If you want to make money blogging, you have to set up a great blog, create content regularly, and set up a symbiotic relationship between your website and your social media platforms.
How does blogging lead to sales?
- By encouraging people to find out more about you. The content you share on social media platforms should encourage your followers to click through to your website. Clicking the link leads to sales. ‘Likes’, ‘shares’ and ‘retweets’ are not good enough. What matters is that they go back to your website or blog and spend time there.
- By eliminating repetition. If you don’t have new content, and they have already seen everything you have to offer, you are wasting their time. This is why fresh, relevant, content that is uploaded daily or weekly to your website or blog is crucial. This is the most important part of social media. If you don’t have the base with all the goodies on it, why do you even have social media platforms?
- By improving your search engine optimisation (SEO). Creating new, valuable, relevant content will also land your company on the first page of search engines. We all use Google to find what we need and you need to make sure your company is there. The old SEO tactics no longer work. Content is king.
Top Tip: Have Something To Sell
Five ways to make money blogging
Once people arrive on your blog, make sure you have something to offer them. If you are a large company selling goods, this is self-explanatory.
- Sell Online. If you’re working for yourself, you can sell your expertise by promoting your own products. Sell digital products like e-books, e-courses, and online coaching sessions. (Our online courses are: Writers Write Online, Short Cuts Online, kids etc. online)
- Sell In-Person. You can sell physical products like courses, speaking engagements, and gifts with your logo. The possibilities of what you are able to offer are endless. Open an online shop at Cafe Press.
- Advertising. You can also sell sponsored posts and advertising on your blog if you have enough traffic. It is not advisable to litter your platform with pop-up ads and link advertising as this just annoys readers. Choose wisely.
- Join Affiliate Programmes. Sign up for affiliates that sell products linked to your brand. We have links for companies like Amazon and Scrivener (Example: Scrivener 3 for macOS and Scrivener for Windows) on our site. If somebody buys a product, we get a small percentage.
- Ask For Coffee. If you have a loyal following who want to support you, join Patreon or ask your fans to ‘Buy You A Coffee‘. This allows people to show their appreciation for all you do, especially if they are unable to buy one of your products.
The only way to build your brand’s credibility is by constantly creating content that you can display on your website or blog. Blogging helps you with your content marketing.
If you want to learn how to blog and write for social media, join Writers Write for The Complete Blogging and Social Media Course
Amanda Patterson is the founder of Writers Write. Books have saved her life many times and she carries one with her at all times in case of emergencies. She has interviewed many authors, written a ridiculous number of book reviews, several books, hundreds of blog posts, and more courses than she can remember.
