by Marc Andre | Ecommerce
It’s no secret that selling your own products is one of the best ways to make money from your website or blog. This is especially true with digital products like ebooks, courses, and other downloadable products that don’t involve inventory or shipping.
But one of the biggest reasons many people put off creating and selling their own products is because they don’t think they will be able to generate enough sales. The answer to this is an affiliate program that allows other bloggers and website owners to promote your products in return for a commission on sales that they refer. With an effective affiliate program you won’t need to have your own audience, and it’s possible for anyone to start making money by creating and selling products.
by Marc Andre | Social Media Marketing, Traffic Building
Social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ get the majority of attention from bloggers and marketers, but Pinterest is a site that has become one of my favorites over the past year. Although all of the major social networks have become more visually oriented in recent years, Pinterest is almost exclusively visual.
There are a lot of reasons to like Pinterest, but what really separates it from the other leading social networks is its ability to send ongoing traffic to your site or blog. With Twitter you may be able to drive visitors to your content through your own tweets or tweets from influencers, but the lifespan of a tweet is usually only a few hours. After several hours the link in that tweet is unlikely to continue to send traffic to your site.
Pinterest, on the other hand, is much more likely to become a stable source of traffic that sends visitors on a daily basis. Of course, in order for this to happen you will need to get your items re-pinned, preferably on some influential boards, and that is what I will cover in this post.
by Marc Andre | Blogging, Social Media Marketing
Although most blog posts are primarily text, graphics and images can be extremely effective for holding the interest of your visitors and for improving your results with social media. With major social networks like Facebook and Twitter become more graphically-oriented, quality images can go a long way in helping your content to stand out, get shared more frequently, and attract more traffic. And with Pinterest visual content is everything.
But if you are not a designer you may be unsure of how you can get quality graphics for your blog without hiring a designer. The good news is that you don’t need to be a designer in order to get effective images, and you don’t need to hire a designer or own Photoshop. Canva is a free web app that makes it possible for anyone to create graphics for a variety of purposes, including use with your blog posts.
by Marc Andre | Blogging, Interviews
Being able to earn a full-time income as a blogger is a dream for many people. Some are able to make that dream a reality, but most give up before ever reaching their goals.
Niche Hacks is a blog that I’ve been following for close to a year now, and ever since I first came across the site I’ve been very impressed with how Stuart Walker runs the site. If you’re not familiar with Niche Hacks it is a blog that focuses on helping readers to find profitable niches for their own websites and blogs.
The site recently turned one year old and Stuart published a progress and growth report detailing the first year of the site and its current state. If you read that post you can see a lot of interesting details about how the site has grown, but perhaps the most interesting part is that Niche Hacks is now generating a profit of over $6,000 per month.
That’s a fantastic accomplishment for a blog that’s only one year old, so I reached out to Stuart to see if he would be willing to answer some questions about how he achieved this. If you’re looking to start a blog or hoping to work your way towards a full-time income from blogging you won’t want to miss the advice and insight that Stuart shares here.
by Marc Andre | Email Marketing
Regardless of what type of online business you are running, growing an email list is one of the best ways to build sustainable traffic and income. One of the common challenges that many bloggers and marketers face with building an email list is a fear of losing subscribers.
Of course, the goal is to gain subscribers not to lose them, but you shouldn’t be worried about people choosing to no longer receive your updates by email.
Every email that you send to your list will need to include an unsubscribe link that allows people to easily remove themselves from your list (and if you’re using a service like GetResponse or AWeber this will all be handled for you automatically). So every time you email your list you are likely to have some people that choose to unsubscribe.
Some bloggers and marketers worry so much about people unsubscribing that it prevents them from emailing their list at all, or limits them to very infrequent emails. The whole purpose of growing your list is to be able to stay in regular contact with your followers, so infrequently or rarely emailing your list almost defeats the purpose.
If you want to get the best results with email marketing you will need to ditch the fear of people leaving your list. In reality, it’s really nothing to fear, and we’ll look at 7 reasons why.
by Marc Andre | Interviews, Social Media Marketing
Social media clearly provides tremendous potential for bloggers and other marketers to get unparalleled exposure. Many of the challenges that arise with social media marketing involve using your time in the most effective way possible. There are so many different social networks out there, and it is difficult to know which ones you should use and how many you should be focusing on. And it can be equally challenging to use social media effectively without allowing it to consume all of your time.
I recently reached out to some of the leading experts in social media marketing to ask them two questions about using social media efficiently. The first question relates to choosing the right social networks to use, and the second question relates to using your time efficiently. You’ll find some really helpful advice in their responses.
by Marc Andre | Blogging, Making Money Online
When I visit different blogs one of the things I like to observe is how they are making money. The typical monetization methods like AdSense, banner ad sales, and affiliate marketing are what you’ll usually find. Some blogs, of course, have their own products or services to sell.
Even blogs that use these common monetization methods can put a unique spin on it to do something that stands out. In this post I want to highlight five blogs that are doing something a little bit different than most other blogs. Of course, there are far more examples that could be featured as well, so if you know of any interesting examples please feel free to share them in the comments.
Hopefully taking a look at these five blogs will give you some ideas about how you can monetize your own blog. Looking at blogs in different industries and niches can be a great exercise because it can help to get you out of the rut of doing the same things as all the other blogs in your niche or industry.
by Marc Andre | Blogging
When it comes to growing your blog, building a social media following, getting traffic to a website, establishing your reputation in the industry, or just about anything else you could want to accomplish online, you’ll need some help from others.
Blogger outreach is a common topic these days as many people have realized that networking with influential people can be one of the fastest and most effective ways to gain exposure.
One of the challenges is that you need to develop a relationship with influential people who are likely very busy and a little but difficult to reach. You’re not likely to have great results by simply emailing the most popular bloggers in your niche or industry and asking them to share a link to your recent blog post.
So how can you go about getting noticed by influential people and start to develop that relationship? In this article I’ll cover 11 different possibilities, along with some examples.
by Marc Andre | Interviews
As I’m sure you have noticed, many successful bloggers are making money by selling their own e-books. If you have never written an e-book the process can seem pretty overwhelming. Not only do you need to write it, but you’ll also have to format it, get a cover designed, decide on a platform for selling it, and promote it. If you’ve thought about writing and selling e-books you may have decided that it is just too difficult.
Well, the truth is that most of the technical challenges are not that difficult if you have some direction. I recently emailed Ryan Biddulph of Blogging from Paradise to see if he would be willing to do an interview with the intent of providing that direction to anyone who is looking for a little bit of assistance or guidance with getting an e-book completed and for sale. Ryan graciously agreed, and in this post I think you’ll find some really helpful advice that you can put into practice right away.
by Marc Andre | Blogging, Interviews
One of the biggest challenges for any blogger is making efficient use of your time. It doesn’t matter if you are blogging part-time or full-time, there will always be more things to do than time available. Learning how to make the best use of your time is critical if you want to maximize the results of your blog.
Recently I reached out to a number of successful bloggers to get their feedback and advice in regards to tools and resources that they use to improve efficiency. You’ll find an interesting variety in the responses of these bloggers. Some of the same tools are mentioned several times, some are only mentioned once. Some of the bloggers use several different tools for efficiency, and others use very few, if any.
