Blogging is now an accepted fixture around the Internet and pretty much everybody and their dog has a blog these days. Some may use it as chiefly a social activity (something like a myspace or facebook page) where they post happenings in their lives for their friends to read, others use it as a venue for their creative expression where they can showcase their writing talents, and still others use it for promotional purposes.
Since this article is about using blogging as a free internet marketing method, we’ll discuss it from the promotional angle.
Promotional blogging is a part of a type of marketing called “niche marketing.” Niche marketing involves creating a blog about a certain subject, say, home repair. You picked home repair because is your thing and you know tons about it. So you start a blog about home repair and you’ve posted information in there about how to repair stucco, how to paint a room, etc. In other words, you are providing some real information that people can use to help them repair their homes. You can make money from a blog like this in two ways, and probably a combination of the two will work best:
Adsense: Adsense is Google’s advertising program for publishers. Publisher is another word for website or blog owner. You must apply to be approved by Google, and once you are, by inserting a bit of javascript (it’s cut and paste, no coding knowledge needed) you can run Google ads relevant to your content. This means, in the case of your home repair blog, ads related to home repair, like ads for tools and materials. The idea is the closer the relevance between the ads on your site and your content, the greater the likelihood that they’ll be clicked, and for every click, you will earn money.
Affiliate links: Whether you get them from conventional networks, like Clickbank, Paydotcom, or Commission Junction, or from CPA networks like Clearblue or AzoogleAds, the idea is to pick products that are related to your site content, just like your Adsense ads are. So for our home repair blog, we would need to include affiliate links for power tools, home repair supplies, and home repair books or videos.
See, because you’re creating a blog around an entire concept, you’re not really selling anything so much as giving helpful information about a subject you know about and enjoy, and you are including information on products and services that might be of interest to this group of people.
One thing that has changed in the promotional aspect of blogs are the new FTC regulations that state you must be clear that you will make money from the affiliate links on your blog. The reason for this is to create more transparency and to cut out a lot of the “fake mommy blogs” that suddenly began appearing out of nowhere. All that this means is that if you have affiliate links on your blog (Google Ads are obviously ads, so they’re not affected) that you disclose the fact that you will earn a commission if someone buys though your link. The disclosure and be right in the post where you’re pitching the product or somewhere off the the side where people can clearly see it.
For more information on blogging and other ways to make money online, please check out my recommended products. Are you struggling with writing? Are you a non-native English speaker? Hire me to write custom content created just for you. Article Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/blogging-articles/free-ways-to-make-money-online-blogging-1641899.html
Tags: commission junction, conventional networks, creative expression, niche marketing, paydotcom
