BLOGGING FOR FUN
I know that some of you started your blog without thinking about making money from it. You had a topic that you were interested in and thought you would share your thoughts with whoever happened upon your blog.
You may have had a small following made up of family and friends. Maybe they were telling you what a great writer you are. Or you could have gotten a lot of questions about your topic which made you realize that there was a lot of interest in it and need for your blog.
BLOGGING FOR PROFIT
One day you realized you could make money from your blog. You may not have been thinking about thousands of dollars each month, but maybe just a little bit each month to cover the cost of having your blog hosted online and your time.
You began to look for information about how you could monetize your blog. Monetize is the word used that means make money from.
MONETIZING IDEAS
All the information you read about monetizing your blog repeated the same things over and over:
affiliate marketing
digital products
services
physical products
advertising
Which of these monetizing ideas appeal to you?
For me, it was affiliate marketing. I joined Rafuken Marketing (LinkShare), Commission Junction, and Impact. These three companies have thousands of merchants that they work with but it is up to you to apply to each merchant individually to get accepted as an affiliate. In your early days of blogging, there will be a lot of rejections.
Rejections come about because your blog doesn’t have enough traffic or you don’t have enough posts on your site, among other reasons.
SKIMLINKS
Then I discovered SkimLinks which works with 20,000 merchants and you don’t have to sign up with any of them individually. Once you sign up with SkimLinks you are an affiliate of all the merchants they work with. Let’s say Amazon rejects your affiliate application when you apply directly to Amazon or through another marketing program. You can still create Amazon affiliate links through SkimLinks.
The drawback is that SkimLinks wants 25 percent of whatever commission you earn from their affiliate links. But is that such a drawback? In your early days of blogging, having SkimLinks take care of turning all the links on your site into affiliate links saves you time. That saved time makes it worth the 25 percent you give up.
CLICK HERE to check out SkimLinks.
DIVERSIFY
But I believe in not putting all my eggs in one basket which is why I still use LinkShare, CJ, Impact and Amazon separately from SkimLinks.
Keep reading my blog as I add more “how to make money from blogging” posts. I’ll share what I learn as I go along. There’s something new learn at every turn!
