How to Make Money Online With a Free Blog - For Newbies
This report is for complete newbies and it explains the various ways that you can make money with a blogger blog.
A Blog is a short name for "Weblog" and it is basically a website that you can get for free and use for multiple different things.
In this case you will be using it for Internet marketing purposes – more specific to sell products as an affiliate marketer and/or to make money from clicks, via Google Adsense revenue.
A Blogger blog is a blog that you can get for FREE from Blogger.com. They are owned and operated by Google, so if you have a Gmail account or a Google Account, you can use your same login name and password as that to log in and you don't even have to create a new account!
If you do not have an account with Google already, you can create one forfree, at http://www.Blogger.com or Gmail.com.
Once you log in to blogger.com, you can create a blog right away! You get your own domain name that will look something like this:
www.YourDomainName.Blogspot.com
Of course, you would replace "YourDomainName" with whatever you want your URL to be. Most of the time, people choose keywords that are popular search terms on, so that the blog ranks higher on the search engines.
If you are in the weight loss niche, you might want to choose a name like "LoseWeightFast.Blogspot.com" for example, because the term "Lose Weight Fast" is a very popular search term and brings up over a million results.
The fastest and easiest way to make money with a blog, is with this formula: RB + AL + AM + T = $$$.
You might be saying, what the heck is that?
Don't panic, I hate math too...just watch how easy this is:
RB = "Review Blog" - This is a blog that you will create with Blogger.com and you will use it to post product reviews, about products that you are promoting as an affiliate.
AL = "Affiliate Links" -At the end of each product review, you would include your affiliate link to the product you reviewed. Your "affiliate link" is the URL that you send people to, so that you can earn a commission on the product if they purchase it.
AM = "Article Marketing" - By writing articles (or outsourcing them) you can drive quality, targeted traffic to your blog.
T = "Traffic" - This is the traffic you will receive from both the articles, as well as people who are surfing Blogger.com for blogs in your category. The more popular of a niche market you choose, the more traffic you will likely receive.
$$$ = MONEY! - This of course represents the money you will earn when you make an affiliate sale! Think about it...this WHOLE ENTIRE process won't cost you a dime. The blog is free, with blogger.com. Becoming an affiliate of Clickbank.com, Amazon.com, Ebay.com and CJ.com are ALL 100% FREE. Writing and submitting keyword optimized articles toEzineArticles.com or GoArticles.com is also 100% FREE and that is all it takes to make money with a blog. Many big name marketers and Warriors use this method to make tons of money...and the more articles they have out there, the more money they make. If you choose to outsource articles, this would be an expense and it could cost you anywhere from $2 - $12per article for quality articles from a freelance writer.
OK, that was just the gist of it. Let me give you more elaborate details and instructions so that you can start doing this right away.
Step 1 would be to sign up as an affiliate with Clickbank.com. <---At this link, you can sign up as an affiliate for FREE, right away. Then, you can browse the marketplace for niches and products that you want to promote! All you have to do is click the small link at the top of the page that says "Marketplace."
The products over at Clickbank.com are "digital" products. A digital product is either an eBook or a software application. The reason why they are called digital products is because they can be downloaded immediately after purchase and there is no need for shipping or sending a physical product. An 'eBook' as most of you know (but remember this report is for complete newbies), is a book that can be read right from your computer screen and can be downloaded immediately after purchase. You can also print it out to read it if you prefer, or use one of those new electronic eBook reading devices.
The great thing about the products on the Clickbank.com marketplace, is that they offer stunningly high commissions to their affiliates (you). Most of them offer a 75% commission! If you were promoting an eBook that is $47,in the Weight Loss niche or the Make Money Online niche, you would earn $32.50 for every copy you sell. The best part is, you don't even have to sell them the eBook...the sales page that the product creator made will do that for you. All you have to do is refer people to your 'affiliate link.'
An 'affiliate link' is the link that is provided to you, so that you can promote a particular product (of your choice). This link will take the customer to the same EXACT page that the product creator uses to sell the product, but it will have YOUR affiliate ID in the URL. Your affiliate ID will be the username that you select for your Clickbank account. Here is an example of an affiliate link:
http://YourAffiliateID.ProductName.Hop.Clickbank.Net
Of course, "YourAffiliateID" is replaced with your actual username and the "Product Name" is the code name that the product owner made for that product. You won't need to be guessing any codes though, all you have to do is click on the link that says "Create Hoplink" located underneath the listing of the product that you wish to promote -- on the Clickbank Marketplace. After you select the category and subcategory you will be taken to a page full of listings of products to promote. You can view the product price, the commission percentage, and the gravity. The gravity is how many people (affiliates) earned a commission on that product in the past one or two week pay period. You can also view the sales page, which is where your affiliate link will send people.
The magic of your affiliate link is that it takes the customer to the same destination they would go to if they hadn't been referred by you. The only difference is that since your affiliate code is hidden within the link...you earn the commission and the money shows up right in your Clickbank That's where the review blog comes in. If you write product reviews of three Books on Clickbank, post them on your blog and then include your affiliate link at the bottom of the review. A certain percentage of people who visit your blog and read the reviews will click on your affiliate link. Out of those people, a certain percentage of people will actually purchase the Book once they visit the link. A common conversion rate is 2%. So, out of every 50 visitors to your affiliate link, you should have 1 purchase. That would net you $32.50. It is very easy to get 50 visitors to your blog and even much more.
Step 2 would be to sign up with Blogger.com. <---At this link, you can sign up for Blogger.com for FREE --and start creating as many blogs as you want, right away. You can be up and running in just minutes. If you don't have a Google Mail account already (Gmail, Adwords, Adsense) you will have to create one, but that is 100% free. Then, you will proceed to the "Create a Blog" section, by clicking on the "Create a Blog" link.
Here you will create a name for your blog as well as a domain name. The domain name will be the web address that people type into their browser to get to your blog site. Depending on the product(s) that you are promoting.
Step 3 would be to go back to the Clickbank.com Marketplace and choose a product or products to promote. Here you can pick a category and even a sub-category. For instance, a popular niche is "Health and Fitness" and the most popular sub-category of the Health and Fitness market is "Diet."
Step 4 would be to write a product review about the product you choose to market. Remember, you are marketing a product here...the product is already made.
It is your job to find the people who want/need the information you are offering --and then give it to them. They will buy it if/when the sales pitch sells itself.
But, you do NOT have to give or write the sales pitch...the sales page for the product you're promoting will have one already -- Most likely written by a professional sales copywriter. All you need to do is guide people there, If you can not write a product review to save your own life, you can easily outsource it to someone on the warrior forum. A freelance writer would not charge too much for a product review for a Clickbank product. You can expect to pay anywhere from $3 - $20 for a custom written product review, depending on the writer and the word count of the review.
Step 5 would be to add your affiliate link to the bottom of the product review. It can be a short review, something like 250-500 words or more if you wish. At the end, you can give a strong "Call to action" so that the reader will be compelled to click on your affiliate link. Something like, "To check out (ProductNameHere), visit their website at (Your Affiliate Link) and (Something positive that the product will do for them --such as lose 9pounds in 11 days!)."
So, your call to action at the end of the product review would look like this (if we were promoting a weight loss product) example:
"To check out Fat Loss 4 Idiots, visit their website at: http://YourAffiliateID.4idiots.hop.clickbank.net and learn how you can lose 9 lbs. in just 11 days!"
Step 6 would be to drive traffic to your review blog. You don't just want any traffic going to your site, you want 'targeted' traffic. Targeted traffic is visitors who are actually interested in the product that you are reviewing. They are in the market for what you are offering basically. That is the beauty of
niche marketing...you find the people who need what you are offering and you simply give it to them. It's easy money, and you are helping people at the same time.
The way to drive targeted traffic to your review blog is to write articles for it and submit them to Ezinearticles.com and GoArticles.com. These article directories are the top, most popular ones and rank very well on the search engines --especially Ezinearticles.com. If you write articles in the niches that you are promoting, and you give away some good information and of course include a link to your review blog in your resource box at the end of each article, you will have targeted traffic to your blog, which will convert into sales, which means you will earn affiliate commissions!
Step 7 includes additional methods of driving quality, targeted traffic to your blog. This includes (but is not limited to) back link building, social networking, pinging your blog, paying for traffic via Pay-Per-Click advertising, traffic exchanges (not so great), offline advertising such as business cards, classified ads, yellow pages, etc. The more targeted leads you drive to your website...the more sales you will make. It's simple, but it does take work.
There you have it. This simple, yet effective method of creating a review blog to market affiliate products costs nothing to do and can earn an potentially unlimited income. Depending on how much traffic you drive to your blog and the conversion rates, you can build a $20,000 per month business or more using this exact model.
Good luck and I wish you the best of success with your blogging.
Now go and make some money!