Blogroll

Jul 11, 2012

Monetize Your Blog with Amazon


One of the reasons many people begin blogging is to create a secondary source of income. The trick to building a solid audience is finding something that you are passionate about and then sharing it with others. The trick to making money with it is to set up ads and other affiliate programs on your blog. Amazon.com allows you to link to products and earn whenever a customer purchases a product that they click through and buy. You can also set up Amazon ads on your site.
Setting Up an Amazon Associate Account
First you will need to enroll in the Amazon Associate program. You can do this by signing into your Amazon account and clicking on the option to sign up as associate. You will need to fill out the information for the program, which includes providing your address and account information so that you can operate an account. Amazon will put a stripe along of the top of your account, which makes it easy to create links and insert images into your blogs.
Posting with Your Amazon Links
For your referrals and other advertisements to work the best, you will want them to flow naturally with your blog. This means that you may not have a product your recommend in every single post. Only recommend the things that you love the most and that you feel are the most useful. If you can be genuinely enthusiastic about a product it is much easier to have people be interested in purchasing it. You can also list the products you like the best in your side bar with a link back to Amazon.
Amazons Ads and Banners
In addition you can put Amazon ads in the sidebar of your blog. This is a very easy thing to install using the widgets that Amazon provides for you. The banner can be place at the top or the bottom of your blog as well. This may be an easier option when you are first starting your blog out, then selling ad space to people, since you often need to state how many viewers you have each day. It allows you to earn money while you build up your readership and get to the point where you can begin to sell ads on a regular basis.
Balancing Your Blog While Monetizing It
For your blog to be truly successful you need to build a strong readership that will come back and participate in a discussion with you and other readers. Too many ads, and not enough real content will turn readers off and will make them stop coming back. You need to focus on providing quality content that is engaging and put in your advertisements around your content, and focus on that first. This will allow you to build a blog that can bring you a steady stream of income. Finding a subject or variety of related subjects you are passionate about will make it possible to build a blog that people enjoy reading. The more readers you have the more likely you are to have a successful blog that will provide you with income.