What is the BEST Way to Monetize a Blog?

The Best Way to Monetize a Blog?

I’m a mommy blogger that makes money online with affiliate marketing. I’ve found that affiliate marketing is the best way to monetize a blog because you can earn commissions on sales a lot quicker than you can earn adsense revenue.

Once you have an established blog of many years, Adsense is a great way to monetize a blog – but it’s NOT the best way that I’ve found.  And until you’ve brought home over $14,000 in Adsense in one month, I’m just not going to change my mind.

I know it’s doable, but for the average Joe’s mom like me, affiliate marketing is a much better return on my time.  The money comes faster than it does with adsense.

Affiliate Marketing is the Best Way to Monetize a Blog

Why is affiliate marketing the best way to monetize a blog?  With affiliate marketing you can make money right away with a blog and if you have an established blog already, you can add links to the posts with the highest traffic right away and start earning quicker.

Now, if your idea of affiliate marketing is squeeze sales pages and fancy copywriting skills – you’re not thinking of the right kind of affiliate marketing for bloggers.

Affiliate Marketing for the blogger is a completely different ball game from those squeeze pages and sales funnels you see.  A lot of times, affiliate marketing isn’t even noticed in a blog, even with disclosures.  A good blogger can subtly add links where a reader needs more information on something and make money without being spammy.

How Do I Monetize My Blog with Affiliate Links?

By joining affiliate programs like Amazon and many others, you can link to specialty items that you mention in your blog posts.  Perhaps you read a book?  Made a new recipe?  Bought a new vacuum?  All of those things and many more topics mommy bloggers talk about can be monetized.

Your blog experiences that you’re already writing about can start making you money if you would monetize them with affiliate links.

Affiliate links put in the right places actually serve your readers better than no links at all.

The same way you link to other resources online in your blog – you can link to products you use too.

Think about it!

These are all products that I’ve sold on Amazon from my blog:

Amazon has millions of products – I bet you’ve blogged about something that Amazon has at one point.  Not just Amazon either, there are hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of affiliate programs out there.  Walmart, WayFair, Etsy and more.  All these affiliate programs will allow you to link to their products in your blog.  If your reader buys something through one of those links – you make a commission because the links have a unique tracking ID on them that credits the sale to you.

Can I Monetize My Blog?

Yes, if you have a blog, you can monetize it with affiliate marketing links.  I would suggest that you join an affiliate marketing group for bloggers and learn the BEST way to monetize a blog with affiliate links.

You will need certain disclosures on your blog when you use affiliate links, these disclosures can be subtle and placed in the sidebar of your blog.   A lot of affiliate programs want you to make a sale within a certain time frame so it would be a wise on your part to learn the best way to monetize your blog so that you can stay in those programs.

How Do I Monetize My Blog?

Monetizing a blog looks different for different people depending on the blog topic.  The most effective way to monetize a blog is to begin adding contextual links in areas where you think a reader would want more information.  (see video below for a visual)

Sometimes recipes call for ingredients that readers can’t buy in a regular grocery store. You can link to those specialty ingredients, kitchen tools and other things you use subtly in the text for your readers to purchase.

How to Add Affiliate Links that Convert Sales to Your Blog

I made this video here to give you a visual of what I’m talking about when I say to add affiliate links in places where readers will want more information.

Affiliate Links Only Work if You Have Readers

Affiliate links only make money when there is traffic (readers) to the blog that you are monetizing.  Besides adding affiliate links to your existing blog posts, you need to optimize those blog posts so that you get targeted traffic from search engines and social media.  A good step by step blogging course can show you how to do this.

Monetize Your Blog to Earn Extra Money Online

Monetizing your blog just makes sense.  If you have a blog, monetize it.  Affiliate marketing with Amazon or other reputable online retailers is the best way to make money with your blog quickly.  Adsense is awesome but it’s nothing compared to what the average mommy blogger can do with affiliate marketing.

If you don’t know any bloggers making money with affiliate marketing, I suggest you join a group on Facebook that has some.  Just because you don’t know any bloggers that make a lot of money doesn’t mean they don’t exist.  The Pajama Affiliates are a group of online bloggers making money with affiliate marketing and their group is free to join and their classes are dirt cheap!

Affiliate marketing is one of the best ways to monetize a blog because of the amount of money that you can make.

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Images were courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net / Photo 1 and Photo 2 by patpitchaya