Squeezing Cash Out of Your Blog/Website
by Derrick Lascola
Hundreds of visitors descend on your site every day. All for a glimpse at your profound insights, your posts. There is one problem though. Although the world has been enlightened and you love blogging, you haven’t made a dime. Yes I know, not a good trade. Well, fortunately you can benefit financially from all you hard work and it is not as hard as you might think.
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is a partnership. A partnership with other websites or other businesses. In simple terms, they have a product or service that they want to sell and you have the traffic or the visitors that may be interested. Working together, both partners can benefit financially. For every click, purchase or registration through a partner link (placed on your website), you earn income. The trick is obviously which partners, ads and or links to use on your website.
Here are a few tips on using affiliate programs to generate cash.
1. Choose relevant links
As we know your readers visit your site for its content. i.e…Your insight on backpacking across Europe or biking across the country. They come for a specific reason. In all likelihood, these readers aren’t going to be interested in links to Toy stores. However they may be interested in backpacking or biking gear. A site or links to these products would be ideal. Now obviously you can’t exclude every irrelevant link but you can be selective. The higher the relevancy the better.
2. Links embedded in your article converts better
Whenever you can, embed you link/ads in the body of your content. Ads that are placed on the sides usually get completely ignore and treated as useless advertisements. Now if you have the extra free space and it happens to be on the sides you can utilize it. Just make sure that the most relevant ads are added to your content first. Most ads within your article is read, only if quickly. Why? We are given the impression by the author that he thought it was important enough to embed it in the article. If your visitors value your content/opinions, chances are that they will be willing to visit a link or two.
3. Periodically rotate links/ads
An extremely important point here. Make sure that you rotate you ads or links periodically. If you never change your links you will find that people will learn to ignore them. They are old ads that they have seen before and they will become easy to tune out. However if your ads are fresh and constantly rotating then there is always something new for your visitors to see. Something that he or she might miss if they don’t pay attention. New affiliate marketing opportunities are always out there. You should always be on the look out for new things that your visitors might find interesting. Your visitors will be more likely to notice changes.
4. Ensuring that your links are inviting/appealing
Lets face it, most people are going to avoid a button that says “Click Here” The only time you may get a click this way is from curiosity or pure boredom. That is not how we want to run our marketing campaign. Your links should be inviting, they should be interesting and engaging. For example, rather than a link that says “Click Here”, you might use a link that says “Reviews - Top rated bikes”. Just ask yourself what you would consider appealing, in most cases. Usually it is some kind of banner or picture with links. Plain text Adsense ads are great but tough to wade through. Most times people ignore them. A nice banner draws immediate attention. Now obviously no one approach works in every case so you need to learn to mix up text ads and images/banners. Test your ads, revise and test again.
5. Not every link has to be a Click Per Action (CPA) opportunity.
Don’t b surprised to find that some programs are simply an exchange of links. I link to you and you link back to me in return. Although these links don’t necessarily squeeze any cash directly out of your website, they do boost your traffic. This boost in traffic can be converted in to cash via sales etc.
The thing to remember here is that not any one item works 100% of the time. The trick is to mix up your ad selection and add location to keep you view fresh for your visitors.
Check back here at You Make a Website Blog soon for more tips.
