Category: Blogging

Blogging

Can You Make Money From Home Through Affiliate Marketing?

JayneLeave a comment

Credit (CC0 License)

The ideal life for a lot of people is being able to stay at home while still earning a decent living. Not only that, but you want to work for yourself and set your own schedule in life. It’s possible to seek out different opportunities to achieve this state of living, one of which is affiliate marketing. 

What is affiliate marketing?

In short, it’s a type of digital marketing that relies on people promoting things for companies. As an affiliate, a company provides you with your own unique link to share with other people. When someone clicks on your link and purchases something from the company, you receive a percentage of the sale. Effectively, you receive a commission for promoting a business.

When you read this, you begin to wonder, can you actually make money through affiliate marketing? Well, the overall answer is yes, because you certainly can. However, there are definitely things you need to know before you go down this route. A lot of affiliate marketers don’t make money, but it is definitely possible. 

Find an affiliate marketing platform

Going out into the big wide world of affiliate marketing on your own is never going to end well. Instead, you need a platform to help you get set up. Essentially, these platforms help you find affiliate marketing opportunities and give you tools to help promote the various companies. They may also offer education to further your knowledge on the topic. Be careful, as this Wealthy Affiliate review shows, some platforms can be outdated and a bit of a waste of money. Do lots of research before coming to a decision on the platform you wish to choose. 

Don’t spend too much money

As an affiliate marketer, you can spend money to promote your link and get it seen by many people. Things like paying to have ads directing people to your blogs or using social media ads are popular ideas. Nevertheless, you should aim to spend as little money as you possibly can. Otherwise, you might struggle to make a profit when you compared your affiliate earnings to what you spent. This is a mistake many affiliates make all the time!

Work with companies you trust and believe in

Lastly, only become affiliates for companies that you trust and believe in. The best way to make money through affiliate marketing is via a blog or social media account. Thus, you need to ensure that the companies you work with aligning with your particular brand. If you have a blog about sports, it makes sense to promote companies that sell sports clothing, equipment, etc. It’s easier to work your link into your content, and your target audience will be interested in the companies as well. Research the companies beforehand to ensure they are legit and trustworthy too. 

You most certainly can make money as an affiliate marketer, but it’s not as easy as people make out. There’s this myth that affiliate marketing is easy and you can instantly earn a fortune. In reality, it takes a fair bit of skill and perseverance to ensure you actually earn a steady income.

Blogging

Giving Your Blog A Little More Glam

Jayne2 Comments

Your blog is getting to be quite old these days, isn’t it? You’ve been running it for 5 to 10 years now, and when it comes to the internet, that makes you an ancient player in the news feed’s eyes! You’ve updated your blog consistently over the years, building up a reader base that regularly comes back to visit you, and you love noticing all the traction you receive on social media. Hey, you’ve been working hard to build an online persona, you’re allowed to want to see it pay off!

But because of all of this history, there’s a good chance you could do with ‘glamming up’ your blog throughout 2019. It’s a new year, and it’s a big one for all of us who work online: millions is being spent on contenting writing and marketing, and the price is only going to go up!

So, why not think about making your blog more of a glamor model in your network’s eyes? Here’s a couple of ideas you might want to check out to do just that.

(Unsplash)

Know What Other Blogs are Doing

Other blogs on the platform can be your friends, your collaborators, and your competitors. They can be all three at once, of course, or they can just be another blog you’ve never approached before. But there’s one thing they are always going to have in common: you can look to them to see what works.

When you use other blogs to base your layout, your images, and your themes off of, you can quickly learn what’s popular and what isn’t. You can also mix and match much better than before, seeing as you now have a template to work off of!

Know the Templates that Work

Speaking of templates, you’ll find all kinds of posts across the internet telling you the most popular WordPress themes for the year, or the best layouts to use to make sure people stay on your website. And sure, these posts have some grains of truth to them, but they’re not experts on the matter! Your readers come from all walks of life, after all, and they’re all going to have their own little tastes; only they can decide if they like the aesthetic of your blog or not.

Which is why it makes a lot more sense for you to rely on what’s worked before, rather than try to predict the future. You’ve been in the business a long time; ask yourself how many times a choice has paid off without doing any research beforehand? For example, Microsoft Office templates are always going to popular with both professional and personal users alike. So if you’re someone who’s always out to advertise to both bigger companies you could work with, and the readers who love to consume your content, this could be a good place to start!

Your blog might need a new sprinkling of glam to it, it might not. Either way, it’s always nice to be able to redesign!

Blogging

How to Increase Your Income as a Blogger #SEOYourBlog

JayneLeave a comment

Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash

When I started blogging nine years ago, I started off very much from scratch. I didn’t know anyone who blogged and had no idea that there was a whole blogging community out there. I started my blog on a free WordPress URL and just started writing. I didn’t discover for quite some time that it was possible to monetise a blog, and never knew quite how many ways there were to do it.

One way to optimise your exposure is by including PPC links into your posts through an agency like Click Consult – advertisers use space on your blog and in return you’re paid a fee every time someone clicks on the advert. It’s a great example of what we call “passive income”, essentially something that ticks over in the background, earning you money, and doesn’t need you to do anything beyond adding a little bit of code to your blog.

One of the most important skills to learn as a blogger is SEO, or search engine optimisation, to those who don’t already know. SEO, according to Moz, is “the practice of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search engine results.”. Using good SEO practices within your posts allows them to be found by Google and means that your blog will show higher up in search results when someone searches for a keyword you use. There are lots of plugins which can help with SEO, making your life a whole lot easier!

There are many other ways to make money through blogging, such as sponsored posts, brand partnerships and even branching out as a freelance copywriter, but it’s worth bearing in mind that you may need to register as self employed and start filling in a tax return if your earning exceed a certain amount.

If you’re new to blogging and are interesting in other ways to make money from your writing, leave me a comment below, I’d love to hear from you and help you to get started.

Blogging

How to Organise Your Blog Posts

JayneLeave a comment

Blog organisationI’m not going to lie, organisation is not my strongest quality. I’m always the mum who finds the crumpled up letters at the bottom of Sausage’s bag, the day before they’re due to go in in some sort of elaborate fancy dress and I’m terrible at remembering to RSVP to anything we’re ever invited to. I’ve started using my reminders on my phone more and more to keep me organised in my daily life, and am planning to invest in some quality notebooks, but my blog is something that suffers massively because of my lack of organisational skills.

With BB off to school this September, I’ve realised that I need to get some life back into my blog, which means planning more original content and getting back on track with my writing, so I decided to ask some fellow bloggers how they get their act together and stay on top of blogging. Here’s some of their advice:

Nickie at Typecast said “I personally use a bullet journal system incorporated into my Filofax. I also have a BOAT (Book Of All Things) which is generally a brain dump and I’m a bit old school where I have to write things down. I also use Google Calendar a lot (linked to my phone) for reminders on the go and we have a Family Google Calendar too for ‘family reminders’. This may seem like overkill to some people, however, what works for me may not work for you but you can take ideas from various sources and incorporate them into your own planning system.”

Amy Lynne Andrews said “Create a way to capture your blog post ideas. Great resources to capture ideas are Evernote, a note-taking app on your phone or a paper notebook. I always seem to get good ideas when I’m driving. If you do too, try calling yourself and leaving a voicemail, having Siri or your Google Assistant email or text you or using a voice recorder app. Regardless of how you do it, keep all your ideas in one designated place.”

Alisha Nicole said “Starting off with a solid routine will help you get into the flow of creating content consistently. Your schedule should be based on two major factors:

  1. How often you are able to provide high quality content. (remember it should always be quality over quantity)
  2. When your audience is online to consume your info.

Personally, I know I am only able to create one blog post, one video and send out one newsletter per week. And according to my stats, my highest traffic days are Tuesdays and Wednesdays, so those are the days I post to my blog. Also from a recent reader survey that I conducted, I know that the majority of my audience would rather watch live webinars in the evenings and on Saturdays due to their work/life schedules. If you’re unsure when to post your content, checking out your Google Analytic stats will tell you exactly when your audience is using your site most often.”

Blogging

4 Simple Tips for Blogging Success in 2018

JayneLeave a comment

Blogging began as a way to keep a digital journal, but over the years it has evolved into a popular pastime and viable career path. (read this tale of a London SEO expert success story you’ll never believe) With so much competition out there, it’s more important than ever to have a high-quality blog. In this post, I’ll highlight a few ways — from upgraded web hosting services to embracing SEO — to improve your website.

When it comes to creating and maintaining a successful blog, there are many, many things to consider. Although the design and content are the first things your readers will notice, the efficiency, SEO, and quality of your website hosting also play a vital role. In this post, we’ll take a look at why each of these benefit you and how you can implement them into your site.

  1. Quality Over Quantity

The blog posts you write are not only your website’s main purpose but also a representation of you as a person and a writer. Ensuring that the content you publish is of the highest possible quality will establish a stronger connection with your audience and give them a reason to keep visiting your website.

Although it’s good SEO practice to publish content on a regular basis, it’s vital not to slip into the habit of writing for the sake of writing. You should always prioritise quality over quantity when it comes to blogging, so plan ahead, research thoroughly, and don’t rush the writing process. Oversaturating your blog with too many posts will make it difficult for your audience to keep up and is a good way to lose readers.

  1. Is Your Blog User-Friendly?

Before people get a chance to read your content, the first thing they see is your website’s design. It’s for this reason that a professional and appealing design is essential, to make a great first impression and ensure that your posts get read. Although the style and aesthetic of your blog are important, it’s also vital that it’s user-friendly, because even the most amazing design will come unstuck if it’s a nightmare to use.

In this instance, you should aim to make your website as simple to use as possible. This means menus and other navigational tools have to be in plain sight, the font you use needs to be legible, and your website must be mobile-friendly. A few years ago, mobile internet usage overtook desktop for the first time, so without a mobile-friendly site, you’ll substantially decrease your potential readership.

  1. Upgraded Web Hosting Services

Another important aspect of website creation and maintenance is web hosting. This is the service that provides you with the web space and bandwidth to get online. If you’re yet to re-evaluate your website hosting service since you first created your site, it’s vital to upgrade if your current service no longer suits your needs. There’s a good chance that your traffic is now higher, meaning you need greater hosting resources to keep everything up to speed.

A higher quality website hosting service (e.g. upgrading from shared hosting to VPS servers) will improve site performance. This is another way to enhance user-friendliness as it means your blog will load quicker and be a lot smoother to navigate. Those things are necessities these days, as we expect our internet to be fast — our patience for slow sites has seriously dwindled.

  1. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

As a blogger and someone who spends a fair amount of time online, it’s likely you will have heard of ‘SEO’ before. This stands for search engine optimisation and is a series of techniques you can employ to make your blog rank higher on search engines.

Optimising your blog posts and website copy for SEO — and therefore making your blog appear on the higher pages of a search — will prove to be a massive benefit for increasing your readership and establishing your site as an authoritative voice in your chosen niche.

So now that we’ve established that SEO is a fantastic thing for your blog, here are a couple of easy ways to get started:

  • Keywords: Keywords are words and phrases that are entered into search engines. First, you need to decide on a few keywords that relate to your blog and that you believe you can rank highly for. Then use these keywords throughout your content to make sure your site appears in more search results.
  • Backlinks: Backlinks are external links to high-authority websites inserted into your posts to help support aspects of the article like statistics and quotes. Doing so tells search engines that your site is a reliable and relevant source of information, and in the process greatly improves your site’s SEO.

Are you a blogger looking to kick things into gear in 2018? The tips in this post are a few ideal ways to make some adjustments to your website, current content, and future posts to give you the best chance of increasing your readership and brand recognition.