Your blog can earn you money without you having to do a thing - yes really!

I joined a site recently that allows me to choose products that may appeal to my readers and promote them (painlessly) via banners on my sites. Any sales resulting from people referred via my banners generate me commission. To my great delight when I checked my account today I found I had made three sales. This does not sound massive but they are from a low traffic site so imagine if I put some effort in marketed these items?

I just made money by putting code on my blog and that delights me no end. You can do the same.

Click on the link below for more details:

http://writersadvice.blogspot.com/2008/09/how-you-blog-can-make-money-without-you.html

This link will take you to a post on my writers advice blog.

Good luck!

Sorry creativeblogger but we'd have to challenge your claim in the name of open discussion!

Any blog to make any $$ takes hard work, preserverence and quality content - if it's too good to be true it normally is and you're an exception to the rule with your banner success. So many blogs are caught up in the $$ adsense and multiple banners that readers are often blind to and rarely click.

In the early days we tried banners here, amazon book links and realised that it didn't work for us. Focusing purley on flower banners that aren't covering what we give away in flowers in the caption contests is the only $$ making initiative we'll entertain.

Our focus now is on providing qality content and discussion on health, travel, food, inspiration and books with the founders and the likes of yourself contributing within your area of expertise and interest that is flower smelling.

Maybe Glaxo will offer us $10,000 million to place one of their banners here oneday - LOL?

Thanks for sharing but making money without doing anything would get boring anyway, right!?

Jim, I did say that if I wanted to make more than 3 sales over a long period I would need to put effort into marketing in my post, so we are not in disagreement there, the point had already been made.

When I say passively what I mean is that most bloggers blog for pleasure mainly, me being one, thus I don't consider adding content to some sites as 'work'. It's fun. Thus if I get a sale it's like 'wow...money for nothing'.

So

If you have a high traffic blog already that you add content to regularly mainly for pleasure and will do whether you make a sale or not, then yes the income is passive as you don't write for money. The pay off though is that byproduct of your hobby is that as a small % of that traffic will always click on ads and a smaller % yet will buy something.

If you want to create a site from scratch to generate income that is something else all together and YES it takes a lot of work as the work is in getting traffic to that blog and targeted traffic too. But that is not what I am suggesting.

If you have a blog already with a good traffic stream, a few ads here and there ..make sure the products relate to the reason people visit your site, then at some point you may make a sale. Some bloggers with very high traffic sites actually have people pay them to advertise on their sites so yes it works. I am not at that level yet, as I need to work on building my traffic but still, I was delighted that with almost obsolete blogs I still generated a few sales passively.

I made 3 sales totally passively on sites I barely ever submit content to, I set them up then forgot about them. One sale got me $100 commission.

Click bank (digital products affiliate program) allows you to see how may clicks you have on promotions. I was surprised to see most visitors to my one site clicked on a promotion. This told me I either needed better products to generate a sale of more traffic to increase the odd of a sale. I didn't do either as that wasn't my focus at the time.

I hope this clarifies what I meant by passive sales. ;)

ps

I had a very high traffic niche site a while ago which was my best traffic puller but I deleted it as I was bored with the type of content it covered. I never made any sales from that blog, but the ads were not niche enough for the audience that was popping along.

Example: health blog will have better chance of selling health products than sewing kits.

You may struggle here as the site covers many topics and books are such a personal thing. When you expand (as planned) you may find the products that will sell from here are books on flower arranging, floristry, how to train as florist, gardening as well as self improvement books and great gift ideas as the people visiting the site are 'flower people' they are also looking perhaps for gifts.

I sold a couple of amazon books in a short period via a teaching assistant blog I have but that was because the books were on 'teaching assistants' so they were 100% related to the sites content.

I hope this helps!

Great feedback creative and thanks for this - this is what forums is all about - people digging deeper into issues in the garden. Your take on 'established blogs' and 'passive sales' is understood and agreed.

The title of this thread, when we first read it, in all honesty is the headline grabber that could put people off and doesn't do your knowledge, craft and acumen justice BUT your comments do, for sure.

The explanations below are spot on and niche offerings is the way to go....not playing patronising school teacher here but just giving you feedback how it comes across initially.

Our topics of health, inspiration, food and travel are the essence of the community here and as you'll see we've an empty shop with the exception of flower banners - monetising GSTF is up for consideration once we've got the content mastered in the space.

Kind of 'do what you love and the money will follow'

**Crickets chirping**

All that said having an E-business is a mega growth market and this thread will work towards helping others work their magic online....

Anyone else who can cihp in here feel free!

Hi again, if this title doesn't draw you some traffic I'll eat my stiletto's ;)

People using search engines enter search term like

'How to get top of Google'

This is a VERY popular search term, how do I know?? There are tools which tell you what the best keywords are based on what people enter into search engines.

Thus if I use a title that exactly or very closely matches what people enter in search engines, your site will be listed possibly in top 10 on Google and people may if they think the content is relevant click on this sites link.

An arty ambiguous title would not show up in Googles top 10/20/30 etc and would not be picked by a Googler as they would have no reason to suspect the gems of info were within the content of that title.

This is thus my first tip to those who want to increase traffic

Get your titles right

Find out what terms people use when searching for your product/service/niche blog/website and incorporate them in the text but mostly in the title.

Also, you need a domain name that tells Google searchers what type of content you host. Don't waste time with fun ambiguous domain names, keep them content specific.

Googlers looking down a list of titles will go for the title and domain that tells them you have what they are looking for.

When I post on forums, I don't just post for those members. I always keep in mind the vast world wide web and the many people searching for particular content. If I have what they want then I try to help them find the material via these methods.

This is why my content at problogs got so many readers in such a short space of time. Titles and content related to that title and titles and content related to what people are searching for.

ps. I posted this title at mybloglog (via bulletin messages) and I never had so many visitors so fast to my blog on any link I posted there before!

My motto for Internet Marketing is 'give the people what they want'.

Thanks for clarifying and we're coming at it from the other angle...

Content for and from founders and those who join in based on the key topics and then it builds up.

However, with your rationale above we'd be wise to consider the bigger crowd.

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