There is one SEO technique that I discovered not long ago that holds great promise and can help any site make leaps in popularity and activity.  It is a variety on the “back-link” idea.  Many web site owners want to have their links on your site because it forges another web in a network of web strands leading to their site.  When you have links to other sites ( the larger, more active and popular, the better)  the search engine bots read this as “activity” and “relevance” and this can improve your page-rank making your site easier to find because, it is at the top of the list of sites dealing with your subject.  I call this technique, for lack of a better term at the moment, “The Jewel and Crown Strategy.”  It is not my invention, but I am spotlighting this technique here so you can consider it for yourself if you are looking for ways to improve your site visibility.

The Jewel and Crown  Strategy is simply this:  Your Blog is like a Crown Jewel.  It is the central focal point of the Crown which is actually a network of smaller sites that belong to YOUalso.  In other words, you have a blog and now you will spend some time building a number of smaller web sites.  These make-up the Crown into which your blog will be set as the central focal point.  Every site is linked to your blog and to each other.  You are the Sovereign of your network, in a manner of speaking, and you can forge links with yourself with complete assurance that you can trust the site you are linking to, assuming of course, that you trust yourself.

What will these other sites be about?  It depends on the theme of your blog .  There are a couple of considerations to be aware of.  If your blog is a Family-friendly blog, don’t create and link to a site that is not Family friendly.  The same common sense rules for linking to other web sites apply to linking to other sites owned by you.  It can be useful to create a site based on your blog content, e.g., if you have a sports blog, you may want to create a site that offers sports apparel or equipment items for sale.  You do not have to warehouse these items.  You can promote these items for an affiliate network.  creating a site such as this, offers you three huge advantages: 1)  you have one more site that can be making money for you  2) you can concentrate your promotion of commercial items from your other sites, permitting your blog site to remain relatively uncluttered with any but the most profitable ads and 3)  another site gives you another active link to your site creating another strand in your own network of web sites.

You can create just one other site, or several.  It is reasonable to assume that the more sites you can link to your site, the more dramatic the results will be.  Building additional sites does not have to be expensive or difficult.  If you are somewhat adept at basic html and have built sites before, it will be very easy and almost without cost.  There are several good templates available which are free.  You can simply follow the general instructions for building your own blog discussed in an earlier post: Setting Up A Blog and Setting up your Blog:Making it Visible to the World.If you are very busy or have not yet mastered the basics of web site building, you can have someone else build the site for you.  You can find experts willing to do this for a fee on Elance or you can use Godaddy as I did for one site and get the domain, hosting account and website for one fee.  It is more expensive than doing it yourself, but the results are guaranteed to please you as they are very professional.

Another advantage you will have by creating additional web sites linked to your blog is that on some of your other sites, if you have some particular product or products, you can write a post for your blog that is in some way related to the product(s) you are promoting on your other site(s).  For example, suppose you are interested in the different running styles of avid running enthusiasts; you can feature a product from your other site, running shoes, for example, and do a product review of that product-or, you can offer a text link to that product on your other site.  When a visitor goes to your other site, he or she will also see the other links you have to your other sites and may go to these as well.  Do you see the possibilities here?  Your multi-web site network can really become energized and crackling with activity when you apply this strategy.  I have been very busy since August of this year building several additional web sites myself and this is the reason there was an absence of posting activity here on my blog(sorry).  I will say this:  It is a lot of work, though it is not unpleasant(in fact, it is quite a lot of fun) and once completed, you will be able to generate more traffic, not only to your other small commercial sites, but also to your blog from visitors who find your other sites.  Think of the possibilities!-

(I have) : These are several web sites I have had in thepast.  They are no longer active,but to properly emply this technique, you will want to have multiple web sites of your own.

  http://www.choicechristmasgifts.com

http://www.sneakers-airmax.com

http://www.toystory3-dvd.com

http://www.transformers-optimusprime-hasbro.com

Consider this.  It is another way to bring your blog more traffic and another opportunity to generate profits from your online activities.

Thanks for reading.

–wil

Affiliate Marketing, of course is a business arrangement in which a web site owner becomes associated or “affiliated” with a specific company to promote its products on his or her web site.  It doesn’t cost the web site owner anything.  The investment has already been made in setting up the web site and in taking time to set up ads on the web site to promote a company’s product.  The web site owner who displays a company’s ads, however, will profit by earning a commission every time a visitor/customer to the web site clicks through the ad and purchases the product.  With enough traffic and thousands of potential customers searching for thousands of products, you can see how the numbers quickly add up.

There are, as I have suggested, thousands of products to choose from when you become an affiliate marketer.  Click Bank is a well known affiliate network company and lists countless products to appeal to nearly every conceivable popular interest.  Commission Junction is another company, more specialized in providing tangible products rather than the digital downloads favored by Click bank.  There are a number of other companies large and small who offer affiliate opportunities.

Other than the usual networking companies that are well-exposed all over the Internet, you can also search for smaller companies which provide good opportunities for affiliates.  Sometimes these smaller companies offer very popular products that have a broad appeal among the market segment to which they are selling.  I have recently discovered such a company which offers an affiliate opportunity and promises to be very profitable based on the proven popularity of its products and the solid reputation of its owner.  I’ve decided to talk about this here because if you can become an affiliate of this company, you will earn 50% in commissions for each product sold through your web site. 

    The name of this company is Online Future and I like it because 1)  I know the owner and I know that he knows what he is doing  2) the owner is very successful 3) the owner of Online Future is successful because he has zeroed in on specific, high demand  products  4) The products are high quality and popular. 

These products fall into the category of Health and Beauty and include such things as stress reducing supplements, male virility supplements, breast enhancement formulations for natural breast augmention without surgery,  weight loss supplements and more.  Here are a few of the most popular products offered by Online Future:

 http://www.onlinefutureinc.com/cgi-bin/cmd.cgi?af=1159892&u=zoftmenopausegum.com

 http://www.onlinefutureinc.com/cgi-bin/cmd.cgi?af=1159892&u=gethoodiagum.com

 http://www.onlinefutureinc.com/cgi-bin/cmd.cgi?af=1159892&u=enlargementgum.com

I like Online Future’s product line because the products appeal to people everywhere.  The owner of Online Future and the originator of Zoft chewing gum, that offers a totally new way to enjoy the benefits of nutritional supplements, has created a unique and distinctive product that has been getting a lot of attention.  The Zoft products are designed to bring specific health and beauty benefits and there are many more kinds in development.

If you would like to promote these and other great products from Online Future, on your web site as an Affiliate, you can sign up without delay here:

 http://www.onlinefutureinc.com/cgi-bin/cmd.cgi?af=1159892&u=onlinefuturecash.com

Give this a try because it can bring you substantial extra income with little extra effort other than signing on as an affiliate and placing some ads on your site.  Whatever you decide to do, good luck with your present and future projects .

–Wil

Mr. Carter has done his homework here and has created what seems to be an automatic PPV affiliate marketing system.  Rapid Income Creator combines professionally and PRE-BUILT created landing pages, specifically designed for PPV traffic, plus “copy and paste” demographic  research so members don’t have to guess or spend time doing the work to build campaigns.  Better yet, the way the program is set up, there’s no need for you to even have a website of your own, as the landing pages are fully hosted.

If that wasn’t enough, Mr. Carter went ahead and added  simplified PDF reports on PPV and advertising so anyone can understand it, meaning people of all experience levels.  Additionally, Rapid Income Creator also offers a traffic resources section that even makes many veteran online marketers envious.   There are a ton of new money-making traffic networks and advertising venues I haven’t even heard of.

  This is not very difficult.  You may be surprised at how easy this system is to use because every step of the way the program is laid out in a way that anyone can come in and understand it.  It isn’t heavy with tons of stuff to read and absorb.  The content John Carter gives in Rapid Income Creator is integrated into the program into easily do-able steps.

Every step of the way, you are learning by doing.  Taking specific actions and getting a result.  I have to admit that John does throw in a few documents to read ,  but they’re short and easy to understand.  The “control center user interface” inside Rapid Income Creator is  designed to be  a fool- proof system.  If you can count, then you can use it;  no guesswork involved.

On a scale of 1 to 5, 5 being the best , we can give Income Creator a 4.9 for quality.  It doesn’t get  a  5 because every product can be improved slightly.  There are other improvements planned that make Rapid Income Creator even more valuable.

Rapid Income Creator is, so far, appears to have great potential, which is a good thing, considering all the ineffective, heavily-hyped programs and systems in the marketplace.

 This program also rates a  4.5 for its money making potential,  because John does not go into how to make a large income with it, but does teach how to make a few hundred a day with it.( would you turn that down?)  It gets a  4.9 once again for content because not only are the campaigns set up for you,  you also have top shelf resources that I wish I knew about before.  Rapid Income Creator does not shrink from describing itself as a “surefire”  program that is going to do very well online for a lot of people.  How long will these methods work?  Well Mr. Carter has plans on making that indefinitely-as long as possible.

 This is system can move you closer to your wealth attaining objectives.  Rapid Income Creator is an exciting product that can help you achieve your financial objectives.
Check out Rapid Income Creator Here:

http://wil126.youmatter.hop.clickbank.net

This is a product that you can use yourself to explore different ways to make money online, or, you can promote this product on your website and it will do the same thing for you in a different way.  This is a product worth trying.

–Wil

Keep in mind that “more” is not necessarily “better,” and fewer, well selected products may accomplish your goals just as satisfactorily as if you offered many products.  Some bloggers, however, may prefer to offer a number of products, because they believe that a wider the range of products will result in more sales.  If you are not sure which strategy is the right one for you, you will need to experiment. Irrespective of whichever approach you use, you can offer a product review from time to time, as a post about a product or products that you are spotlighting.  If you have a separate page of products, you can review one or more products from this page, or you can introduce a new product not mentioned anywhere else on your site.

The products you will review are products which you believe in, (based on your research) and which you think will appeal to your visitors;  including other bloggers and non-bloggers alike.  Everyone who visits your site is a potential buyer.  Even bloggers, who may simply be searching for interesting products to sell,  and may want to read about the products you are promoting to decide if they want to promote them too, may decide to buy something to evaluate it for themselves.  There is no better way to write authoritatively about something then by experiencing it first hand.  A product review is especially useful to other bloggers who may not have been aware of the product(s) you are promoting.

So, how do you review a product?  A review can be simply a discussion, either formal or casual, depending on your writing style, of what the product is, who it is for, what are its benefits and any other information or comments about cost, ease of use, how and where to purchase it and so on.  Think about whatever you would want to know before you purchased this product and that is what you should discuss.  That is really all there is to it.  You can review 5 or 6 products at a time or just one, giving that product a thorough and favorable review. 

You can provide a banner in your post or a link to the product landing page ( which will promote the product more aggressively) and readers can click on this banner or link and be brought to a place where they can buy the product.  Be sure that, in the case of an Affiliate Network source for this product, that your I.D. code is embedded in the link or associated with the banner so that if a reader actually clicks through and purchases the product you are promoting, you get credit for that sale and you get paid.    

You are promoting only products that you believe are high quality products ( not just high profit products.)  Since you hope to make a sale, you want products which will result in customer satisfaction.  If you want, as a public service, you can, from time to time, also do a review of products you would never recommend that people purchase.  This will not result in any commercial activity for you directly, but it will make your site more valuable as a source of useful and trusted information.  Visitors will return to such a site and may eventually purchase something as well. 

My opinion is that a blogger should not over do it with product review posts.  I believe review posts are best used as one would use seasoning to enhance a meal.  You can space these posts out with other kinds of posts in between for variety.  I mention this because there are some blogs which consist almost entirely of a discussion of products.  How you use the product review depends on the purpose of your blog.  However you use it, the product review is a useful service to your readers and provides some interesting material for posts, as well. 

So, start your search for the best products available and tell the world about them . The sooner you use this approach to monetizing your blog, the sooner you will make money with your blog.

Good Luck and Good Success,

–Wil

The research and evaluation you do, when it is understood by the public which you serve with your blog, gives assurance to people who purchase from your site and enhances your reputation as an honest, responsible entrepreneur.  When you inspire trust, people are more likely to feel comfortable when purchasing something that you are promoting.  You want buyers to be satisfied with their purchases so they will return to your site another day and so they will remember your site and tell their friends.  Your sterling reputation pays dividends in future sales so pay attention to the reputation you are building.

With this in mind, what happens when a product that you are promoting (even after your diligent efforts suggest that it is a good product), turns out not to be the good product  you thought it was?  This can happen, although, with thorough research, it is less likely to happen to you.  You can tell if a product is not what it purports to be when it doesn’t work as described, or it doesn’t deliver the implied benefits enumerated in the promotional ad.  Sometimes you may not be aware that there is a problem with a product until a visitor/buyer makes a complaint about something to you.  In that case you need to contact that person immediately and find out the details so you can try to help the individual resolve the problem, if you can.

There is another way you can discover that there is a problem with a product you promote favorably;  that occurs when you are researching another product, and you happen to read, in a forum or in another blog,  something very distressing  about a product you have been advertising.  What should you do?  I’ll tell you what you should do because this post was inspired by just such an experience that happened to me.  In my case, the person who was using the product and complained about it was………me.   ( more about this later.)

However you discover that a product you promote is not a good product, there are three things you must do and each action should be taken immediately as soon as you find out about a product negative;  here are the three actions you should perform together:

1)   You should alert your readers and inform them that there is a problem, and describe the  nature of the problem.

2)  You should apologize.  Although it is not your fault and product provider is responsible, You advertised a defective or problem-riddled product and someone may have purchased this because of your promotional activities or ads.

 3)  Without delay, immediately “pull” the product ad from your site.

From the inception of “Bloggasurus” I advertised two products on my site that I, in fact, used myself.  One was Rob Benwell’s “Blogging to the Bank” and the other was a hosting company called “Hostazar” which was my hosting company.  In early January 2010, Hostazar’s servers went down—for about two weeks!  When you are trying to promote a web site, build traffic volume and improve your page-ranking on search engines,  this is the “kiss-of-death.”  When your readers are becoming accustomed to visiting your site on a regular basis and then can’t find your site anywhere on the Internet for weeks, they conclude that you gave up and so, they give up on your blog and move on to something else.

I was exceedingly frustrated and completely exasperated.  Not only could I not find my site on the Internet, but I couldn’t access it to  rescue my data and I couldn’t even get in touch with the web masters at Hostazar who were incommunicado (I later learned, this was because they were not even in attendance at their headquarters to maintain the servers.)  My site was still very new and this problem was also new to me so after two weeks when the staff returned from a holiday absence, and the servers were back online, I breathed a sigh of relief and immediately got busy writing new posts, correcting display anomalies from “validation errors” and making such improvements as I could—on March 26, without warning the servers were down again.  My website vanished and, although I did not know it at the time, It was gone permanently.  I sent a total of 14 support tickets in a desperate attempt to find out what was going on.  more than ten weeks later I started to get replies from these requests and I pieced together this scenario:

 1) Hostazar had been sold at auction without announcement to the hosted clients and had a new owner.

2) No one had been available to respond to questions during the transition.

3) Data on the servers was apparently erased.

4) Rob Benwell was the previous owner and now,  unfortunately, has a tarnished reputation because of questionable business practices (not including the auctioning off of his hosting company without consideration of his 4000 clients.)

  For the complete narrative about this disaster ( if you like disaster stories) please refer to my previous post:

                         http://bloggasaurus.com/uncategorized/apologies-farewell-and-welcome/

 So, the hard lesson from this is that you should do the best you can to find good quality products to promote and research them as best as you can.  If something goes wrong, then, you must address it immediately by alerting your readers to the problem; apologize ( you should do this to disassociate yourself from the product) and then remove the advertisement(s) ASAP.

Handling  product-quality problems in this way will allow you to make the necessary corrections quickly so that you can get back to writing for your blog and communicating with your readers. 

Do your research; sell your products confidently and make money, honorably.  You will really enjoy yourself and your success will be well deserved.

Take Care and Good Success,

–Wil

“Profitability” is the final consideration which you should factor into your decision-making process about which products to advertise. When you have finalized your product list, have evaluated them and found them to be satisfactory, you need to check the information provided by the supplier to determine what will be the percentage of your commission, earned on each sale. Practically speaking, given a choice between two excellent products, you might as well choose the product offering the highest commission. If you have allocated enough space for several advertisements on your site, of course, you can offer as many products as you have room for, even those with a lower commission, however, if you think of your website page as a sort of “virtual shelf” like a shelf in a store, you may want to consider the concept of

Product Rent

Supermarkets, department stores and other large businesses use “product rent” when calculating the cost and profitability of merchandising specific products on their shelves. The purpose, of course, is to utilize shelf space most efficiently and to maximize profits. Businesses will promote the best-selling, higher profit items, by giving these products the most prominent locations on the shelf in the most actively shopped sections of the aisle, as determined by marketing research. Vendors who stock the shelves will compete aggressively to have the best position on the shelf ( perhaps eye-level and near the front of the store.) This is not something which is critical for you, although, you may want to put your most profitable products where they will be seen first. In some cases, in larger stores, low-profit items or those which do not sell well will be phased out and eliminated. The exception to this practice would be low-profit items which are popular with customers. Ultimately, as with blog content, you want to keep the public which patronizes your business, happy, so they will return.

I have mentioned this product rent concept here because, although, as a website owner, you will probably not have the same constraints and costs of doing business as the large supermarkets or department stores, you are limited in the time you have to manage your site. Writing posts, reviewing comments, replying to e-mails and performing whatever additional management tasks are necessary to keep your site functioning smoothly, will take some time and effort. You may, for practical reasons, want to limit your product offerings to a few of the most popular products with the highest profit margins. In this way you will earn the biggest profit from the smallest investment of time and effort. If you have an abundance of time, then you can do whatever you want. Consider, though, that a smaller number of really great products with a high profit margin may accomplish the same profit objectives as pages of products and may get more attention from online shoppers who have fewer choices to check out.

The analogy I would use to clarify the point I wanted to make above, is this: Modern day gold mines process 10 tons of gold-bearing matrix to get 1 oz. of pure gold. With the high price of gold, it is ,apparently, feasible to do this. Consider, however, how much more profitable it would be, especially factoring in time and effort, if a mine processed a rich, gold-bearing quartz vein that yielded 100 oz. of pure gold per ton. The point here is that if your time is limited and you do not want to have 10 pages of products, then one page of high profit products can serve your purpose quite satisfactorily.

The product selection and evaluation process I have outlined is a suggested procedure. It is not “written in stone.” However, if you are new to online marketing, or have a website to which you have not yet added products to sell, these suggestions offer a workable guideline that will provide you with a starting point to help you accomplish your commercial objectives for your site.

However you decide to find, select, and evaluate products for your site and however you promote and sell these products, I hope you have great success. Yes. It takes some time and effort to do this but it is part of the fun” After all, you are stocking the “shelves” of your own business. If you have a blog–this is the essence of How to Make Money With Your Blog.

Good Luck and please feel free to visit again,

–wil

From the moment you launch your blog, you are building a professional reputation and earning respect. You will want to constantly protect your reputation and your good name. Choose high quality products that people like.  Once you have selected your products from the six categories mentioned in the previous post, you will need to perform some online searches to evaluate each product you have selected using criteria such as quality, merit, popularity, etc.. If you have other criteria, use these as well.

Here are 6 Ways to Evaluate Products for your website

1. You can contact the author or product creator to ask questions.

2. You can do an online search to find articles about the product you want to evaluate.

3. You can go to forums and, if necessary, start a new thread asking if anyone has had experience using the product.

4. You can purchase the product and evaluate it yourself.

5. If you are selling products as an affiliate, you can go to the Affiliate Networks’ websites and find the product which, usually, offers detailed information about each product. Clickbank, to mention one example, has a statistic called “gravity” which is, basically, a measure of how well a product is selling, at present.

6. You can ask friends, fellow bloggers and affiliate marketers who may be familiar with the product(s) you want to advertise, about their experience with a particular product.

Some of the above, if used selectively, or all together (recommended), will provide you with a powerful combination of tools to help you choose good quality, popular, profitable products for your website, based on research, not on guesswork.

You may have found several exciting products to sell and you may have evaluated them, finding them to be all good, reputable products. There is, however, one more consideration that will determine, finally, which products will appear on your page:

Profitability

I will discuss this factor in the next post.

Until then,

Take Care and Be Well

 –Wil

Suppose you are starting a blog or perhaps, you already have a blog (or full featured-website) but have not yet selected any products to advertise. You want to monetize your site: How do you decide what kinds of products to advertise and promote? Whether you have a specialized blog or a more general non-specific blog, there is an easy way to narrow the field of choices of products that are most popular with online shoppers.

Surf the web and visit 10 or 20 or more websites and blogs and notice what kinds of products are being advertised on these sites. You should soon begin to notice that many if not most of these products can be assigned to definite categories. The categories I list here are from my analysis. You may discern more but I believe these are valid and most useful for the purpose of our discussion. I can identify six product categories:

1) HEALTH AND BEAUTY

2) MONEY-MAKING SYSTEMS

3) TECHNOLOGY PRODUCTS

4) SELF-IMPROVEMENT/SELF-HELP

5) ENTERTAINMENT/HOBBIES

6) DOMESTIC COMFORTS

The Health and Beauty market is “huge” today. These products are “hot” items and in great demand by people all over the world who are conscientious about their health and attractiveness. Health and beauty products include such things as nutritional supplements that deliver benefits like weight loss, virility, energy etc.; vitamins; even chewing gums that contain health promoting ingredients; Beauty Aids, of course, including cosmetics of various types (topical oils, creams, lotions and oral supplements) that will promote smoother, younger looking skin, breast enhancement and what I call “optimization of male reproductive accoutrements.”

Money-Making Systems are very popular and are usually delivered as digital downloads and E-books. Many of these courses teach you how to set up and manage a money-generating website. A few of these systems confidently assert that if the entrepreneur is conscientious and follows the provided instructions, their website will have the potential to bring a six-figure income.

Technology Products can include any kind of software that protects your computer from virus, spyware and other threats or enhances its operating efficiency. Technology can also include hardwoods like Ipods, cell-phones, MP3 players, mini-speakers and other popular electronic devices.

Self-Improvement/Self-Help products are such things as self-hypnosis CD’s to help lose weight, stop-smoking, get more sleep, foreign language courses, vocabulary builders, manifestation/visualization programs, IQ boosters and informational/educational downloads.

Entertainment/Hobbies: music, or instructional CD’s,, “Books on tape,” and DVD’s (movies and “how to” subjects. Also in this category are physical merchandise such as woodworking and garden tools, fishing and camping gear, model-making supplies, books and much more.

Domestic Comforts are any products that make you feel good, secure, and comfortable. These are usually self-indulgent treats that you enjoy while relaxing at home, perhaps hibernating during bad weather. These products include special “comfort foods” like chocolates ( one of the most wonderful comfort foods invented by man–or was it woman?); pastries, jams and jellies; gourmet teas and coffee, cheeses, fine cigars, exotic pipe tobacco blends, “comfy” sleepwear; candles, fragrant oils, incense and whatever you can think of that makes a person smile–Use your imagination: There are many, many possibilities.

There are other ways to find sought-after products to sell: You can do a Google search using search terms like “online products to sell” or “online product directory. You can search for “product review” sites. You can go directly to an Affiliate network website ( such as Clickbank, commission Junction, Linkshare and others) and see what products they are offering Affiliates. Finally, you can go to a large bookstore or other store that sells magazines and peruse through a number of them looking for interesting products that you might like to sell on your site. Some of these Ads may have an Internet address that you can go to and you can contact the supplier to see if you can offer the product on your website.

By assigning products to different categories you are organizing and narrowing your choices of potentially useful products. If yours is a specialized blog, you may want to select products that reflect the particular theme of your blog, or, you could do as someone would do who had a more general, non-specific blog and choose products of many different kinds, advertising them on a separate page from your blog posts.

Once you have found and selected the products that you want to sell, there is one more important step you should take. You do not have to do this, but it is a good idea. You must evaluate the products you have selected. In the next post, I will discuss ways in which you can determine if a product is a quality product that will appeal to your potential customers and generate a reasonable profit for you.

Until then, Take Care and be well,

–Wil

 If you have a blog, you will want a different approach; you will advertise passively.  In this case, you will simply place the advertising on your page with no special fanfare or promotion.  You may mention the products and even offer a brief review, if it is relevant to your blog, but you will not aggressively promote the products as you would on a product oriented web site.  When your site is a blog, it is all about the blog; that is the central focus of your web site.  This is an important point because when visitors come to your web site, they want to read your blog. They do not want to be overwhelmed with many “flashy” promotions of products.  Such excessive displays are annoying and distracting.  The product choices and the number of products advertised should not compete with your blog.

I have visited some blogs that have so many advertisements that even the advertisements become a confusing jumble of inharmonious commercial “signage” that distracted me from the blog itself.  That is not what you want.

If you desire to offer lots of products then maybe you should consider a full-featured web site devoted to products.  If you still want a blog, then, you can add one as another page; many web sites have a blog in addition to their product pages, but it is not the central purpose of the web site.  This kind of blog is secondary to the product offering(s) and exists, mostly, to help promote the products.

If you really want to promote many products in order to maximize your profits from one web site but you also really want to have a blog, there is another possibility:  You can have a “hybrid” web site.  You will have a blog as the central purpose of your site, but you can set aside an entire page for products that you want to promote.  This is perhaps “the best of both worlds.” By creating a separate page devoted to a number of products, preferably related to your blog theme ( but not necessarily), you can offer a number of products and promote them more aggressively.  Because these products are on a separate page they will not directly compete with your blog and visitors can choose to look at this page if they are interested or they can focus on your blog instead.  In this way, you can offer a large assortment of products without alienating or “turning off” your visitors.

However you decide to introduce advertising to your site, I wish you success.  Now go work on this and “make some money!”  Good Luck

–wil

There are other bloggers, and I am one of them, who believe there is no harm in designing your blog so that it can earn some income for you. After all, you will spend some money developing your website, and even if it is not very expensive to start a blog, you will need to spend some time doing it ( perhaps a lot of time, depending on how elaborate the blog is.) Why shouldn’t a pleasant past time be used to generate income? It seems a sensible and practical thing to do.

Those of you who have read a number of my posts are aware of the steps a blogger needs to take in order to set up his or her blog to make money. Although there are some requirements for monetizing a blog, there are not very many and it is really quite simple.

To monetize a blog so it can generate income for you, you obviously need 1) a website. 2) You need to place some advertising on your site and 3) you need to optimize the site to get more and more visitors. 3 things. That’s all you need. I don’t want to oversimplify: each of these steps requires some time and effort and sometimes money to accomplish but there are only a few things you need to do.

I want to comment more specifically on each of the above steps or requirements. You can set up a website for your blog in as little as two or three days. More realistically, however, if it is your first website, it may take longer, perhaps two or three weeks or more before your blog is up and running. You will, of course, need to work through the process of setting up the website as discussed in my post: “How to Set Up Your Blog“

Secondly, you will need to place advertising on your website. You will need to make decisions about what products you want to advertise, where you want to place them and whether your products are going to be digital downloads ( information or ebooks that can be instantly downloaded) or physical products that must be sent to the customer.

There is good money to be made (as in a “substantial” amount) with affiliate advertising, in which you place ads on your site to advertise products of others who then pay you a commission whenever a sale is made from your site. You can place these ads on each page or devote a special page just for these products. You can write a positive review of a product to promote it so that visitors to your site will want to investigate further. Once they click on a product, they will be taken to a carefully designed landing page provided by the supplier of the product, that more fully promotes the product and its benefits. You don’t need to do anything. The company supplies the product and takes care of the details of order-filling, shipping and payment. Your commission is sent to you by check (cheque) or by electronic transfer (or wire) to your preferred bank account, details of which, you provide to the company when you register as their affiliate.

Physical products are a different matter. Unless you have a warehouse or other storage facility and lot’s of time, I advise you to choose products that are warehoused by the supplier who will also be responsible for filling the order, shipping and collecting payment. There are many companies which will do this. You will need to search online for these. Your only responsibility, in this case, is to advertise the product, perhaps write a nice review and then, when a sale is made, you receive your commission as described in the previous paragraph. Here are some top Affiliate Networks with which you can register as an affiliate:

Clickbank, Commission Junction, Befree, Linkshare, Websponsors, Sharesale,

Performics, Clixxchange, Clixgalore, Fastclick, Affiliatefuel, Darkblue, Fineclicks etc.

The third requirement is “traffic.” If you have done everything else right and have the most spectacular website on the Internet, nothing will happen for you unless you have traffic. Unless there is a steady and growing stream of visitors to your blog, well, it is like having a new computer still in its box. Unless it is hooked up, plugged-in and connected to the Internet, nothing will happen. That’s why the techniques of SEO (search engine optimization) are so important. Building traffic may take some time, but you should regularly monitor the volume of traffic/visitors you are getting and consistently work to increase this volume.

Suppose after 6 months or a year you are still not earning any money from your site? You then need to do some troubleshooting and objectively evaluate your blog and everything you have added to your website. Are your posts interesting, relevant, informative and frequent enough to engage the viewing public? Do you have enough products of the right kind that appeal to potential customers? Perhaps you need more and different products. Have you spent enough time making sure that your website is organized and “search engine friendly?” Do you have a few pages of useful material that will show the search engine spiders that your site has depth and relevance? Do you have some back-links from ezinearticles you have written as well as to other interesting websites that have a significant volume of traffic? If you are not yet making any money, the reason is probably going to be found in your answers to the above questions.

All this sounds like a lot of work and I don’t want to minimize this by telling you it is really easy, however, it is not very difficult either. It takes some time, perhaps some money(not very much,) some attention and the most basic ingredient to any successful enterprise:

The desire to make it work.

Good Luck, and let me know how you are doing.

Take Care–Wil