How do I turn my hobby into some much needed cash?

Amee and I have shared with you many ways to make money blogging.  We’ve discussed contests, building relationships with other bloggers, and actively promoting your site with good content, readers & strategy. This week I’ll be talking about affiliate programs.  If you want to make money;  you must sign up for affiliate programs.  You can find affiliate programs all over the web to promote companies and products to help boost your income.  The key is finding programs suitable for your audience.

If you’re in an affiliate program and have postings about baby items & deals, but your website it all about cakes, you’re not going to see much revenue from the affiliate. Why?  You’re not gearing these programs to suite your audience.  You need to find affiliates that have cake making products for sale, books to teach decorating techniques and other relevant baking content.

You should also be conscious of the types of affiliates, the programs you are linking to & how these programs are being promoted on your site.  Spamming or linking to affiliates for the sake of making a dollar can turn readers off.  Finding a balance between keeping your readers needs in mind and generating income can be difficult & time consuming, but worth the effort.

I get hundreds of emails a week with deals or products to share with my readers.  Most of these never make it onto my site.  Yes, I could be making more money by posting these deals, so why don’t I post?

1. I don’t feel the content is relevant for my site
2. I can’t be sure of the authenticity of the deal or I’ve have problems with the company or product in the past
3. I simply don’t have the time

Ad placement is also key to generating income from affiliates.  Prime ad space is above the fold, within the first 1000 pixels of the page.  Some advertisers may require placement in this area of your site as a requirement for joining their program. 

A few of the types of affiliate programs are:

• Pay per Click – You earn commission every time someone clicks on the the ad
• Pay per Pageview ads – Commission is earned just from the traffic on your site, by the number of pages on your website viewed.
• Pay per Action – Commission earned through email sign up or purchase depending on advertisers requirements.
• Referral – Earning through a referral link is a great way to share programs with your readers and earn cash or credits for your website

Next week Amee and I will be sharing the list of affiliates that we actually belong to!  All our favorite affiliates will be at your fingertips, so make sure to check back next Sunday!

Looking for more blogging tips? Search for Ask a Blogger

If you need hosting, we both use Host Gator and Love them.

How do I turn my hobby into some much needed cash?

Dana and I have shared the ins and outs of making money actively and now I will share a more passive method. Once you have built an audience or as you are building an audience you need to have a strategy. You wouldn’t take a vacation without planning, so you need to make a plan for your business. It is so easy to get sucked into just posting items. I mean I get hundreds of deals emailed to me daily just sorting is a full time job although I use Other In Box so it helps a lot.

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Last week Amee talked about a topic that most bloggers are eager to learn more about, How to Make Money Blogging.  I learned early on that blogging takes a tremendous amount of time.  You must write content, stay up-to-date on current issues in your niche (in our case deals), answer emails and comments, connect with other bloggers, build an audience and much more.  After realizing the time involved in blogging;  I decided I needed to be compensated for my time.  I blog first to help others save money and second to help support my family.

I’ll remind everyone that you don’t start off making money.  In the first year, I barely made more than I spent.  In a year!  Find a topic you are passionate about and brace yourself for a long, exciting journey.

If you missed last week, Amee talked about several active ways to generate income for your site.  This week we’ll be begin talking about passive money making tips.  These passive tips help generate income for your site by increasing traffic. More traffic can equal more money.

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How do you make money Blogging?

I want to first say it takes money to make money. We have talked about hosting and design. What we have not talked about is time and your initial monetary investment. I say that time is money. Madame Deals started at a coffee shop there were a bunch of us “moms” sitting together talking about saving money. We then moved to a yahoo group and on to Blogger. When we figure out you could not make money on Blogger then we made the move to Word Press. The reason is the amount of time associated with running a site requires some sort of financial gain or at the very least breaking even. I would say you can expect to be “broke” for six months. It will take you that long or longer to figure out what you need to do to make money. It will take you longer to build your fan base so you can actually make money. I am nowhere near quitting my day job nor do I intend to do so. The site operates at a profit but if I take time off then there will be no profit. There are two ways to make money passive and active.

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The ability to schedule posts is a handy tool in blogging.  You can write an article and schedule it to post on your blog at a later time and date.  I use this feature to schedule posts throughout the day or to post while I’m not home. For example:  I post my menu plan and mailbox goodies every Monday morning.  I write these posts on Sunday night and schedule them for Monday around 6 am.  I can be asleep or getting the kids ready for school and a post will appear on my site. 

How to Schedule a Post

• Under Publish
• Select “Edit” beside “Publish immediately
• Select the date and time (24 hr) that you want your post to appear on your blog
• Click “OK”
• Click the blue Schedule button (previously stated Publish) 

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Thanks to Amee with Madame Deals for this week’s Ask A Blogger post!

If you missed any of our other Ask a Blogger Articles. We talk about how to post in Word Press. How to make Blog Buttons, Creating the best Site design, moving your site from Blogger to WordPress and How to Build an Audience.

Why do you want to add images to your site?  The answer is simple to get attention. They are also used to describe something. The best answer is people look at pictures and the longer people stay on your site. Why do you want people to stay on your site. Well, they are more likely to click around and buy something that you are selling or they may just decide to stay and sign up for your feed through facebook, twitter, rss, or google friend connect. This is how bloggers make money through advertising.

That is why knowing how to put hyper links in your post is also important. You want to be able to write about topics and either link back to a previous article you have written. These types of links are referred to as” deep linking” or you would like to link to another company. We “bloggers” often link to companies that sponsor our site by offering us commission on the products they sell. I have a commissioned based link in this post . When I suggest Host Gator to you below. If you link to topics that have a large number of people searching for them then people may end up on your page as a source of information on the store, topic, or product.

It is really easy to add images to your page and to hyper link you article. Watch the video below.

Amee and I have posted a lot about wordpress since we started this series.  We’ve discussed the cost of moving from a blogger blog to a wordpress blog, our experiences with the move and our experiences with blog design.  This week I wanted to step back and show those of you who have been toying with the idea of moving wordpress how to start writing a post using the somewhat foreign looking dashboard.

1.  Click “Add New” under the “Posts” heading on the left side of your dashboard

2.  Type your post title in the box where it states “Enter Title Here”.  The gray lettering will disappear as you type your title.

3.  The next thing you want to do is open the “kitchen sink”.  This will open the Extended Toolbar and show more post option buttons such as underlining and adding color to text.

4.  Click the Blue Square, “Toggle Fullscreen Mode,” to enlarge your post editor screen and hide all other wordpress options.

5.  If you’re familiar with posting in blogger, most of the process will be relatively the same.

6.  Once your post is complete – You can add a category on the right side of the dashboard and select to “Publish” or “Schedule” your completed post.

A trick to posting in wordpress:

• A single space between paragraphs – WordPress automatically adds a single space between paragraphs when you hit the “enter” button.  But what if you don’t want a space?  You simply hit “shift” and “enter” simultaneously.  This will change your post from:

A post with

A single Space

to:

A post with
No space

In 2 weeks I’ll share how to add a hyperlink to a wordpress post and how to add an image.

Watch the video below to get a peak at my wordpress dashboard
(please excuse the microphone static-this was my first ever video!)

Looking for more blogging tips?  Search for Ask a Blogger.