“How do I find affiliate products to promote on my blog?”

Last week I spoke with a small group of bloggers here in Melbourne over a coffee. One of the topics that a number of them were interested in talking about was affiliate marketing. They were struggling with the advertising as a model to make money from their blogs and wanted to branch out and experiment with affiliate promotions on their blog.

However wanting to get into affiliate marketing and actually doing it are two different things. There are a number of challenges to overcome first.

One of these challenges is finding the right product to promoted.

Choosing the right products to promote in affiliate promotions is crucial for a number of reasons - the two main ones being:

1. Relevant Products are Key - if your blog draws an audience centered around a particular topic or demographic you’re unlikely to be able to sell products that have no relevancy to your blog’s topic.

2. The Quality of Products can Impact Your Long Term Brand - promote low quality products and you could be hurting your brand. Readers remember who they heard about products from and their trust of you and your blog will be increased or decreased by what you recommend to them.

So - choosing the right affiliate product is crucial. It not only impacts conversions and profitability but it impacts your brand and relationships with readers.
How to Find the Right Affiliate Product to Promote

A few tips and thoughts on finding affiliate programs to promote come to mind:

1. Google It - this one isn’t rocket science but it does work. If you have a Beauty Product blog google “Beauty Products Affiliate Program”. Insert your main keywords into that search and you may just find products that are relevant to your niche.
2. Look at Your Competition - what products are other people promoting in your niche. Quite often a quick glance down the sidebar of another successful blog in your niche to see what products and services they are promoting will reveal affiliate products you could promote to (and it could also point you to some relevant advertisers to promote).
3. Check out AdSense Ads - many of the AdSense ads appearing besides Google search results, on other blogs and even on your own blog are likely to be products with affiliate programs attached. Don’t click the ads on your own blog but checking out what the ads promote can reveal all kinds of potential affiliate partners. The same thing is true with other types of advertising. For example I was recently surfing on Facebook and saw an ad relevant for my blog - on clicking it I found a new product with an affiliate program that I’d not heard of before.
4. Approach Potential Affiliate Partners - this one might not work if you’re a new blog with small traffic but as your blog grows you might find yourself in a position to approach the makers of a product or service to see if they’d start some kind of affiliate program for you. I’ve done this a couple of times over the last year and it has been great. The best part of it is that you get a head start on your competition for the promotion as you’re likely to be the only person promoting it.
5. Search Affiliate networks - lastly there are quite a few affiliate networks around that list many affiliate programs. Most of these have search functions to allow you to type in keywords and find promotions relevant to your niche. Check out MarketLeverage, Clickbank, Commission Junction, PepperJam Network (disclaimer, MarketLeverage sponsors ProBlogger) and many more.
6. Search Online Stores for Products - many online stores like Amazon have affiliate programs attached to them. In general the comissions are not massive (for example Amazon’s range from as low as 4% up to 15% depending upon the type of product and how much you sell) - I guess they have narrower profit margins) - but stores like this have a massive range of products and can be a good place to start while you build traffic and find other programs.

LETS TRY IT...

AFFILIATE MARKETING IT IS`EASY????

It seems that more readers are asking this question than I previously thought.

In a recent poll here on ProBlogger I asked readers whether they’d done any affiliate marketing on their blogs. The results revealed that:

* 29% of readers regularly do it
* 24% occasionally do it
* 27% have never done affiliate marketing on their blogs
* 6% used to do it but don’t any more
* 14% don’t know what affiliate marketing is

There’s some interesting results there but it was the last category (of bloggers not knowing what affiliate marketing is) that I wanted to write this post for with the hope of answering the question. It’s pretty basic and quite beginner focused but for the 14% of you who don’t know what affiliate marketing is - here’s a brief introduction.

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Perhaps the simplest way to explain affiliate marketing is that it is a way of making money online whereby you as a publisher are rewarded for helping a business by promoting their product, service or site.

There are a number of forms of these types of promotions but in most cases they involve you as a publisher earning a commission when someone follows a link on your blog to another site where they then buy something.

Other variations on this are where you earn an amount for referring a visitor who takes some kind of action - for example when they sign up for something and give an email address, where they complete a survey, where they leave a name and address etc.

Commissions are often a percentage of a sale but can also be a fixed amount per conversion.

Conversions are generally tracked when the publisher (you) uses a link with a code only being used by you embedded into it that enables the advertiser to track where conversions come from (usually by cookies). Other times an advertiser might give a publisher a ‘coupon code’ for their readers to use that helps to track conversions.

* Advertisers often prefer affiliate marketing as a way to promote their products because they know they’ll only need to pay for the advertising when there’s a conversion. I knew when I started this affiliate program that while I’d earn less for each sale that having a network of affiliates promoting it would almost certainly increase overall sales levels.
* Publishers often prefer affiliate marketing because if they find a product that is relevant to their niche that earnings can go well in excess of any cost per click or cost per impression advertising campaign.

Why Affiliate Marketing Can Work Well on Blogs

Affiliate marketing isn’t the only way to make money from blogs and it won’t suit every blog/blogger (more on this below) but there are a few reasons why it can be profitable in our medium. Perhaps the biggest of these reasons is that affiliate marketing seems to work best when there’s a relationship with trust between the publisher and their readership.

I’ve found that as this trust deepens that readers are more likely to follow the recommendations that a blogger makes.

Of course this can also be a negative with affiliate marketing - promote the wrong product and trust can be broken (more on this below).
Affiliate Marketing - Easy Money?

While affiliate marketing can be incredibly lucrative it is important to know that affiliate marketing is not easy money. Most people who try it make very little as it relies upon numerous factors including:

* traffic (high traffic helps a lot)
* finding relevant products
* finding quality products
* building trust with your readers
* having a readership who is in a ‘buying mood’
* you being able to write good sales copy (and more)

There’s also some risk associated with affiliate marketing in that if you push too hard or promote products of a low quality you can actually burn readers and hurt your reputation and brand.

It’s also worth noting that affiliate marketing doesn’t work on all blogs. Some blogs are on topics where it is hard to find products to promote - other blogs attract audiences who are not in a buying frame of mind and for other blogs it just doesn’t fit with the blogger’s style or approach.

Tomorrow I want to continue the focus upon affiliate marketing with another post - this one on how to find affiliate products to promote.

17-Resources-For-Creating-A-Blog-Design

List - blog design blog

1. Weblog Usability - Top Ten Design Mistakes

Jakob Nielsen gives us the run down of the top 10 blog design mistakes. When Jakob talks, I listen… sometimes. I can’t help it, he has a lot to say. But his breakdown of the top 10 design mistakes is quick to the point so give it a read.

2. 13 Blog Cliches

Cliches suck, here are 13 of them for blogs. Yes, the calendar is one of them! Get rid of them please, they clutter blog designs and serve no real purpose.

3. 10 Principles of effective web design

Smashing Magazine does an excellent job of breaking down 10 important principles when it comes to web design, which also applies to blog design. Go read and learn.

4. What Makes Good Blog Design?

Well if you have been wondering about this question all along, Steven guides you through 10 important points to blog design.

5. 11 Factors to Consider When Designing Your Blog Theme

DailyBlogTips takes the usual lists of 10 points and tops it by adding one more. Go read it to find what that one more is.

6. 8 Reasons to Redesign Your Blog

This is for the people who are still unsure if it is worth the time to invest in a new blog design.

7. If your blog looks crap, it IS crap!

I think someone forgot to give him a hug when he was a kid, but he does make some good points.

8. 20 Types of Pages that Every Blogger Should Consider

That is about 20 more different design variations to consider when designing your blog. Of course you could make every page look exactly alike, but adding little tweaks here and there for different pages make it looks nice and lets the reader know they are on a different page.

9. Five Blog Design Mistakes that Make You Look dumb

Yeah, they really do make you look dumb. Ok, maybe not. But they definitely make your blog design worst. Check them out.

10. 5 Simple Ways to Make Your Blog Design POP

Article focuses on different things you can experiment with in order to make your blog design POP and get noticed more. This article was part of my blog design 101 series that is still ongoing.

11. 99 Sites All Designers Must Know

Jacob gives us not only a great list, but one that includes a screen shot of each site as well, which is cool. There are 99 of them so you better get started.

12. Best Design RSS Button Collection

A ton of RSS buttons to make sure no one misses your feed. On top of that, it makes your subscribe button look cool.

13. 20+ Free Web Design Ebooks and Guides

For those who are unwilling to spend a dime on real books.

14. Web Developer’s Handbook

A ton of links to web design resources all on one page. One downfall to this list is that it doesn’t seem updated with the latest, but there are still a lot of great stuff here that is relevant.

15. 101 Typography Resources for Web Designers

Steven at Vandelay Design searches the web using his super powers to bring us 101 typography resources. Great list of resources on typography.

16. Top 25 Free Icon Resources for Web Designers

All the free icon resources gathered in one place. Great for adding some visual interest to your blog design. Don’t get carried away and make everything into a button.

17. 25 Must Buy, Borrow, or Steal Books for Web Designers

My take on 25 books that are valuable for web designers and blog designers alike. Yes, I have read them and scribbled along the sides of the books with notes and epiphanies. I think some very old and wise guy once said “A book is not yours until you scribbled the hell out of the insides of it” or something along those lines.

31 Days to Building a Better Blog Challenge (2)

Today is Day 2 in the 31 Days to Building a Better Blog Challenge and today your task is to Do a First Time Reader Audit on your blog.

Get a friend or family member who has never read your blog before and sit them down at a computer.

Load your blog up and let your friend surf it.

Don’t talk to them as they do - but watch carefully how they use your blog.

* How do they navigate?
* Where do they click?
* What do they pause to read?
* What do they skip over?

Once they’ve surfed your blog ask them some questions about the experience.

* What were their first impressions?
* What did they first think your blog was about when they arrived at it?
* Did they find it easy to read/navigate/understand?
* What did they ‘feel’ when they first arrived at your blog?
* What suggestions do they have on how you could improve your blog?
* What questions do they have having surfed your blog?
* What words would they use to describe the design?
* What are the main things that they remember about your blog 10 minutes later?

It’s amazing to see what you’ll learn by watching someone use your blog.

Once you’ve done your First Time Reader Audit come back to this post and let us know what you learned.

31 Days to Building a Better Blog Challenge (1)

Your task for this first day of the 31 Days to Building a Better Blog Challenge is to email a new reader of your blog.

Create a great impression upon a brand new readers to your blog by choosing a commenter that is new and emailing them to thank them for their comment.

It might not sound like the most profound tip but I’ll let you in on a secret - this is one of the main strategies I used to build up ProBlogger’s audience a couple of years ago.

What I found is that when you do it the chances of the readers that you email coming back to your blog again increases significantly. Get them to come back to your blog once and you increase the chances of them coming back again… and again….

So email a reader now, thank them for commenting and tell them that you’re looking forward to further interactions.

Make sure you include a link back to your blog so they know who you are and make the email relevant to their comment (ie answer a question they asked or add to their comment in some way). While there are some tools out there that do this automatically for you - the more personal you can make it the better.

This simple tip takes just a moment to do but can create a loyal long time reader. Do it at least once a day (or set yourself a higher target) and you’ll build your blog consistently over time.
Is this Tip Not SPECTACULAR Enough For You?

Last time I shared this tip with a fellow blogger they rolled their eyes at me and told me that they didn’t want to find just one more reader for their blog - they wanted hundreds or thousands.

This blogger failed to realize two things:

1. Loyal Readers Spread the Word - I’ve found that in many cases a single reader quickly becomes numerous loyal readers because they like to spread the word. They do this through their own blogs, word of mouth and social networking sites etc.

2. Loyal Readers Build Page Views - One loyal reader can potentially view your blog hundreds (if not thousands) of times. A daily visit from that reader for a year brings an extra 365 page views to your blog. Gain an extra loyal reader every day for a full year and the numbers start to add up.

While there’s nothing wrong with attracting thousands of new readers to your blog quickly - the majority of times they’ll come and go very quickly. Build loyal readers one by one on a daily basis and can be a lot more fruitful in the long run.

NEW IN BLOG??? WHAT IS BLOG??

There are a number of ways I could answer this question ranging from the broad to the highly technical.This is several people opinion about what is blog:

A weblog is a hierarchy of text, images, media objects and data, arranged chronologically, that can be viewed in an HTML browser (source) http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/whatMakesAWeblogAWeblog

From “Web log.” A blog is basically a journal that is available on the web. The activity of updating a blog is “blogging” and someone who keeps a blog is a “blogger (source)

http://www.computersprintersrepairshouston.com/glossary_of_terms.html

A weblog is kind of a continual tour, with a human guide who you get to know. There are many guides to choose from, each develops an audience, and there’s also comraderie and politics between the people who run weblogs, they point to each other, in all kinds of structures, graphs, loops, etc (source)

http://newhome.weblogs.com/historyOfWeblogs

A blog is basically a journal that is available on the web. The activity of updating a blog is “blogging” and someone who keeps a blog is a “blogger.” Blogs are typically updated daily using software that allows people with little or no technical background to update and maintain the blog. Postings on a blog are almost always arranged in cronological order with the most recent additions featured most prominantly (source)

http://www.matisse.net/files/glossary.html

A blog is a website in which items are posted on a regular basis and displayed in reverse chronological order. The term blog is a shortened form of weblog or web log. Authoring a blog, maintaining a blog or adding an article to an existing blog is called “blogging”. Individual articles on a blog are called “blog posts,” “posts” or “entries”. A person who posts these entries is called a “blogger”. A blog comprises text, hypertext, images, and links (to other web pages and to video, audio and other files). Blogs use a conversational style of documentation. Often blogs focus on a particular “area of interest”, such as Washington, D.C.’s political goings-on. Some blogs discuss personal experiences (source)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog

SO WHAT IS A BLOG?????

Iam here put it as simply as possible - a blog is a type of website that is usually arranged in chronological order from the most recent ‘post’ (or entry) at the top of the main page to the older entries towards the bottom.

Blogs are usually (but not always) written by one person and are updated pretty regularly. Blogs are often (but not always) written on a particular topic - there are blogs on virtually any topic you can think of. From photography, to spirituality, to recipes, to personal diaries to hobbies - blogging has as many applications and varieties as you can imagine. Whole blog communities have sprung up around some of these topics putting people into contact with each other in relationships where they can learn, share ideas, make friends with and even do business with people with similar interests from around the world.

(Rearranged from various source)

Iam a new blogger. Iam also learn how to make a good blog, how to write as a good blogger. So lets join this blog and give your comment, we share information about blog here. I think if we have a motivation as a blogger, we can do it.

BE A BLOGGER IS ONE OF ALL MY DREAM…..