If you want to make some money online by promoting affiliate offers, then there are various ways for you to accomplish this. You could building landing pages for each offer you push, or even link directly to the offer depending on which advertising channel you use. But one of the ways to push affiliate offers online is by simply creating a blog.

Blogs have many advantages. They make it very easy to add unique and new content, which will help them remain interesting with readers and also make SEO easier. With blogging platforms such as Joomla and WordPress, creating your own blog has never been easier. So how do you make one for affiliate marketing? Here is an example scenario:

Let’s say that you are promoting web hosting affiliate offers. The main topic of your blog will be web hosting, or issues that are of interest to other internet marketers or webmasters. You would make regular posts such as: web building tips, reviews of particular web hosts, comparisons between different types of web hosting, SEO advice, etc. Basically, anything that is related to being a webmaster.

There will be various ways for you to “plug” the affiliate ads into your blog. You can, of course use classic banner ads, or text ads placed in prominent locations. But it is also possible for you to include affiliate links inside the text of your blog. For example, you could link the name of a web host that you talk about in a blog post to the affiliate offer.

But one important thing to remember when you are creating a blog for affiliate marketing is to not make it look like this is the only purpose of your blog. Sure, for you the main objective of your blog would be to generate money for you. But your readers come to your blog in order to be informed about something they care about, not simply read post after post that is singing praises of various different companies and products.

So back to our example of a web hosting blog. Sure, it is fine to have certain posts talk about how great a certain web host is, or that inform readers of a special promotion that a hosting company is having at this time. But you also need to include some informative content as well. So you could make some posts that talk about web design tools or posts that explain how VPS web hosting is different from shared hosting, etc. If your readers notice that your blog is nothing more than an advertising platform, chances are they won’t trust it very much. They will probably leave to go to another site and the chances that someone would click one of your ads and sign up for one of the web hosts that you are pushing are quite remote if your blog is structured that way. Basically, the key to success is having regularly updated and informative content.

If you’ve decided to start an online business of any sort, you probably know that blogging is a great marketing tool. A blog can help you get the word out about any products you’re promoting, and adding a blog to your marketing campaign is a great idea. There are a few different types of blog you can use, and it’s important to pick the right one to suit your needs.

Personal Blog

Personal blogs are typically written from the first person perspective, and they detail the happenings of someone’s life. Personal blogs are very effective at creating a sense of trust between the blogger and the reader,  because the blogger is sharing pieces of their personal life with the reader. As you make mention of any products or services you might be promoting on your personal blog, include affiliate links to them so that you can use your blog to bring in some money. Personal blogs tend to be the easiest for people to write, but the hardest to profit from. It can be difficult to work in links to products you’re promoting without sounding fake, or impersonal, and being personal is the cornerstone of a successful personal blog.

Niche Blog

You’ve probably read at least one niche blog today – in fact you’re reading one now. A niche blog is just a blog that covers a particular topic or set of topics on a daily basis. Niche blogs are a great way to generate ad revenue. Just write about what you want to write about, and put ads related to that topic on the blog. As time goes on and your traffic grows, you’ll start generating ad revenue without even trying.

Product Blog

A product blog displays various products in an informative or entertaining way. Most of the time, those products are tied together by some common factor, and most every product displayed on the blog leads to an affiliate link so that the blog owner can generate profits from the blog. If you’re going to run a product blog, it’s very important to keep the writing high quality. If the blog is boring, or if it comes of as “spammy” to the reader, your blog won’t get very far. Whether or not a product blog succeeds is directly related to how good the write ups for each product are.

Each type of blog has some strengths and weaknesses, and it’s important to figure out which one is right for your project. Choose carefully, and you’ll have a profitable blog in your future.

The number of blogs you should own is up for debate in a lot of forums and blogs that I read, so I thought I would weigh in on the topic.

I write for about 4 or 5 blogs as a writer personally, and I make sure that I do not take on more clients than that. I love the writing aspect of blogging, but not the promotion and business end of it. I prefer to write great content that brings visitors back again and again, and leave it up to the site owners to get the readers (you!). There is so much more to running a successful site than writing content and you must be conscience of that before jumping into 10 different niches.

With that being said, I think that the happy number of blogs you should own, at most is 4 or 5.

Why?

It really is simple, if you get stretched to thin trying to write on to many different topics and niches you are going to burn out really bad, really fast. It takes a lot of work to manage a successful blog. You need to write new content every day, do social media and promote the new posts, bookmark, do SEO, comment on other people’s blogs, post on forums related to your niche, and more. You simply can’t do it for more than 5 blogs, you will burn out.

Of course, if you hire out help for writing content, promoting the blog, SEO, and other aspects of your business, you can do more. But as a general rule if you are running the blog yourself no more than 4 or 5 blogs.

The reasoning behind this is because it takes about 1.5 hours per day to write that new content for each blog. Maybe closer to 2.5 hours, depending on your niches and how comfortable you are writing able them. So factoring that in, you have 2 hours per day in sheer writing on average, plush everything else you have going on. One tip, if you have 5 blogs, rotate your promoting every day. On day one promote blog A, day two blog B, etc. That way you can focus your energy on that one blog and not try to do everything at once.

Once you start getting traffic to your first few blogs you can start to expand, at this point you should have some cash-flow and be able to outsource some hired help to manage your blogs and update them for you. Focus your attention on what you are passionate about and write for those niches only at first, then build into other areas.

Blogging can take a whole lot longer than needed.  This is generally due to the time eating activities available to the blogger on the computer while they are trying or are at least supposed to be writing.  Effectively earning money from blogs requires the blogger to be focused on updating them.

A good way to keep yourself on task is to give yourself a lot of work.  This way, mentally, you will say I don’t have time for this because I have so many articles to write.  Whereas, when you only have one or two to write, you might think that you have time to take breaks, when realistically, you do not, because time is a precious resource, and it could be used elsewhere or on something else.  Writing a lot of posts at one time can save a lot of time as well as effort, because many writers can get on a roll, where they can pump out very articles very quickly, allowing them more extra time later to work on other things.

Using a white screen writing program, or a word processor in full screen mode can be very beneficial, because then, it will be the only thing you can look at, and nothing else on the screen can possibly distract.  This obviously doesn’t account for things outside of the computer, such as the TV or people, but those can be easily minimized as well.  Working with a full screen word processor in a closed off room without a TV is the best way to ensure you are writing what you need to be.

Social media sites are the biggest time sink for bloggers.  The sites themselves are designed to keep you on them, with so many different feature and things to do, you can’t even think of them and list them all in one hour.  They keep users coming back for more, which is what they are designed to do, and should be voided at all costs when trying to write.

During your down time, while you are just browsing the web, you should have a quick and easy way to jot down blog post ideas.  This may come in the form of a program, such as Microsoft OneNote, or EverNote, or even by just, old fashioned, pen and paper.  Whatever works for you, so long as it allows you to quickly and easily record what you want to write, and the source if you need to.

Photo credit: laffy4k