ground floor up. Then, and only then, should you begin to create a team that will help you manage your blog and eventually, expand into other avenues with other niche-based blogs (if you choose to do that).

Again, in no way is blogging a hands-free method of making money during the INITIAL stages. You must be prepared to put in some time and effort if you truly want to succeed.

But the good news?  Your hard work will pay off.

The 5-Step Formula

While there are countless reports and articles that overcomplicated the process of making money with blogging, here’s a basic overview of how it’s done:

1: Create a blog and register a memorable domain. Avoid remotely hosted options. You need to be in full control of your website so you can take advantage of all the different revenue options with no limitations (or other people’s advertisements).

2: Write (or outsource) killer content that will generate traffic and drive visitors in. This content needs to be extremely high-quality, targeted and informative. All meat, no veggies.

3:  Convert your visitors into email subscribers so you can build your list. A newsletter is key in building a successful blog online. Scratch that; a newsletter is essential to be successful in nearly ANY market online. You will never make as much money without one.

4: Communicate with those subscribers regularly so your lists don’t run cold. Build rapport and trust.  Nurture relationships with your market.  This is where you can build a recognized brand as an authority in your market and set yourself apart from the competition (especially those bloggers who aren’t doing this!).

5:  Sell products and services to your audience via your blog and through your newly cultivated newsletter.

Sounds easy enough, right? It is. But it will take time. Let’s dig into each of these steps a bit deeper so you better understand how it works.

CREATING YOUR BLOG
This report is focused on how to make money with your blog, so I won’t go into detail about building the platform. Just know that you should always choose a memorable domain that is targeted to your market and that you set up a professional hosting account that houses your blog.  Don’t use a free host or a remotely hosted option like Blogger.

CREATING CONTENT FOR YOUR BLOG
The type of content you create will depend on your target audience, but every piece of content should always be informative and the juiciest, most relevant topic you can come up with.

Your content will be what drives in traffic and keeps visitors returning to your blog. It needs to establish your blog as an informative source of content in your market so make sure you spend extra time crafting compelling content (or outsource to experienced writers who know your market inside and out). 

Insider Tip: An easy way to provide extra value on your website is by using a plugin like www.PostGopher.com that will turn your article content into PDF files that your visitors can save to their computers. This lets them read it at a later time, keeping their attention and increasing your chances that they will digest your content.

BUILD AND CONVERT CUSTOMERS
You need to always be working towards building your list.  This is a process you can set up on autopilot by using on-site opt in forms that capture visitor’s information and add them to your mailing list.  Plugins like www.OptinMonster.com make it easy to add visitor’s to your mailing lists.

Offer an incentive to those who join your lists such as providing them with a special report not available anywhere else on your blog, or special offers and discounts on products and services.  Always over-deliver, and start off easy. Don’t inundate your subscribers with paid offers right away – build rapport with them first and let them know you are looking out for their best interests.

Then, set up autoresponder campaigns that will broadcast different valuable offers and freebies to your subscribers over time. I personally set up an introduction/welcome email to go out to my subscribers as soon as they join my list.

Then, 2-3 days later, I have another automated email go out that offers a free special report on my niche. Then, a week later, I begin to condition them to open my emails because they know they’ll receive value by doing so. Another free offer, a special discount code or a special infographic based on what my visitors are most interested in.

It’s not until 7-12 days later before I begin to actively sell, and I do so as passively as possible. Rather than bold, in-your-face offers, I work WITH them by providing valuable resources or tools that I believe will help them or improve their lives in some way.

When subscribers feel that you are a friend who is looking out for them, rather than a marketer whose only interest is in making money, they will respond accordingly.  So, don’t be a pushy email marketer – be a professional blogger with a pulse on your market and one who is willing to go the distance for your visitor’s (and potential customers).

Earn their trust and respect.

And finally, sell products and services like no one’s business!  This is when you’ll start to make money with your blog and as you do, you’ll see what your visitors are responding to so you can fine-tune your system and begin to tailor both your email campaigns and the content on your blog, around what they are most interested in.

Which brings us to the meat of this report:  HOW to make money.

What products or services should you sell? How can you turn free content into profit?  How can you use your blog as a lead generation tool that will make money steadily?

I’ll show you how in the next chapter.

Top Money Maker

One of the most important aspects to building a profitable blog is deciding what form of monetization will work best for your market.

There are many different options available to you so figuring out which one to start with (and ultimately, gauging what format your visitors are more likely to respond to) is quite often the trickiest part in the process.

So, let’s break it down for you so that you can create a surefire system that will have you earning money in no time at all, while avoiding the under-performing options that so many people fall victim to.

DEFINE YOUR OBJECTIVE:
You may start a blog simply because you’re interested in writing content for your niche market. Perhaps you have a lot of information to share and you enjoy helping others.  Great!  But, you still need to define your blog’s objective.

Is your blog designed around attracting visitors with useful free content that you can then turn into a lead?

Are you planning to use your blog to provide a free offer in exchange for an email address to build targeted mailing lists?

If so, then your blog is a lead generation mechanism and that is your objective. 

The point of creating a blog isn’t just to make money by directly selling products and services, either with your own offers or via affiliate marketing offers.  Your blog should also be a lead generation tool, a way to tap into your market, and build authority in your niche.

So, how should you begin to monetize your blog?

Affiliate Marketing!

Even if you have a product or service of your own, if you are new to your niche and aren’t established as a product developer, you should begin by creating compelling content for your blog and monetizing that content with established products and services from business owners that offer affiliate marketing options.

You can then siphon credibility from these established professionals, and better yet, you can let them do most of the work!

With affiliate marketing, you aren’t stuck in support desks wading through emails from customers who need help.

You aren’t working on graphic designers, promotional material and media kits in order to provide tools for promoters to use.

You aren’t working on updating products, chasing down and repairing issues or bugs in your software.

As an affiliate, you have one job to do: Sell the product and make money!

Affiliate marketing is hands down, the smartest strategy.

Need more convincing?

Affiliate marketers can set up profitable blogs faster than anyone else because you are not spending months investing time and money creating products. You can choose from hundreds of high-yielding products and feature them on your blog with a few clicks.

Affiliate marketers can generate an income that is almost purely passive. You aren’t involved in support, development or updates leaving you free to create content, build your email lists and evaluate products from developers that will make you the most money possible.

And affiliate marketing can also introduce you to hot selling products, giving you ideas for your OWN product later on down the road once your blog is established and you’re generating steady traffic! You’ll know exactly what kind of products sell without having to extensively test your own products, minimizing the risk of failure.

It’s a win-win situation.

The only exception to this rule is if you are a service provider. If you make money offering consulting, selling real estate or any other type of service, you will want to start offering those services on your blog from the beginning.  But if you are not a service provider, affiliate marketing is the ONE monetization strategy you should focus on.

Not: Google Adwords, not paid advertising, and not product development – at least not in the initial stages.  Affiliate marketing is where it’s at.

Sell High, Earn Higher

If you’re thinking, “What kind of affiliate products should I sell?”, we’re on the same page.  That is the only thing you should be concerned about when choosing how to monetize your blog.

The key to success is not to go after cheap markets. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that it’s better to sell a $10 product because more people will likely buy it. It’s neither true, nor logical. In fact, you’ll make things harder on you and you’ll have to work that much more to generate a decent income every month.

Instead, do what the pro bloggers do: start with higher-end affiliate products ($77 and up) and work your way down. Not only will you make more money, you won’t have to sell nearly as many copies in order to do so!

The only way a lower front-end product works is if you have a solid backend of higher priced products.  In publishing, authors call this first product (book 1 in their series), a lost leader.  You are basically selling at a price point low enough to qualify buyers (instead of freebie seekers), while enticing them into buying your backend products that are higher priced. That’s where you make your money.

In affiliate marketing, the only way that selling a low priced front-end offer makes sense if you have a series of high-priced back end offers up for grabs. When just starting out in blogging (and in affiliate marketing), it’s much easier to go for gold and promote higher priced offers on your front end while you cut your teeth on the process.

In addition, as you promote affiliate offers and build up your email lists you’ll be able to easily launch your own product later on at a higher price because you’ve cultivated groups of subscribers that are comfortable paying higher prices! 

And remember, the one metric above all others is the number in your mailing list.  Don’t worry about RSS feed subscribers – that is no longer worth considering – just focus on building your newsletters because that will be the true predictor of how much money your blog will make.

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW:
How can you find the best affiliate products for your blog?

The easiest solution is by joining the Chitika advertising network here:  https://chitika.com/publishers

While there are many different advertising networks (and I will share some other money-makers with you in just a bit), Chitika is one of the leading advertising networks online. 

Here are others I have used. These are all fantastic resources for new blogs:

LinkShare: *Rakuten Marketing:
https://www.linkshare.com/

One of the largest affiliate networks online with over 10 million affiliate partnerships. You’ll have no shortage of product and service options to choose from.

Commission Junction:

http://www.cj.com/
This is the one I started with so many years ago (I even have a wooden train whistle they sent their first wave of affiliates!), and I continue to use them today.  Very trustworthy, reliable advertising network.

ShareASale:

https://www.shareasale.com/
One of the most popular advertising networks with over 3,000 merchants participating so you’ll find a ton of products to promote.

Amazon Affiliate Program:

https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/
While the pay ratio is lower than many other networks, they offer you the ability to sell products from a highly recognized brand – plus access to their full inventory of products.  I recommend testing out a handful of products when you first start blogging as they are exceptionally easy to get started with. 

I’ll include some of the other advertising networks that I’ve used at the end of this report in the resources section. For now, join those four networks and scan their inventory for a handful of products that are relevant to your niche and what you feel your visitors would be most interested in.

Then, create your content.  If you are on a tight budget and plan to outsource most of the work, spend the majority of your dollars on content development.  This is how you’ll stand out from other blogs in your market, capture the attention of your audience and encourage repeat traffic.  If you do nothing else, spend time (or money) creating the highest quality KILLER content possible.

Not sure what to write about?

Research the top 10 blogs in your niche market. Look at what they are writing about, what kinds of headlines and titles they are using. Which articles receive the highest number of likes and comments?  Write down everything you find, creating a swipe file of information that will help you create the kind of content those in your market are most interested in.

Take your time with this! If you aren’t sure what kind of content your visitors want most, you really need to spend some time researching before you begin. It doesn’t take long. Spend an hour or two scanning popular blogs and you’ll quickly have a list of possible ideas.

Remember, all you really need to start blogging is 2-3 high-quality articles.  Or, flip the script and offer your visitors a combination of content types including Infographics, articles, or a video.

And always set up your mailing list opt-in box before you start driving traffic to your blog.

 If you want an affordable option that is also user-friendly, check out http://www.MailerLite.com or http://www.MailChimp.com and then integrate an opt-in form application such as LeadPages.net or OptinMonster.com to streamline the process. 

Recap:

·   Create 2-5 pieces of killer content in the form of articles, Infographics or videos.

·   Invest in a mailing list service and set up your introduction/welcome email. No selling in the first 2-3 emails.

·   Offer them ONE free thing: a report, a free download, or something else that’ll appeal to your market.

·   Integrate 1-3 affiliate products into your blog content and into your mailing list newsletters.

·   When you can afford to, purchase a mailing list opt-in plugin that will capture leads.
You can go without this just by incorporating your mailing list sign up code into your blog itself, but honestly, applications such as OptinMonster.com are a lot more professional as they not only will automatically create the pop up boxes or on-site forms, but you can also customize it so that the forms appear based on user activity (such as how many times the visitor has been there, where the visitor is on your website, etc.).

·   Evaluate affiliate products regularly from within the affiliate networks.  Keep a pulse on your market, constantly visiting established blogs in your niche in order to stay up to date with the type of content that is getting a lot of attention as well as the kind of products that are selling.

·   Generate traffic! Engage potential visitors through social media, create ad campaigns with Google Content Display network, utilize forums and communities within your niche to introduce your blog and maximize exposure.

Conclusion

I want you to start selling today. Don’t make the mistake that so many rookie bloggers make and believe that you should first build up your subscriber list to 1,000 before you start selling.  Don’t worry about having “enough” content on your blog.

Begin by posting 2-3 highly informative posts on your blog that will appeal to your target audience and choose 1-3 affiliate products to promote.  Divide that up and feature one product for every 2-3 articles on your blog, with the other affiliate offers being sent out to your newsletter subscribers.

The key is not to be pushy.  Provide valuable content that will attract visitors and integrate an affiliate offer or two within your blogs structure.  That way you aren’t shoving it in their faces but rather reminding them of a useful tool or service that will help them in some way.

It’s hard to stay motivated as a blogger if you aren’t making money so by kick starting your efforts immediately, rather than trying to perfect everything, you’ll see results that much faster.  You’ll also be able to generate revenue that can go into building your team, hiring writers and marketers.

Once you have cashed that first check or accepted that first payment into Paypal for your affiliate sales, trust me; you’ll be hooked.