How would you like to be able to make some money from your blog? Depending on your subject matter, it is possible. Let’s look at some ways to get started.
There was a lot of hype in the last year or so about turning your blog into a cash machine. Many of the ebooks and programs promoted were pretty scammy in general and involved using blogs to generate huge amounts of replicated content and then filling the pages with contextual advertising programs. This is not what we’re going to recommend in this article.
If you’re blogging to help in promoting your business, you may already feel like you’re making money from your blog since you’re pulling in traffic and talking about your business. You could further monetize your efforts by promoting related affiliate programs or displaying contextual advertising.
Affiliate Programs
We’ll let you know right away that grabbing a banner or button from an affiliate program to post on your blog is not going to be a big cash machine for you. People visit blogs to read the blogs – not look at advertisements. But, that doesn’t mean that you can’t use affiliate programs to earn extra money.
What you do need to do is blog about the programs that you want to promote. Share a personal recommendation. Talk about how you use the product. And don’t just post about it once. Revisit a favorite product a few weeks down the road, and then again the next month. Don’t be spammy and hit your visitors over the head with sales messages. Just let them know how much you like it.
Contextual Advertising
In our experience, Google Adsense rarely seems to perform well on a blog. Yet, it’s the easiest to incorporate and a few have indicated that they do earn a steady if small income from their blog ad units.
There are other contextual options such as Chikita Mini Malls and ad units from Yahoo, MSN and Gazoogle. The biggest drawback in ad units is that you never know what might show up on your blog. You’ll have to decide if the profit earned is worth the space you give.
Serve Your Own Ads
If you find that serving ads for others is unprofitable, consider creating your own text ads and promote your own items and affiliate products in that space.
You have probably heard the old saying: “two heads are better than one”. Have you ever thought of applying that to your business? Teaming up with another WAHM is a great way to expand your business while learning new skills.
You can form a “joint venture” with another WAHM and create a way for you to promote your services together. You will both share in the work and the profits. For instance, maybe you are an expert in affiliate marketing and you have a WAHM friend who loves to write. You two can team up on an e-book about affiliate marketing! Or perhaps you have a friend who is awesome at creating podcasts, have her interview you about affiliate marketing and the two of you can sell the mp3. The choices are limitless!
If you have an idea about something you would like to create but do not know anyone to team up with, start researching people that have the skills you need. Send them an email and let them know you like their work and might like to team up. You can also ask for recommendations from WAHMs you already know or put up a post on a message board about what you would like to accomplish.
Whatever method you choose to find potential co-workers, interview several people before you make any decisions; you want the project to be a success. Look at samples of the work each person has done in the past. You will also want to make sure your personalities do not clash, as you will be spending a lot of time working together.
When you find someone you are interested in working with, make sure you both understand how the work will be divided, when the deadlines will be for each step of the project, how you are going to sell your product and how the profits will be divided. Keep looking for other joint venture opportunities as they are win-win situations – you can offer a new product or service to your current customers and the new product can also bring you a whole slew of new customers!
If you are easily distracted, staying focused on your business can be harder than doing the actual work of your business! It is very easy to procrastinate, especially when you are a WAHM. There are always ‘so many other things to do’.
Here is a secret that you may not have heard yet: The dishes can wait! The laundry can wait! So feel free to make those phone calls or answer those emails. The laundry and dishes will still be there, waiting for you! However, if you wait too long to call a client back, they may move on to someone who gets back to them faster than you do.
Why did you become a WAHM in the first place? Did you need to bring in an extra $500 a month to pay off credit cards? Was it to put money away for your children’s college fund? Or was it to save for retirement? Whatever the reason, write it down and put it where you will see it on a daily basis. When you are feeling distracted, look at what you wrote down. It will be easier to work when you remember why you are working in the first place.
You may want to team up with another WAHM. Send each other your goals and keep one another accountable. Call each other at the end of the day and discuss what you accomplished; you can share your successes or lend each other a sympathetic ear over things that didn’t go as you planned.
Stay motivated by setting daily, weekly and monthly goals. If you “work backwards” you will create a road map to your success. For instance, if you are in direct sales and your financial goal is to sell $1500 in product that month. Do the math and you’ll see that you need to sell $375 of product each week. Now, how many home parties do you need to hold each week to accomplish that? How many phone calls do you need to make each day in order to schedule those parties? When you accomplish your goals, give yourself a little treat to remind yourself that you worked hard and achieved success!
