The last three posts have all discussed the selling of text links and banners to make money. Today we are turning to a different way of making money entirely.
4. Amazon
Everyone has heard of Amazon, they sell pretty much everything, and now you can make a commission by helping them sell pretty much everything. Being an affiliate, and excuse me for getting down to basics, but that is after all what this series is about, basically means selling a product/products for a commission. You don’t have to store the item, you don’t have to take money for it, package it, or even send it. You can see the appeal, yes? It’s easy.
Simply sign up to become an affiliate and then there are a range of options. You can feature your favourite toys, books, gadgets in your sidebar or insert links when talking about specific items, like the Nintendo Wii or Guitar Hero (which I recently purchased. So. Much. Fun!!) When a visitor clicks on the link and purchases that item you receive a commission, which with amazon is somewhere between 4% and 10% (depending on the product and sales levels). The really great thing is that even if the visitor clicks on your link and doesn’t buy the product, but instead decides to do their full christmas shopping then you receive commission on the whole lot.
Unfortunately this method has not made me much money at all (I’m still awaiting enough for a payout!), however, with excellent visitor levels via search (ie from google, yahoo etc..) or a blog in a niche that particularly talks about products then the chance of making decent money is there.
This method is what I would consider a long-haul method. If you put product links in (where appropriate) over the life of your blog, eventually your effort will be compounded and you should, over time, start to see increased revenue. Put simply, the more outgoing links you have to amazon the more likely someone is to click and buy.
On a final note, if I am purchasing a product from amazon I will often go to one of my favourite blogs and purchase specifically via their links (click on any link, buy my product, they receive the commission). I do this to show support to a fellow blogger, I am consuming their work in the form of their blog posts and it costs me nothing to provide them with a small amount of revenue for their effort. I would urge everyone to support their favourite blogs by doing the same. This is a win-win-win situation, I win by being able to financially support a fellow blogger, the blogger wins as they receive the dosh, amazon wins because they bag the sale. Win-win-win.
Any questions?
8 Responses to “Ten Tips to Increase Your Blog’s Income”
Thanks for the great tips!
I’m bookmarking all of these and reading them and even printing them off so I can get all this good info!
Great, six more and a couple of bonuses to come!
So you don’t actually have to have anything on the sidebar, just people clicking through from your blog and buying something is enough to get your commission?
thank you for doing this. i’m glad to have this information. i’ve done the amazon thing and have blogher ads but nothing else.
Michelle as long as the link is your personalised affiliate link, then yes, you will receive the commission.
[...] the last post I talked about being an affiliate of Amazon, selling their products for a commission, but what if [...]
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