How do I make a regular income online?
We get asked this a lot, and indeed if you spend time on any social media platform you’ll sooner or later come across people promising to help you earn anything from $250 – $2,500 per day for doing little else than signing up to their affiliate scheme.
So, let me start by saying you are never going to earn those kinds of returns from any affiliate scheme, certainly not one affiliate scheme alone, and certainly not from one that has reached out through a vaguely desperate and scam-like approach on social media. The only people who earn any money from those schemes are those that are running them and getting countless people promoting it for them for free.
Please don’t take this as a slight on the whole affiliate world though, for people with a well-respected blog, with a dedicated following it can provide a soft, and integrated way to add a revenue stream. What these people have done first though is to provide a service, and given value to the people visiting them; they’ve built trust and through trust, they can promote products they believe in and can then expect to make some sales. Even then, let’s be clear that conversion rates for any affiliate links are likely to be between 0.2 – 2% at the absolute maximum. Well known brands with triple-figure marketing budgets rarely make above 2% conversion.
So that’s the (slightly) negative (or, what we prefer to call realistic) framing out of the way. And from that, we can now look at building a sustainable income from your online activities.
Step 1: Build Your Own Blog
Always drive traffic to your own blog and then link out to any affiliate offers, never just direct traffic immediately to an affiliate page with your affiliate link attached and hope to make any sales. Those people will arrive colder than an Eskimo’s swimming pool, and are likely to bounce and never return. Why? Well because most affiliate landing pages are trying SO hard to convert, that they turn people off; they come across as scammy and only the most gullible will be sucked in. If you build a business around having to make suckers out of people, you’re going to fail. Warm people up, write a soft review about the product, make them understand why you like it, and why you think they’ll like it. That way, when they go to the offer, they are warmed up to some degree.
The other major bonus of sending traffic to your own site is that you’re investing in your own asset. And that’s one of the key factors to eventually building a sustainable income online. Traffic you send to other people is building their SEO and their reputation; send it to your own website, and all of your work is slowly building your own reputation.
Step 2: Find Some Genuinely Good Products To Promote
Sounds simple, right? Well not that you’d know it. Far too many people jump on the latest fads, from keto this to bitcoin that, and most of the time they don’t even believe in the product themselves. Always ask yourself – would I buy this product? If not, then chances are that no one else will either, and we’re back to expecting to make a living entirely from suckers. Sign up to an affiliate site like awin.com who run the affiliate marketing for well known, household companies that people already trust. They have brands offering products for all niches which means you can always find something that fits your particular blog topic, so you’re not trying to sell bungee jumps to knitting enthusiasts. Links are tracked in a trustworthy manner and you can expect timely payments for any monies you earn.
Step 3: Sign Up To A CPM (Cost-Per-Mille) Ad Network
Ad networks that pay CPM are a great way to monetise website traffic right from day one. CPM means that you get paid for every 1000 views an ad placement gets, regardless of whether the ad gets a click or not. CPM rates will vary from $0.10 – $20 depending upon your website niche, the quality of the traffic, and the times of the year. Don’t get too hung up on this, just concentrate on providing good content, and driving quality traffic, and the rest will follow. The older your blog is, the more you will also see trust and with it CPM rates grow.
Google Adsense is by far the best-known ad network, and if you already have an established blog with consistent traffic, we would recommend it. If however, you’re just starting out, then chances are you’re not going to be accepted. Don’t worry, there’s a very easy way around this! Build your blog using WordPress (it’s by far the best CMS anyway), the beauty of WordPress is that it’s free to use once you’ve bought a domain and have hosting, and it’s built to make blogs beautiful and SEO friendly. The other great benefit is that you can immediately sign up to Jetpack for WordPress, the premium version costs $9 per month, but it will immediately allow you to run WordAds, which is the WordPress CPM network. In literally 10 minutes your website can be running adverts, they even sell space to Google Adsense!
Good luck, don’t get disheartened, just remember that there is no such thing as a totally passive income, good things need to be built. The important thing is to use your time wisely, implement the steps above to help maximise all of the time, effort and money you’re already investing and the return will come.
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