Want to make money blogging? I highly recommend affiliate marketing.

For those who may have never heard the term of affiliate marketing before, it’s basically when you are paid to promote another person’s product, coupon, deal, or website.

It’s typically CPA (cost-per-action) advertising — which means that you only get paid per action. In other words, a reader must take some form of action (purchase something, click through your link and sign up for something, download a coupon or ebook, etc.) before you receive any compensation.

You sign up for an affiliate program (I share some of my favorites at the end of this post), you promote your unique affiliate link that the company gives you, and then you are paid if your readers buy the item or sign up for the offer.

In many cases, people have to make a purchase in order for you to earn money as an affiliate. However, there are also hundreds of other options that require no purchase.Continue Reading

If you’re a brand-new blogger and you don’t have a lot of traffic, it can be hard to get accepted into many affiliate programs. But don’t despair! There are a number of sites that don’t require you to even be a blogger in order to promote them — and they will pay you for sharing your referral link! Most of these sites pay via credit to their site that you can use to buy products on their site.

This can be a fun way to buy some items you need to buy or want to buy, even if you’re not making a lot of money off of your blog yet. You can share your referral links on your social media, on your blog, or even in your email newsletters!Continue Reading

Wish you could make more income with affiliate links? Here’s a little peek into how I maximized my mileage on an affiliate post that was doing well last week week:

On Thursday morning, I discovered that the Stitch Fix offer (to try it for free) we had posted a little blurb about on Wednesday had converted like gangbusters.

It was a really fantastic offer because people didn’t have to pay anything out of pocket to sign up and we got $25 in commissions per sign-up! (You can sign up for the Stitch Fix affiliate program through CJ.com.)Continue Reading

It’s Black Friday weekend and that means that there are some amazing deals on some fantastic products for bloggers. We’ve rounded up some of our very favorites below:

LeadPages is offering a really fantastic deal for Black Friday! You can try them out for 60 days for just $1!! We use Leadpages to quickly create marketing campaigns and sign-up pages that are so simple to put together and convert really well.

With this offer, you can get started with Leadpages for just $1 and use all the features of the Pro level account for 60 days. (By the way, with the Leadpages Pro Plan, and its 150+ flexible templates, you can create as many mobile-responsive landing pages to build your list faster and make more sales!)

Note: At the end of 60 days, you can choose to continue on with LeadPages or cancel your account. This is a great way to test LeadPages out to see if it would help you build your list and increase you income and engagement.

 

OptinMonster – Get 25% off from November 20 to November 30th, 2017 when you enter discount code BF2017 during checkout! This discount is available for new customers only.

Get the same great discount when you purchase any of OptinMonster’s other products, including WPForms, MonsterInsights, Envira, and Soliloquy!

ConvertKit – Get a FREE 30-day trial of ConvertKit, one of the most popular email service providers out there! Click this link between November 24th and November 27th to sign up and get the free trial. We highly recommend ConvertKit if you are wanting to build an email list.

WP Engine – Get 35% off of your first month with WP Engine, a WordPress hosting company bringing some of the best hosting plans for WordPress sites. Save by entering coupon code cyberwpe2018 during checkout! This sale is valid through Monday, November 26, 2018.

Infusionsoft – Sign up for an Infusionsoft account and get 50% off for 3 months! This is what we currently use for our email lists, our product fulfillment, and our affiliate program. It’s pretty complex and complicated for newbies, but has served us well.

WP Forms is offering 60% off all of their WPForms plans through November 30, 2018. This is a powerful drag-and-drop form builder that is perfect for beginners. This is great if you need/want to put robust and customized contact forms or other forms on your site. Go here to shop the WPForms Black Friday sale.

Blog Start-Up 101 — Have a great idea for a blog but don’t know where to start? In this popular course, I’ll teach you how to set up your first blog — from start to finish! And you don’t have to have any technical experience to do it! Blog Start-Up 101 is regularly $37, but it’s just $20 through Monday at midnight. Purchase it here for just $20.

WordPress 101 — Struggling to make sense of WordPress? Let us help you! We’ll walk you through everything you need to know to get started with your WordPress blog and to conquer your fear of WordPress once and for all! This course is regularly $37, but it’s on sale for just $20 through Monday at midnight.

Elegant Themes – Check out Elegant Themes’ mega Black Friday event — they are giving away $500,000 in free prizes and offering their biggest discounts of the year! We use Elegant Themes’ Divi theme for our courses and LOVE it! The sale starts November 23rd and lasts for 3 days.

Restored316 Designs – Get 25% off of any Restored 316 theme with coupon code r316cm17 (case sensitive) and 10% off any installation service with coupon code r316cm17install (case sensitive)! Discounts valid 8am CST on November 27th through 8am CST on November 28th.

Know of any other great deals out there for bloggers? Share with us in the comments below!

Black Friday is right around the corner and this is an amazing time of year to promote some of your favorite deals and sales. It’s one of our biggest earning times of the year and I can’t stress enough how fantastic a time of year this is to share deals with your blog readers using referral or affiliate links — especially if they are deals on great Christmas gift ideas!

With this in mind, I wanted to share some quick tips to help you make the most of your Black Friday promotions:

1. Share your personal experience with a product.

Talk about how it has impacted you and why you think others should buy it. Don’t just say: Here’s a sale you should check out.

Nope, tell people exactly how this product is going to make a significant difference in their life. Don’t tell them that they should buy; convince them as to why they should buy it.

Some questions to ask yourself as you write posts/do Facebook Lives & IG stories/put together email newsletters about products:

• What problem did this product solve for you?
• How did this product meet a need in your life?
• How did this product impact you in significant way?
• How will people benefit right away from buying this product?

2. Send out an email newsletter about this product/sale.

Blog posts and social media posts can be effective, but they will never hold a candle to how an email in someone’s inbox will convert. Don’t be shy; write and send out emails to your email list. (Be sure to keep this in mind when you write your email newsletters.)

Pay special attention to your subject line — that’s what’s going to convince someone to actually open your email. And then make sure that you write an email newsletter that is both interesting but also compelling.

Maybe start by sharing a story of something personal and then tie in the product to that story. Finally, close with telling people how the product will impact their life (bullet points can work great for this!) and why they should buy this weekend because of great sale.

Be sure to include a clear Buy Now button or Click Here to Buy Now type of live link at the bottom. Make it so easy for them to take advantage of the sale!

3. Talk about the product on a Facebook Live or Instagram Story.

You guys, I know that I sound like a broken record, but live video is where it is at. It’s one of the most effective ways to convert sales — in an incredibly organic and engaging way.

Seriously, you gotta try FB Live and IG stories. I know it’s scary. I know it’s outside your comfort zone. I know that it takes practice. But it really, really works. In fact, oftentimes, live video will beat out or match the conversions we see when we send out email newsletters.

Plus, the more you do it, the easier it gets. For real. (I never, ever thought I’d fall in love with live video. But I have!)

As always, the more you can point people to your own personal experience with a product, the more you can promote the specific benefits of a product, and the more you bring your own unique voice, the more effective your promotion will be.

A few tips for live video: make sure that you are personable (use people’s names if they are leaving comments), have a simple outline, be interesting and overly enthusiastic (it translates to energy on the camera), make your call to action very clear, repeat it multiple times, and use your affiliate link in your teaser text on FB Live and in your bio on Instagram (if you don’t yet have the swipe up feature).

4. Promote the product/sale in multiple ways.

For instance, I’m doing a Black Friday sale and Cyber Monday sale on my products and I will do a multiple blog posts, multiple Facebook Lives, an Instagram post, multiple Instagram stories, plus I’ll send out email newsletters and will post several social media posts in Pinterest and Facebook.

I know that might seem like overkill, but remember that not everyone follows you on every platform, not everyone logs into every platform every day, and most platforms now have algorithms in place so not everyone who follows you on them sees all of your posts. But more than that, what I’ve seen to be so true is that people need to hear about something multiple times before they will decide to actually get up and take action! 🙂

What I Am NOT Saying To Do

Now, I’m not saying that you should post the same photo five times on Facebook. That would be boring and would frustrate people.

What I AM saying is to get creative and come up with multiple ways you can promote the sale — focusing on different aspects of the product, sharing it from different angles, sharing a quote photo that you can weave in a message about the product, sharing a picture you took of the product, sharing a video where you talk about how the product has impacted you, and maybe sharing a post specifically about the sale (this is usually most effective during the last few hours of the sale).

Any time I’m planning to promote a product in earnest on my site/social media, I will sit down and brainstorm ideas for different ways I can promote it, different pictures I can use, different angles I can approach it from, different features I can focus on.

Then, I think about which platform is best for which type of promotion and then I map out a plan for promotion where I write down each idea and what day and what platform I’ll use.

This really helps me so that I’m able to promote the same sale over and over again without frustrating or boring people — and it also helps me to not fall into a creative rut.

So there you have it! My top 4 tips for making more on Black Friday! What tips would you add to my list? I’d love to hear! Hit reply and share them with me!

P.S. I’ll be running a sale on Blog Start-Up 101 and WordPress 101 for Black Friday! Look for a post on Friday with details on those special prices! 🙂