You've probably seen this title too many times already. Blog posts that list out a bunch of ways to make money blogging. Then you get overwhelmed by the choices and give up.
We're going to shake things up in this post, instead of listing out all the methods you've already seen, we're going to focus on one of the most pervasive ones: Amazon affiliate marketing.
Give me my passive income now!
Well, that's the problem. See, before we even talk about making money blogging (Amazon Associates or otherwise), we need to start with the blog post itself.
The very first step to making money while blogging is to not only write great content, but to write the absolute best content you've ever written.
You need to know your audience, what blog topics resonate well with them and most importantly, you need to know what you're talking about (which if that's indeed the case, then the other two should sort themselves out).
In other words, you need to build a successful blog with loyal readers in its own right before you start thinking about how it can make you money.
As a blogger, you should deeply understand your audience’s challenges so that you can offer the most in-demand solution.
Start by looking at niches where you’re a member of the target audience yourself. This way, your domain expertise shines through faster.
Writing amazing content will not only get your readers to beg for more, but more importantly the Eye of Sauron of the internet that is Google search (as well as all the other search engines) will take notice, push your content up the search rankings and land you more traffic on your blog.
Now don't let me lead you on, it's not quite that simple. You need to master Search Engine Optimization (SEO), keyword research, how to find a profitable niche, and so much more. But we go into more detail about it in our training, where we take you along the journey of building your own Amazon affiliates blog step by step.
This baby fits so much traffic from Google search
"Winner winner chicken dinner! Look at all this traffic coming to my new blog!" is what you'll be saying once you've written enough quality content that rivals some of the most successful bloggers out there, and done all the other things we advise you to do in our training.
"Can I start making some money now, pretty please?" At which point I would say *"Fine. But whatever you do, NEVER let it get in the way of creating the quality blog content that you've now become known for."*
We all know that the internet can smell bullshit from a mile away, so in order to not get shit on by the very audience that made you, you need to cherish the trust that they've placed in you like you would cherish your first born.
In practical terms, this means adding an Amazon affiliate link only where it makes sense. That means no links to coffee machines when you're talking about the latest beauty trends, no links to drink bottles when you're talking about online courses, and certainly no links to dog food when you're talking about cats.
Now, let's talk business: How do I make money blogging?
Now that we're clear on what you need to do before you can even start thinking about how to make some money while blogging, let's actually start talking about the money making bit.
If you're somehow not already familiar with the Eye of Sauron of eCommerce Amazon (where my Lord of the Rings tragics at?), well aside from running one of the largest eCommerce platforms in the world, they also run just about the largest affiliate marketing program in the world as well.
"Wait, what is affiliate marketing", you're probably asking. Well, It's when you make reference to a product or service that you recommended in your blog post.
After reading it (and trusting you enough to make this purchasing decision) your readers have then gone and purchased that product.
As a thank you for your blogging efforts, the makers of the product/service reward you with a portion of the profits of that sale, known as a commission.
Ok, so how does Amazon help me make money?
Now in our case, Amazon rewards you directly for referring your readers to purchase products on their site.
It works so incredibly well because Amazon couldn't possibly become an expert on every niche that exists and explain to each audience why they should buy each product that might be relevant to them, in the same way that they can't sell just about every product in the world (which is why Amazon allows third party sellers to sell through their platform).
Instead, they outsource that responsibility to anyone that happens to be an expert in a niche that requires products that can be purchased on Amazon, like you and me.
It's a win-win, Amazon gets more interest from people that actually put their hands in their pockets and buy things, and you get rewarded helping those same people finding a real solution to the problem that they're trying to solve.
Not to mention, it's a far more authentic experience for your user as they're being recommended products that are actually relevant to them, rather than being shown random ads via Google AdSense that, most of the time, are completely irrelevant.
Instead, that visual space on your site that would've been use as ad space can now be filled up with your content, which your audience absolutely prefers.
This then leaves you with a nice little profitable blog that will make you money for years to come!
How long does it take to build a blog that earns money?
As we outline in our training, before you can sign up for an Amazon Affiliate program account you must have your own blog that has at least ten blog posts already on it. So you'll need to factor in how long it's going to take for you to do this.
Depending on how much time you can devote to it, it can take you a couple of months, especially if you take the time to make them great blog posts.
Wait a minute, did you say a couple of months? That's a serious time commitment.
Yes, it absolutely is.
Now I'll be the first to remind you that there are no shortcuts to success, but I will let you in on a little turbocharger to success which is to get someone else to write your blog posts for you.
There are plenty of talented writers on Fiverr who will happily write you blog posts for a modest fee, and this is a great way to avoid all time and effort you would otherwise devote to writing from scratch.
This isn't a complete get out of jail free card though. You will need to spend time editing the posts and otherwise cleaning them up ready to be posted, but again if you really want to you can again enlist talented editors on Fiverr to do this for you for a modest price.
If I'm honest though, the more editing you can do yourself, the better because then you can build up your own digital marketing skills and not be entirely reliant on others.
Ok. So what else should I take into account?
Once you have your blog full of content, you can then go ahead and create your Amazon Affiliates account. The process is relatively straightforward, and can be done in under half an hour.
After you submit your application, it can take between one to three days for Amazon to review and approve your account. Once it's approved, you will be able to start creating links to products which you can embed into your posts, which is precisely the point you can say that you make money online!
At this point of course, you're not going to have that much search engine traffic coming to your site, and as such, you're not going to have that much affiliate income coming in. But as you continue to write amazing content and follow the advice in our course, you will grow the amount of traffic coming to your site, and as such grow the amount of money coming in!
How can I keep the blog post ideas coming?
It's worth noting that once you build up enough of an audience, you will be approached by brands looking for you to write sponsored posts (where they will pay you for a post on your site).
You'll also have writers reaching out to you about writing guest posts on your blog, or even wanting you to write a guest post on their blog.
The bottom line with these is to ask yourself, does my audience benefit from me accepting these proposals? Will it genuinely solve the problems that they're trying to get answers to? If they clearly do, then it's definitely worth taking the opportunity.
Now again, you can farm these out to your buddies on Fiverr if you want or write them yourself, but just know that you'll have no shortage of ideas on what to write next.
Sounds great. What's my first step to building a blog that makes money?
You're in luck! As we've already mentioned, we've actually put together an entire course on how to build a blog that makes money. We take you through all the steps right from the beginning, so there's no prior experience required.
We show you how to use all the tools, what strategies work (and what doesn't), and we provide a curated list of supplementary resources that will help you develop the critical skills you need to master so you can share in the success of thousands of others who build blogs that make sweet affiliate money. You can access the course here.