Adsense is not the only way to make money from blogging. Surprised?

In fact, in some niche markets it’s much better for you to make money as an affiliate. If you’re running a “How to Make Money Online” type of blog and you’re not making affiliate commissions, you’re probably on drugs.

That’s because in some markets, as I discovered on my Internet Home Business blog and on this blog as well, I can make so much more by removing most forms of blog advertising and replacing the empty spaces with affiliate links or links to my own products. Don’t ask me why – it’s just the way it is.

Bottom line: Adsense works well in some blogs (like my voip blog or music blog), but not so well on other blogs. If Adsense isn’t working for you, there are other ways.

Affiliate Blogging 101

Yes, you can make money from affiliate programs, by recommending affiliate products on your blog either directly or by a process now well-established with the term pre-selling. Let’s call this method Affiliate Product Blogging.

Making money from affiliate products can be a good option if:

1. There is an abundance of products in your market with affiliate programs
2. There is a wide range and type of product, i.e physical goods, books, ebooks, software and services
3. Your market has proven the interest to buy online

But for it to work, you’ll need to make sure there is a steady supply of new products introduced in your market. You can browse for such products in established market places such as:

1. Commission Junction – Wide range of physical / digital products
2. Clickbank – Digital products only
3. ShareASale – Pay per lead products, digital and physical products

If there’s aren’t any really good programs on most of these places for your blog’s topic, chances are you can’t choose the products blogging model, and would do better with an Adsense model instead.

If you do find good ones, then you’re in luck. Here’s a rough guideline of becoming a “blogging super affiliate”:

Affiliate Blogging: Creating Content

If you’re blogging for affiliate commissions, creating content becomes much more direct. Basically, you’ll be spending less time reporting the latest news, and more time blogging about products that have an affiliate program, and that other people are searching for.

If you’re just getting started, forget about the products that have no affiliate commissions because it’s not going to pay you.

Also, it takes much less targeted content to make money from affiliate blogging, as compared to making money from Adsense blogging.

• Buy one ebook / book / magazine on the topic, and make sure that it’s one of the most popular ones
• Analyze what topics the author covers and write out the outline of your content, much like the table of content in a book
• Start by blogging about a single product, and I don’t mean review the product. Sure, your first post can be a review but then go really into the details.
• As you read the chapters, blog about it. Rewrite what you’ve written from memory, in your own words. This not only helps you learn better, but it also give you multiple opportunities to sell the product with your affiliate link
• Detail your trial-and-error process. This alone, depending on how many mistakes you make, can come up to quite a number of post, and more affiliate links
• Look at the resources section for websites that you can review and blog about. This should add another 20 – 100 posts for your blog.

Affiliate Blogging: The Art of Pre-Selling

The merchant already has a sales website where prospects can order online. On this page they usually provide all the information necessary to get the sale. But they don’t always provided ALL the required information, especially in terms of pitting the product to individual markets.

That’s when the art of pre-selling sets apart the experts from the newbies. It’s an art because no one can really tell you how to presell, but you can follow the general guidelines:

1. Write Reviews – reviews are a good way to pre-sell any product. An honest, in-depth review can overcome many buying objections and use the power of social proof to sell any product, even if the merchant’s site itself does a poor job at it. You can read more about creating product review blogs here.
2. Write Case Studies – Use a product, and document the results you’ve achieved using the product
3. Use Images – Use a lot of screenshots, pictures of you using the product or even allows visitors to see a demo video of the product in action
4. Offer Bonuses – Offer your visitors a special bonuses for buying the product with your affiliate link. This immediately gives them a reason to buy via your site than anyone else’s site
5. Segregate Your Market – Not every product is suitable for everyone. If a product is very basic, do let your readers know that it’s “Recommended for Newbies”. If it applies only to people who have bought another product, do let your visitors know. Make it clear who needs what product, and why.
6. Push Your Link – Put your affiliate link in a prominent area, not hidden by other text or images. I like to use my affiliate link more than once in a targeted post, so I increase the chances of someone clicking on it. Use once at the top, once in the middle and once at the bottom of your post at least.

SEO and Traffic Strategy for Affiliate Blogging

Keywords are extremely important for affiliate blogging, and your keywords will generally have less search numbers but also lesser competition. Go for the easy keywords first:

1. Name of the product & variations
2. Name of the product creator

Once that’s done you can start targeting more general keywords, and make them all interlink with your money pages, ie the pages that pre-sell and has the affiliate links.

SEO is also important for product blogging, but once you have your money pages set-up, you can also get more paid traffic to those pages and your income will soar! You may want to consider Google Adwords content network where it’s still possible to get $0.05 clicks.

To get one step better, you’ll need to create special landing pages (one-page with opt-in form) to collect the leads first before sending them to your money pages. By doing this you can end up with a really good mailing list that you can use in the future to send to your new pages.

RSS subscription is not so important for this blogging model, what’s important is the mailing list. Since you will not be pumping a tons of content or the latest news every day, they will not need to subscribe to your RSS feed anyway.

Using an Aweber optin form for example, gives you much more control over your target market. When I got started blogging, I used my Internet business blog and focused on building optins instead of RSS subscribers, and it has paid off well for me.

You may see some bloggers displaying that they have “2450 Subscribers via Feedburner” etc just to show off, but in this business model it’s not really necessary since you’re not trying to attract advertisers.

I have more than 12,000 opt-in subscribers using this marketing tactic, which are not limited to the content I write on my blog.

Some Important Tools You May Need

While product blogging may start off simple, in time you may find links scattered all over your blogs, and you may not be monitoring each to see which ones are performing the best.

Some of these tools will go a long way to improving your affiliate blogging income:

1. GoTryThis Affiliate Tracker – GTT is an affiliate link management software, you can manage thousands of links from one place. It also gives you in-depth stats on your traffic sources, real-time reporting of campaigns, and more.
2. Cash Links DX – A WordPress plugin that allows you to automatically turn keywords in your entire blog into links. You can manages and track links as well.
3. Keyword Elite – Build a large keywords inventory on your market, and on the products themselves. Knowing what keywords to use makes it so much easier to see results faster
4. Instant Blog Links – Find blogs you can comment on, and in your comments let people that you have a review / case study on your blog that they can check out
5. LightPop Plugin – Create a cool pop-up for your blog, and drive more optins to your mailing list

Switching to Pure Affiliate Blogging Mode

When your affiliate commissions really start to pick up, analyze your Adsense, Chitika and other advertising income. Is your affiliate checks significantly more?

If it is, remove the ads from key areas of your blog, especially in the content are. Remove all ways for the visitor to click out of your site other than via the affiliate links. You can maintain an Adsense block or Text Link Ads advertisers, but really minimize it. If you give people less choices to click out from the content area, chances are they will be clicking more often on the affiliate links.

Happy affiliate blogging!