Determine if you could be earning money from your blog with affiliate marketing.

Is it possible to predict affiliate income? You’ve probably heard of people who earn income from their blog. Content is a common investment today. Whether it’s a major brand or individual with a hobby, blogs are a great way to build an audience and generate revenue.

While starting a business can be challenging and typically requires a large upfront investment, a blog is something a person can launch for very little investment. Blogs require time more than money to run.

If you’re trying to predict affiliate income and determing if you blog could make you money, consider these questions.

1. How would you monetize the blog?

To predict affiliate income, you need to determine if you can monetize your blog. Simply writing and posting whatever you want won’t generate revenue. How do you plan to make money from your blog? Are you interested in placing ad code and joining a network like Google Ad Manager, promoting affiliate offers, generating and selling leads or a combination of everything? Learn a little more about each monetization type.

Lead Generation

You can earn significant revenue by generating leads and selling them directly to networks like ArrowShade. You will be given a lead form to place on your site. Your blog should help guide visitors down the customer journey to generate interest in completing the form. When a visitor completes the form, their information is sent to the network or lead buyers, and you are paid per lead.

Affiliate Linking

You can promote another business’ products or services through affiliate links or banner ads. The affiliate network or advertiser will provide you with affiliate links to their products or services for you to place on your site or within content. Your job is to get people to click on those banners or links and complete the advertiser’s desired action. That can be generate sales or leads. The difference between lead generation and affiliate marketing is where the action takes place. Will lead generation, the information is completed on your website. With affiliate marketing, the user is redirected to the advertiser’s website to complete the action.

Advertising

If your blog receives tens to hundreds of thousands of visitors a month, you could generate revenue by attracting the right advertisers. You can attract advertisers by using ad platforms like Google Ad Manager, but most publishers make more money through static placements. You’ll need to create a media kit and promote available ad placements. Advertisers will pay you a set fee to appear on your site.

Programmatic advertising allows advertisers to test a variety of websites to find those that are the best fit for them. This is a good way to be discovered by top advertisers; however, you are paid per click and today’s audiences tend to avoid clicking on banner ads. The amount of revenue you can generate from these types of ads is typically far less than other monetization avenues.

2. How will you generate traffic?

Regardless of which monetization strategy you choose, you will need a significant amount of traffic or highly targeted traffic to generate income. Your ability to drive traffic to your blog is the number one indication that your blog can or can’t make you money. Here are some traffic strategies to consider.

Topic Mining

Ideally, publishers pick target niches that are wide enough to secure a large readership but narrow enough to avoid competition from well-established websites. The goal is to earn relevant followers who are in market for specific types of products or services. It’s important to research different topics and the competition before you enter into any space.

Provide Value

Your blog will need to provide something unique to be able to obtain and maintain an audience. Value from a blog includes content that is timely, unique, helpful, well written and thoroughly researched. When planning topics, look at posts from competing sites and determine whether or not they have provided a complete piece. Do they answer every question a consumer might have? If they haven’t, then there’s something for you to write.

Promote Your Content

There are organic and paid ways to promote your content. You can use SEO techniques to help your blog posts rank for highly searched queries. You can post your articles on social media sites and include your link on sites like Quora and Reddit. To boost your audience, you can boost your posts to your target audience. Even a little ad spend can go a long way.

3. Do you have the motivation, interest and bandwidth?

Keeping up a blog takes a lot of work. The majority of your audience will probably be repeat visitors. They expect to see new posts, or they won’t return. You’ll have to be motivated to write and keep posting to continue to make money from your blog. If you can’t maintain consistent posting, you can outsource writing, but that involves paying writers a fee that will come out of your earnings. Be sure to pick a blog topic you are passionate about, so that it will hold your interest long-term.

Summary

Can you predict affiliate income? Can your blog make money? If you pick the right niche, post good content regularly and drive relevant traffic, chances are you can make money from your blog.

Ready to start generating leads and making money? Contact ArrowShade today.