How to Monetize a Blog: 5 Steps to Get Started Affiliate Marketing

The big question… How to monetize a blog? There are more than a handful of strategies out there for monetizing your ontent. This article will focus on affiliate marketing…

In my opinion, affiliate marketing is the best way to create passive income online. In this article, you will learn step-by-step how to monetize your blog and start bringing in affiliate commissions.

Is Having a Blog Necessary for Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketers leave money on the table by not having a blog.

With very little overhead, you can utilize your own platform to increase your rank in search engines, build your authority, and create that passive income.

Blogging is an easy, affordable way to publish content and promote products online.

Though adding to the blog consistently is important, once you create that content, it’s “live,” indexed in search engines, and capable of bringing in affiliate commissions.

Having your own platform is important not only to create that passive income, but also to create authority. You want to position yourself as an expert in your niche and have a place to send your audience to help them get to know you and what you do.

A wordpress blog is a platform many choose because you own it and can control it.

There are strategies to improve how well your content ranks with search engines.  This is what we call SEO, or Search Engine Optimization. This helps you get more eyes on your content, more link clicks, and ultimately, more commissions. Google (and other search engines) love wordpress. If you’re serious about creating SEO friendly content – you need a wordpress blog.

How Long Does It Take to Start Earning Money?

You may be thinking how long will all this take.

We’re all looking for the return on investment in any endeavor in our businesses.

Yet, there are many factors to consider and in order to make money with your blog, you need to incorporate certain elements into it. Here are a few things to consider for your blog to be profitable:

Use affiliate links in your articles

You should have affiliate links in every article you publish. If you don’t, you’re leaving money on the table. Your readers will click and potentially buy the products that you recommend via your links. If you recommend any products or services in your content, make sure you include your affiliate links.

How do you find products and services to “affiliate?” We’ve included our criteria for finding products to promote in this article….

How to Monetize a Blog? Optimize for SEO…

You want more people to see your content. To do that, you need to create content that will rank in search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc. Keyword research makes ranking with search engines much easier. Ranking in google is paramount to earn more affiliate commissions.

#1 search result for “My Funnel Stache Review”

For example, Steve Larsen has an affiliate program that pays 25% commission for the sales of “My Funnel Stache.” This review of his course is search engine optimized for the term “my funnel stache review.”

There is of course, an affiliate link in this review of My Funnel Stache... if a visitor reads the review and purchases the program, it pays roughly $749 in commissions.

People interested in Steve’s program may want to read reviews to learn more before purchasing his program… With a little bit of keyword research, you can find out what customers are searching for, and publish content with the goal of ranking for those specific search terms…

Be consistent

Consistency is one of the essential ingredients to this recipe. The goal is to make your blog an authority in your niche.  Build a site that regularly provides fresh content to your audience. You’ll want to frequently publish high quality articles that are relevant to your industry…

If you’re not consistent, your blog articles won’t rank as well with search engines. If you’re posting new content regularly, google will reward your site by indexing and often ranking your content quicker.

I make sure to dedicate a certain amount of time each week for content creation.  If you create and stick to a publishing schedule, you can help ensure that you’re consistently posting fresh content on your site…

Promote your blog on social media

Get the word out about your blog and different articles you’ve written. You can ethically share your content on Facebook where appropriate, on your facebook business page, other blogs, Quora, and many other places.

Establish your authority. Get the word out. Create content with SEO in mind. Put your affiliate links in your articles. Be consistent. Do all these things and you will begin to see commissions coming in…

Now that you know how important having a blog is to your affiliate marketing business, how do you create one. Here are five simple steps to getting started with it today:

How to Monetize a Blog – In 5 Steps…

Step 1 – Choosing a domain and hosting

Many experienced affiliate marketers suggest using your name dot com for your domain because it helps establish you as an authority in your niche.

However, that domain may not be available. If it’s not available, you could choose something else that has to do with what your site is about, or you could choose dot net, dot co, etc. with your name.

Just make sure that whatever you choose as a domain, it’s easy to pronounce and related to your blog content.

There are many hosting sites to choose from that will host your website where you can build your blog. I recommend BlueHost for your hosting needs. You get one free domain for a year when you sign up. It’s also user friendly, has great customer support, and is affordable.

Click here to sign up for BlueHost.

Step 2 – Customize your blog

You need WordPress for your domain in order to have a blog. Your blog is housed on WordPress. Once WordPress.org is installed (free), you can choose a theme, customize it, and start creating content.

There are a few free plugins I suggest you get that will help you with your blog and help you optimize for search engines.

• Yoast SEO – This plugin helps you optimize each article for SEO so they’ll be ready to rank.
• All In One SEO Pack – This is another plugin that will help with SEO.
• Disable Comments – If you’re prepared to respond to each and every comment and ensure negative comments get deleted, then don’t use this plugin. This plugin makes sure you don’t have to turn comment babysitting into a full-time career.
• Easy HTTPS (SSL) Redirection – This plugin will force all site visitors to https when visiting any form of your site.
• Google XML Sitemaps – Improve SEO sitemap indexing for your website with this plugin.
• Insert Headers and Footers – Want to insert code or text in the headers or footers of your website? You’ll want to add google analytics and your facebook pixel to your site… This will allow you to do just that.
• WP Content Copy Protection & No Right Click – This makes sure your content is protected from easily being copied.
• Pretty Links – This free plugin is great for making your affiliate links “pretty.” You can shorten link URLs using your own domain. This plugin is also great for tracking clicks to your affiliate offers. For example, if I want to promote the SEO Affiliate Domination course, I can link to this ugly affiliate link:  https://www.seoaffiliatedomination.com/a/6979/VYoLMU2s, or I can link to this pretty link:  https://freedomrep.com/seo-affiliate-domination.

There are other helpful plugins, but these will get you started in the right direction.

Step 3 – Keyword research

Keyword research is vital in order to rank your content with search engines. If your site is brand new, it will be difficult to rank for competitive keywords.

With a little bit of research you can find keywords on your topic that are easier to rank for.

You can target your main keywords, as well as long tail keywords in your articles. Here are a few free keyword research tools to help you find the right terms to optimize your articles for…

• Ubersuggest
• Keywordtool
• Moneyrobot
• Google Adwords Keyword Planner – visit https://ads.google.com/home/ then go to keyword planner.
• Keywords Everywhere
• KWFinder

It’s not necessary to hire an SEO expert to figure out what keywords to go after…

The “how-to” of keyword research is not complicated, but it is easily an article in itself… 

In short, you want to write your articles with SEO in mind. Much of this is deciding what keywords you want your article to rank for. 

For example, before posting this article, I did research to figure out what keywords to target… 

Looking at Neil Patel’s Ubersuggest (free), I see that the keyword “affiliate marketing” has 49,500 monthly searches. But I also see that it’s very competitive… An SEO difficulty score of 49 means, I likely will NOT be able to rank for this keyword.

“Affiliate Marketing” is difficult to rank on Google…

If I can’t get this article to show up in search results, nobody will see it…

On the other hand, I see that “how to monetize a blog” has roughly 1,900 monthly searches. The volume of average monthly searches is a lot lower than for “affiliate marketing,” but the keyword is a lot less competitive.

“How to monetize a blog” should be easy to rank for. According to Ubersuggest, there is an 83% chance that I can rank in the top 20 of search results by optimizing the article for this specific long tail keyword…

This article is written with this keyword “how to monetize a blog” in mind…  Ranking content can be a challenge, especially with a newer blog, but the likelihood of getting your content noticed in the SERPS is a little easier if you take the time for a little bit of keyword research.

Step 4 – Writing content

There’s no point in having a blog if you don’t consistently contribute to it.

You have to write.

There. I said it. You have to write. Or do you?

Many entrepreneurs don’t like this part and it’s the main reason for keeping them from starting a blog in the first place. Don’t let that be you.

If you enjoy writing, sit down and write. Be consistent. Get that blog going.

But, if you’re like many others, you’d rather pull your hair out than write.

I’ll tell you a secret…

You don’t have to write a word.

If you are one of those people who simply hates writing, you can outsource that part of it. There are various ghost writers and companies who do just this – they write blog articles for entrepreneurs.

So don’t let the writing part of having a blog stop you from getting started.

I’ve tested writers on Upwork, Textbroker, Content Authority, and other sites with mixed results…

It took a while, but I have found a writer that I now trust to occasionally contribute quality marketing related content to this website.

If not at the beginning, as your website grows, it might make sense for you to expand your content marketing team.

Step 5 – Promote your content

To maximize how much your content is seen, you need to promote it. Here are a few ways you can do that:

• Facebook Groups that have a promo thread or promo day where you can share your links. Don’t post links to your blog unless you have permission.
• Commenting on other blogs in your niche where you can post a link to your blog.
• Quora where you can answer people’s questions and share links to help answer and help them.

Promo Thread posted in the “Sky High Affiliate Marketing Commissions” facebook group

Establish yourself as an authority by following these five simple steps and get your content out into the world. It won’t take long to understand how to monetize a blog with affiliate offers…

Publishing search engine friendly content is a great way to start growing that passive income, but it starts slowly. Stay with it. Be consistent. And over time, that passive income will start rolling in.

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