How to Monetize a Blog Post for Affiliate Profits
If you’ve joined an affiliate program like Printify’s affiliate program, you might be wondering how to monetize a blog to leverage it to make your passive income dreams come to reality.
The world of affiliate marketing can be downright confusing. That goes double if you’re seeing a lot of success stories from your favorite serial entrepreneurs and their social media presence. You’re seeing the success, but not seeing how they’re making it happen – other than their huge social following!
What about the average person, who might even have a small audience but can’t seem to gain the traction they need to get moving?
The answer: high-performing blog posts.
How to Monetize a Blog: May the Best Content Win
Affiliate marketers who have mastered how to monetize a blog earn money by writing the best content. We see it with our own Printify affiliate program, so we know it’s true.
But how can you write your own high-performing blog posts and content?
Today, we’re going to talk to you about why and how you should use high-performing blog articles to monetize a blog and help you drive amazing affiliate sales results.
Pitch Perfect Content Leads to Conversions
Content, content, content. If you’re in the world of online advertising or just looking for passive income profits, you probably had “content is king” drilled into you during your research into writing blog posts. So many experts and entrepreneurs say that content is the single biggest ingredient to making their businesses work. Are they right, or are they exaggerating?
Well, yes, they are right. It’s absolutely true! This is the key to how to monetize a blog, and what kind of content draws in eyeballs. Complete guides, how tos, comparisons, listicles, or long form posts are all common, high performing blog types that our affiliates use. We’ll cover some of these and a lot more to help you get more affiliate earnings.
Why Write Blog Posts vs Other Types of Traffic
In the world of internet advertising, you might be aware that there are two types of traffic: Paid and organic. Paid traffic comes from advertising, from sources like Google or Facebook ads. Paid traffic gives you a boost, you can target people that are searching or that are likely interested in your products or services and send them to your site, with or without amazing content.
The trick with paid traffic is to pay the least amount of money for the right, high converting traffic to your site. If you’ve never run an ad campaign or have limited experience with ads, this is better left to professionals, or by risking small amounts on campaigns – otherwise, you might end up losing a lot of money on ads. This is definitely a different strategy from learning how to monetize a blog.
Organic Traffic Isn’t Free, but It Is Cheap
Notice that we didn’t say that organic traffic was unpaid. It’s not – you pay for it with your time and your research. Helpful, informative, and well-written blog posts don’t appear out of thin air, they’re crafted with time and patience, and eventually, with experience. That’s one of the key lessons learned in how to monetize a blog.
Types of Organic Traffic Posts That Perform the Best
1. Long form, well researched content (3000+ words typically)
Ex: Strategico.io’s Video Advertising Guide
2. Useful and time saving shopping comparisons
Ex: Digital Camera World’s DSLR Buying Guide
3. Personal Success Stories (ex: share your Print on Demand success)
4. Posts with visual stunning content (infographics, videos, et cetera)
Hint: check out Quick Sprout’s Complete Guide
5. Complete Guides or How Tos (see above!)
Another huge advantage to organic traffic – its staying power. If you’re refreshing your content and monitoring its rankings, the traffic it delivers will come at the fraction of the cost of those paid advertisements.
The important difference is that you don’t have to pay to do this actively, you just have to roll up your sleeves and make it happen!
What Is SEO and How to Use It in a Blog Post
SEO or Search Engine Optimization is a term used by internet marketers to describe how well a piece of content is crafted to appear in a search engine. With search engines, the higher a page ranks for a search, the more traffic it gets.
SEO is more art than science, as no one exactly knows how a company like Google will evaluate rankings for web pages. What is known about SEO is enough to get your page to rank for various terms and will let you know how to monetize a blog, even if Google won’t exactly tell you why.
Why Are Search Terms Important?
Search terms are the closest thing that marketers have to a declaration of the buyer’s intentions. They can also tell us what stage they are in their buyer’s journey.
Here’s an example:
You search for “Best affiliate programs to make money” because you’re interested in earning extra money. You’re in research mode, and you’re gathering information, you’re comparing programs. You might be watching YouTube videos from other affiliates, talking about their own experiences. Later, maybe days, weeks, or months later, your search for “Printify affiliate program benefits”. That means you’re much closer to signing up for the most amazing Print on Demand affiliate program. You’re probably going to use it, you’re just looking to get a few more details or get signed up.
Traditional, non-search advertising aims to create a buyer’s profile of a likely buyer. This is used on platforms now like Facebook or Instagram. That doesn’t mean they can pinpoint exactly where a person is at in their buyer’s journey.
Focus on the right keywords for your affiliate program. You can then rank high for your potential customer while they’re in their buying phase. This can lead to serious dividends for you. Here are some great focus keywords for Printify’s affiliate program:
- What is print on demand?
- Print on Demand Dropshipping in 2021
- Best print on demand companies
- Best print on demand sites 2021
- TOP 10 Print on demand products ( t-shirts, hoodies, mugs, stickers, hats, backpacks, tote bags, phone cases, canvas, face masks)
Writing the Post
Step One - Research Keywords
This leads to the next topic – you should craft your posts around keywords you think will attract your potential audience at the right stage of the buying cycle. You can do keyword research with free tools like Google trends, or you can use paid tools to dive deeper. Paid tools show you historical search volume and the likely competition you’ll face if you write to try to rank. Finding the right high volume, low competition keywords for your audience will lead to success for your posts.
For example, you’re probably not going to write a blog post that outperforms Coca-Cola’s website.
Doing the right keyword research is a skill you’ll develop as you write more and more content for your blogs.
Step Two – How to Choose a Blog Post Topic
Choosing a topic for your post is a judgment call. You have to try to figure out what keywords you can fit into a title so that you can hopefully have your post be seen by potential readers. It’s a mix of creativity and science to choosing the best topic for your post.
Using our example above, the search term “Printify affiliate program benefits” leads to your title. It could be something like “Printify affiliate program benefits for beginners” or “Printify affiliate program benefits complete guide”. The point is to get the keyword you’ve chosen into the title, and preferably at the beginning.
Step Three – Choosing What Types of Blog Posts Perform the Best
You might be wondering how to pull this all together. How many headings, subheadings, topics will you have? Even how long to make your post is a sometimes fiercely debated topic among content creators. While you have the discretion to write whatever you’d like for your blog, remember that your goal is to have a high-performing post.
Here’s What We Find Works Best:
Complete How-Tos or Guides: These blog posts help to solve a problem or answer a question, often combining sources and material from different places to compose a in one or quick reference guide. They’ll contain stats, be over 3,000 words in length, and will help someone learn about a topic and make a decision about that topic. These types of posts perform extremely well if they’re organized with a table of contents and have clear, concise sections and explanations.
Product Comparisons: Product comparisons often contain tables or other graphics that will help a reader make quick, informed decisions about products. You may have seen these types of pages if you’re shopping for something like a new DSLR camera. These posts will compare the cameras in a table, provide some commentary, and maybe even describe using these cameras and the pros and cons, and then contain a link to purchase the camera. That link – is an affiliate link, and it’s a little reward from the buyer to the writer for being a helpful resource in their buying journey.
Take their money posts: This post is focused on keywords of people that are at the very end of their buyer’s journey, like the iPhone example we gave above. These people are hot to trot and ready to go, so just give them what they want and nudge them over the finish line with a well-crafted post about the topic they’ve searched for.
Step Four - How to Write Great Content
This is your time to shine. You can write the way you’d like to draw in your audience. The content itself should be engaging and informative. If you’ve been writing for a while, you’ll have developed your own tone of voice and delivery that will be familiar with your audience. Remember that most audiences favor quick, easy descriptions to long, wordy ones. The shorter and more concise you are, the better.
Working from an outline and crafting the headings, subheadings, and topics of each section, then filling them out is the easiest way to craft a good, well-structured blog post.
Use SEO Tools
You’ll want to use a tool like YOAST or RankMath to optimize your post. This will help you write the proper keyword density for your post. It will also help you to identify the best way to write your Site Title for SEO, your meta description, and subheadings. There are also a host of other things that you’ll want to pay attention to as you craft your post.
Remember, you’re working backward from your keyword terms, so you’re going to build your content around the keywords.
Mistakes to Avoid in Affiliate Marketing
The beginner affiliate marketer might become a bit discouraged when they first begin marketing and learning about how to monetize a blog.
Here are some things to keep in mind while writing.
- Shorter is better – the best writers aren’t wordy, but express complex ideas in the shortest space possible
- Simpler is better – don’t use big words when small ones will do
- Use infographics sparingly – don’t overwhelm the reader
- Layout and Design are almost as important as content
- Don’t have unrealistic expectations
Reach Out to Us
Even with all these tips, we know that you might need some help. That’s where we come in, we’re here to support you. We’re committed to making each and every one of our affiliates successful.
Let us know how we can help you get off the ground! Contact us at [email protected]
Make It Happen Today!
Written by
Phil Brown
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