Welcome to day 7 of Start Your Own Blogging Business! Today it’s all about how to make money on your blog. I’ll explain what it means to be an affiliate and how the affiliate links work. I’ll also go over Sponsored Posts and where you can find opportunities for them.

As always, if you have any questions please leave them in the comments or post your questions in the Facebook group. If you haven’t already joined the Facebook group, please do so you can participate in the community.

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**Disclaimer**

There may be links in this blog post, some of them might be affiliate links for which I earn a small amount if you click on them, a really small amount it turns out. Still, full disclosure and all that…

Adsense

There are multiple ways to make money with a blog. Adsense is a great start and it’s super easy to do. All you have to do is generate the code from your Adsense dashboard and place it in a widget on your sidebar. The code will generate ads for your readers based on their history. You don’t have to worry about targeting ads because Google does it for you. If you haven’t signed up for Adsense yet you can do it here. You will need a Google account.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is the process of earning a commission for marketing someone else’s products or services. Many companies from Amazon to Ulta have an affiliate program. Sign up for the program and if accepted you’ll be given an affiliate code that is used when linking to their products. You’ll also have access to banners and other graphics to use with your code automatically generated. All of the graphics on my sidebar contain links with my affiliate tracking code embedded in them so when you click on them I get credited if you purchase something.

For instance the books I’m currently reading are all Amazon affiliate links (I have read all the books and highly recommend them). When you click on the image you’ll be brought to Amazon where you can purchase the book. If you purchase the book I make a small percentage of the sale. If you click on the image but do not purchase the book that’s ok. I still make something just for getting you over to Amazon. If you go back a month later and purchase the book I still get the fee for the sale because they keep the cookies for 6 months (I believe it is 6 months) unless you clear your cache out.

Most companies will have a link for their affiliate programs listed at the bottom of their website. You can also use a company like CJ (Commission Junction) and Shareasale. Many of the companies that do offer an affiliate program run it through one of these two websites. You can sign up for both and then choose which companies you’d like to be an affiliate for.

Approval

You’ll need to get approved for most affiliate programs. They are looking for established blogs or websites (older than 6 months, often longer) and with a minimum amount of traffic. They all very – some require 5000 hits a month, while others want even more. They also have requirements for social media follows. This is why it’s important to get those numbers up as quickly as possible.

You will get rejected for some programs, and they don’t always tell you why. If you don’t have much content and have only been blogging for a few weeks you probably won’t be accepted to the bigger affiliate programs. However, there are plenty out there that have less stringent requirements. If you do get rejected you can always go back and apply again. In the mean time, work on adding great content and growing your audience.

Sponsored Posts

Sponsored posts are another great way to make money with your blog. In a nutshell you are asked to write about a specific topic and link back to the sponsor. I recently completed two campaigns that were sponsored. You can see examples here and here. Each of these campaigns had other requirements in addition to the post on my blog. They usually include a social media element. For both of these I was required to Tweet each day and include a link to their products. I find these opportunities by being a member of Massive Sway and Influencer. Both are free to join, and I don’t believe you have to have a certain number of followers or traffic, however they might require you to have been blogging for a certain amount of time. You will still have to meet the criteria for each campaign, but they are all different and many have none so are open to new bloggers.

Homework

Join both Massive Sway and Influencer and apply for a couple of campaigns. Start slow, maybe one at a time. I did those two campaigns at the same time and it was confusing to say the least.

If you have any questions about today’s lesson, please feel free to leave a comment in the comment section below, on the Facebook page or you can email me directly at jen { at } redheadranting.com (use the @ sign and no parentheses or spaces).