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Blog Smarter: Turn Your Blogging Skills into Successful Affiliate Promotions

Posted By Guest Blogger 22nd of February 2012 Affiliate Programs 0 Comments

This guest post is by Regine Becher of Syndicated Partners.

Like most bloggers, you probably want to make some money from your blog. Chances are good you’ve tried things like writing product reviews or putting banners or links to affiliate products into your sidebar.

But while many bloggers have mastered the “Art of Blogging” (or at least the basic principles) successfully, earning money from your blog doesn’t seem to be that easy. So what could be better for you than to use your blogging experiences and skills to improve the results of your affiliate promotions?

In this post, I’ll show you how you can re-purpose three of the most successful blogging strategies to get more out of your affiliate promotions. As a nice extra, these tactics will also have a positive effect on your blog. But more importantly, you’ll learn how you can merge them into a combined and even more powerful strategy for your affiliate promotions.

While some of what I write may seem simple or self-evident to the more experienced affiliate bloggers, it’s this way of tying it all together into one strategy that will make the affiliate promotions on your blog really stand out.

Let’s look at the three important blogging strategies on their own first.

Write (and promote) for your audience

You know that well enough—if you want your stuff to be read, it has to match your audience’s interests. The same is true for your affiliate promotions, in particular for the products you choose to promote: they have to be relevant for your audience.

This sounds self-evident, but frankly I’m stumped at the number of bloggers who have an affiliate banner for a hosting company on their blog—even though their audience clearly isn’t thinking about computers or internet when visiting their blog.

So instead of promoting your hosting company on your garden blog, why not try it with an affiliate link for garden tools, or link to an ebook about gardening?

Publish (and promote) quality

You know the game… Quality content attracts real readers which are interested in the topic. An excited and engaged audience. (Just look around here on ProBlogger if you don’t believe me.) It also makes people stay on your site longer, come back for more, engage with you and others, and recommend you to friends.

Just the things you want for your blog.

The same holds true for any products you promote: choose quality. Again, this seems to be self-evident. But take a look around at some blogs and see what they promote. (Or take a close look at your own blog, just for good measure.)

A lot of times, I see just the same banners or “product reviews” for the same old products. It seems that a lot of affiliate bloggers don’t bother to pick a product by its quality. Nor do they care about the “quality” of the vendor, i.e. about his integrity, and about how much he cares about his customers.

In the long run, your readers will notice the difference. And they will trust your recommendations just because they know you watch out for them.

Even the quality of the affiliate program should matter to you as affiliate. After all, you can and should expect a fair treatment for your efforts. Affiliate promotions are a business deal between the vendor and you, the affiliate. If a vendor doesn’t care about the success of his affiliates, why should you bother to promote his products?

So, again, be picky. Choose the right kind of products to promote.

Establish expertise—not only for yourself

This powerful blogging strategy has several facets which can all play together:

  • You can establish yourself as expert on your own blog by posting the right kind of content.
  • You can establish yourself as expert to a wider audience by guest posting on other blogs.
  • You can establish other people as experts on your blog by publishing their guest posts.
  • And you can establish yourself as a “meta expert”, as the go-to guy/girl of the experts in your field, by publishing a selection of guest posts by recognized experts in your field and/or by interacting with them on your blog, e.g. through interviews.

Again, you can make use of the same strategy in your affiliate marketing. If you want your readers to buy the products you’ve selected for them, they need to do two things: trust your judgement, and trust the vendor to deliver quality. A big step towards the first is if your readers see you as the expert. That will make them much more likely to trust your recommendations.

But don’t forget about the second part, about trusting the vendor. Before somebody buys from a vendor you recommend, they have to be reasonably sure that this person will be honest, and that (s)he will deliver quality.

To some extent, you can establish that trust towards the vendor with your recommendation: if readers see you as trust-worthy, your recommendation carries some weight, too.

But you should also consider establishing expert status for the product creator on your blog. Then when a reader clicks on your affiliate link, he will already be prepared to trust the vendor whom he sees as expert.

Tie these strategies together for even more power

Just by using these three strategies, you can improve the results from your affiliate efforts a lot. But there’s a very simple, though rarely used way to combine these strategies into something even more powerful:

Publish guest posts by product vendors on your blog, and include your affiliate link in the byline.

Now, just to be clear about it: I’m not talking about promotional content or “product reviews”. I’m talking about guest articles with real, quality content. And about establishing the vendor as the expert (unlike a product review, where you are the “expert” who reviews). And, of course, about picking and promoting the right kind of products in the first place.

To fully understand the power of this strategy, put yourself in the shoes of your readers for a moment:

They come to your blog. They know you publish good stuff, and you’re an expert in the field—you’ve done your best to establish that status. On your blog, they read a guest article by another expert. It contains great content, is helpful, informative, and entertaining.

They like the style and want to read more of the same.

Do you think they’re likely to click on the link (your affiliate link) in the byline? And do you think they might be willing to spend money on a product by this expert?

To achieve this, you only need to re-purpose and tie together the three simple strategies you’re already following when you blog: write for your audience, publish quality, and establish expertise. Do this by choosing the right products, and then publishing informative guest posts by product vendors with your affiliate link included.

In return, you get more out of your affiliate promotions for everybody involved:

  • Your readers get to read great content.
  • You recommend a good product which will improve your readers’ lives in some way.
  • You make it easier for your audience to trust your recommendation, to buy the product and thus to improve their life.
  • The vendor has a chance to make more sales and get happy customers.
  • And you? You benefit from fresh quality content. You have a chance to enhance your reputation even further. And of course there’s the thing with the affiliate commissions…

In short, it’s a win-win-win. What I like most about this strategy is its simplicity. Despite being a really powerful strategy, it’s also about as simple and easy as it gets.

To show you just how easy it can be, I’ll give you the outline again in eight simple action steps. Why don’t you just give it a try and actually do the steps while you read along?

1. Choose a few good products to promote

By “good”, I mean quality products from trustworthy vendors with a quality affiliate program. And of course products which fit the interests and needs of your audience.

2. Sign up for the affiliate programs of the vendors

Make sure you read the terms of the affiliate programs, and are happy with them.

3. Check the existing promotional material

If the vendor offers promotional material for his affiliates, browse through it to check if there are any suitable articles you could use.

Don’t be disappointed if there aren’t any, though—usually vendors provide what is most asked-for by affiliates, and most affiliates don’t use this strategy… (bad for them, good for you!).

If you find ready-made articles by the vendor anywhere, make sure you’re allowed to enter your affiliate link. If in doubt, ask. If no suitable articles are readily available, go to step 4.

4. Get in touch with the vendors

Introduce yourself, and give them the URL of your blog. Be professional: you’re contacting a potential business partner.

Ask for suitable articles, and explain what you want to do with them (establish the vendor as expert on your blog, give your audience good content, and generate sales for both of you). It should be clear that you’re not looking for purely promotional material, but for actual content.

Make sure it’s absolutely clear that you will use your affiliate link in the resource box and/or the article content—you don’t want to risk any misunderstandings about this.

To increase your chances of getting suitable material, you can also point out that the articles could have been published elsewhere before. Most vendors, especially the more established and successful ones, won’t provide each affiliate with a different set of “unique” articles.

I’m not going into the depths of the “unique content” discussion here, but since this is not primarily an SEO strategy, it may not matter for you whether the guest articles on your blog have been published in other places, too. The quality of the articles is much more important! The internet is a huge place, and chances are very high your readers haven’t seen them before.

5. Read between the lines

Not every vendor will send you suitable articles. But regardless of that, their replies might tell you a lot about how they do business, and how they treat their customers and affiliates. Even if somebody can’t provide you with articles, he/she might be a great guy or girl, and there might be options for other business ventures in the future.

Just be open for ideas.

6. Check the material you get

Seriously. You want to feature the vendor as expert. So to make this strategy work, you have to stick to your standards. Make sure you only publish articles which:

  • are a good fit for your audience and topic
  • contain real content, are entertaining, informative, or helpful
  • aren’t promotional
  • meet your quality standards

A good test is to ask yourself if this article would be worth publishing without your affiliate link. If an article doesn’t match your requirements, don’t use it.

7. Insert your affiliate link

Insert your affiliate link for the vendor in the places you two agreed upon. Then double-check the link, just in case.

8. Publish

To add even more leverage, don’t just publish the article on your blog. We’re talking about serious, quality content here—about guest articles you could and should be proud to anounce to your audience and to the world.

Use social media to point people to the article. Link to it in your newsletter, or publish it in your ezine. Add it to an autoresponder sequence for your mailing list, so that any future subscribers can read it, too. Or link to it from your “thanks for opting in” page.

After all, if you’ve chosen the right kind of guest article, your audience will love you for the pointer to the post! Once you’re done with all the steps, go back to step 1 and start over.

The biggest enemy of success…

We’ve all been there: you read about a great new strategy that would move you forward quite a bit. You’re very excited about the idea, and make plans to implement it as soon as possible. Only “asap” usually turns out to be tomorrow. Then next week. Then next month. And then never.

Sound familiar? Why don’t you do it a bit different this time? I’ve given you eight action steps above. Take a piece of paper or open a file right now and start a list of suitable products and affiliate programs. If you’re already signed up for such affiliate programs, go straight to step 3. Check the available content for suitable pieces. And if you can’t find any, don’t pass go, proceed with step 4 and send a note to the vendor(s). Right now.

Worst case is you’ll spend the next hour getting in touch with potential business partners—not the worst thing that can happen to you today, is it?

Editor’s note: tomorrow, our final posts in this series look at blogging smarter (and more profitably) with WordPress.

Regine Becher is an affiliate manager and JV broker. To help affiliates and bloggers get more out of their affiliate promotions, Regine runs a service called Syndicated Partners, where affiliates can download quality articles and publish them with their affiliate link inside.

About Guest Blogger
This post was written by a guest contributor. Please see their details in the post above.
Comments
  1. I’m still a bit away from having to worry too much about sorting out good affiliate programs at the moment, traffic is still my main aim! However one thing I would say as an addition is to make sure you don’t market the same thing everyone else is.

    People reading in a niche are only going to click on an affiliate link for a product once (at least I’d imagine they are..!). Making sure the product you’re advertising is a bit different so that the reader may not have already come across it seems like a good plan in my opinion anyway!

    Thanks for the article :)

    • Ben,

      Yes and no. In general people click on a link if they can see some value for themselves. So you can do quite well with promoting the same product as everybody else, if you are the one who makes people see value.

      You could do that be actually reading/using the product, and writing an honest review. Or by giving tips on how to best use it (e.g. for software, certain settings that worked well for you). Or by pointing out for whom exactly this product is a good choice, and for whom not. Or by offering your own special bonus.

      The strategy I describe in my post above is just another way to achieve this “value”… If your readers experience the vendor of the product as an expert on your blog, they’ll be much more inclined to click on your affiliate because the already trust the expert.

      On the other hand, you are absolutely right… It pays to be a bit creative and to choose products which are a good fit, and of good quality. Just picking a promo because everybody else promotes it, too, usually isn’t the best choice… ;-)

    • I have gone through a few affiliate programs, so one thing I’ve learned is to read everything! There was one that divided the commission into so many aspects that it wasn’t even worth it.

      I have a new site called Affiliates Market where I used the best program I have found.

      The Program I use have all of the top companies to advertise along with competitive commission rates. Its also a variety of companies to market for almost every niche.

      Cash in with LinkShare’s Affiliate Marketing Programs!

  2. It’s daunting and discouraging to think you’re doing all you can do to increase your blog revenue, only to have your efforts not amount to that much. Chances are that working hard is not your problem, but working *smart* is what is holding you back from greater success. I’m still trying to figure out the angles of affiliate marketing and I appreciate your ideas!

    • Erin,

      I absolutely agree about working smarter. The people I see having success are NOT the ones who just followed a blueprint they bought on Clickbank… ;-)

      For me, it helps to step back occasionally and think about the big picture. Where do I want to go to, and how can I get there in a smart way? Then things usually fall into place at some point…

  3. Two more actionable steps are to make sure you create and post disclosure and privacy policies. In the US, a disclosure policy is required by law, and some affiliate programs require you have a privacy or else your account will be terminated. More importantly though, those policies help strengthen your readers’ trust in you.

    • Bryan,

      Thanks for the addition — good advice!

      I’m not qualified to give legal advice, but absolutely agree with you here: If your blog doesn’t look “serious” to your readers, you can hardly expect them to take you and your recommendations serious…

  4. You’re absolutely right Regine, too many bloggers just paste banners here and there, or tell people buy this. You need to know what you’re talking about, and engage your visitors, if you can connect with them individually it’s even better, but you have to make sure if you take the time to do this that whatever you’re promoting pays enough for your time, or even better that the people turn into long time clients.

    • Jamie,

      Time is a good point — my 24 hours are never enough… ;-) That’s why I suggest leveraging content by other people, in particular by the vendors of the products you promote.

      Not only can you establish the expert status of the vendor. It’s also huge time-saver if you can just paste in a guest post on some days….

      If the guest post is of high quality, it’s an addition to your blog (look around on ProBlogger!). And it doesn’t take many sales to compensate for the time it takes to post a guest post… ;-)

  5. From my experience, the biggest challenge for me is TIME. It takes a lot of time to produce great content, that will endorse our readers to click our affiliate offers.

    However, it can be done. Thank you for the great post, Regine Becher. :)

    • Tim,

      If you read my post again, you’ll see that there is an easy way out of this problem… You can to some extent leverage other people’s content AND at the same time increase the effectiveness of your affiliate promos.

  6. Great points, however I am still sitting on the fence about leveraging the amount of affiliate links with my own future products. It is very true – promote something similar to what your blog content is all about!

    • Cheryl,

      Thanks! Not sure if I got you right about affiliate promos vs. your own products… :-)

      As far as I understood, you’re concerned about promoting affiliate offers, since you want to sell your own products later on?

      I don’t think that’s exclusive. Most people I know do both: sell their own products AND promote affiliate offers.

      And you have the control over your blog posts. If an affiliate offer later is too close to your own product, you can remove the affiliate offer and sell your own product instead.

      But until your products are ready to sell, you could at least generate some income from affiliate promos…

  7. Regine

    crisp and clear blogging smarter is essential for us, by monetizing our efforts.

  8. All good points Regine. It really boils down to writing great,specific content for your niche and promoting quality products that fall inline with your niche.

    Advertising hosting on a garden tools site is not the best idea lol

    • Jeff,

      It’s really hard to write a lot of good content yourself. Syndicating articles of product vendors as guest posts makes your life much easier.

      But yes, even that has to be somewhat specific to your niche if you want to see results… ;-)

  9. I definitely need to work on this a lot more. Affiliate Marketing is key to monetizing.

    • Charles,

      It’s a good way to start. If you don’t want to put in much effort, go through my action steps again. This is one of the fastest ways to get good affiliate promos going on your blog, and also to get some valuable contacts in the process.

  10. Some very valuable advice, Regine.

    What you outline regarding how a person should gain a greater understanding of the products(services) they are providing, is solid advice.

    To become established as an Authority in a niche, though, would seem to be a much more difficult prospect. Given time, and with the right approach, it can be achieved.

    • Daniel,

      Thanks.

      Rome wasn’t build in one day either… ;-) But small steps do add up pretty fast! You don’t need to be a celebrity in your niche to have a dedicated audience of people who trust your recommendations…

  11. When I first entered in blogging world in 2007 I was kid of 13 year but then also I maintained a blog which started getting around 100 visits a day but soon my Adsense account got suspended for invalid click (Which I made really), So I left blogging.

    But I am now again here and this time I have got lots of knowledge and still getting by post like these. and this time I will be making thousands of dollar for sure.

    Thanks Regine and Darren, I will be soon with you.

    • Rajnish,

      Welcome back to blogging! :-)

      I’m sure you know that from your previous experiences, but it makes sense to diversify your income streams a bit once you start to make serious money. E.g. choose affiliate programs by different people, or sell banner ad space in addition to affiliate promos.

      That way, if one income stream closes down for whatever reason, you have some income left and time to replace it.

  12. Agree, key to success of any blog is consistency, well planned content strategy that makes sense to the site audience.

    I liked the point with example of hosting company banner. That’s kind of annoying when you see unrelated advertisement on website. Personally, I do not like it. Blog advertisement should gel with the topic giving more benefits to the readers.

    • Victor,

      Once you know who your ideal audience is, and what type of content you want on your blog for that audience, a lot of other things fall into place.

      The hosting company banner is an extreme example — but it’s not uncommon, alas… :-)

  13. Hi Regine

    The reason for most splogs is that they’re just following what a cheap clickbank ebook told them to do. I mean it’s so obvious that you should be matching your banners to the niche you’re targeting.]

    Honesty is also another important thing when promoting, if you write a review on a product you think is rubbish but it pays good commission then people will see through you. Sure it could make a quick buck, but you won’t get any repeat business or growth with this method.

    Pick products you believe in, and good things will happen.

    Andrew

    • Andrew,

      I know that I’m personally are getting hesitant when I see a “product review”. I mean, it might be a legit, good review from an honest person — but I’ve just seen too many fake “product reviews” to trust them anymore.

      That’s why I suggest adding quality content from the vendor into the mix. That way, your readers can see firsthand that the product vendor knows what he’s writing about.

      You can still add your own review where you explain why you liked the product.

      But seeing the quality of the vendor’s content for themselves can convince even a skeptical audience…

  14. You have strong point Regine. This is my interest and I know problogger provide with many blogging tips, that is why I am always come here and leave comments in your post.

    I am on my own to learn deeper about affiliate that sales from my blog (so affiliate is my interest as reader). May be I can add one tips for those who want to try affiliate. I have found some vendors that give full support to their affiliate. They teach us everything start from where to promote until how to make the campaign. These kind of vendors are so helpful particularly for beginner in affiliate marketing

    • Okto,

      Thanks — you hit the nail right on the head.

      Essentially, the vendors are your business partners. And just like with any group of human beings, there are the ones, and than there are the others… ;-)

      Pick partners you enjoy working with. The ones who care about you and your success. And then make sure you care about them and their success in return. That makes a HUGE difference!

  15. I’m beginner want to study some scenarios to make my self very smart on this field ;)

    thnx

    • Muhammed,

      If you’re just starting out, I suggest you follow the action steps in my post.

      They don’t require much time or much prior knowledge. With this strategy, a little bit of common sense and business-like behavior can carry you a long way…

  16. Jessica Zirbes says: 02/22/2012 at 10:42 pm

    Great post! I already recommend products on my blog, but I’ll be taking it to the next level by initiating conversations with vendors.
    Cheers!

    • Jessica,

      Great to hear you got some value from my post.

      If you want to make money from your blog, it’s a business — even if that’s not what you can read in most ebooks about the topic. That includes getting in touch with potential partners. Just that simple step will put you ahead of the majority of the crowd…

  17. Yes the product promotion is a key role. Thanks a lot for the info.
    Very useful.

  18. Hey Regina,

    I’m new to the blogging world and your post has all the information that anyone newcomer would need. I especially like your points: writing for the audience, publish quality and establish yourself as an expert. I’ve learnt these pointers from a marketing course I’m on right now too and from the blogs I’ve read of other great bloggers, these are the main things to follow. If we follow these, the money making part becomes easier I believe..
    Thanks for your article.

    Jas

    • Jas,

      Glad to hear you got something out of my post! :-)

      In the end, most of that stuff is nothing more than common sense. Think about what YOU like to see on other websites, and what makes YOU buy a product through an affiliate link.

      Then offer the same to your audience, and you’re off to a good start… ;-)

      • Vitali says: 04/24/2012 at 2:50 pm

        You are right, Regine, but not all people are able to find that common sense in order to make something simple and great!

    • Vitali says: 04/24/2012 at 2:48 pm

      Thank you, Regine, for a very useful article. I am about to go live and I will badly need blogging for promoting purposes; your article came out at the right time for me.

  19. Hey Regine,

    It is so easy to get caught up in the latest promotion which is supposedly selling well or has the most gravity in the Clickbank market place. Do your home work when it comes to using ads.

    I have been running a few tests on my blog lately. One of those tests was to remove all my ads and go for a cleaner look. I must admit it’s working for me. I may have lost a little affiliate revenue, but my engagement is up and I have sold more of my own products.

    I am looking into advertising on alternative pages of my blog rather than the home page and sidebar. I want people to feel at home first rather than feel they are being sold to.

    I will see how it all works out.

    Thanks,

    Dan

    • Hi Dan,

      Thanks for sharing your test results!

      That stuff really is hard to predict without testing: it depends a lot on “soft factors” like your market and audience, and your own style. So it’s great to hear you found something that works well for you. :-)

      If you have products of your own to sell and a decent mailing list, you might even be better off having no 3rd party advertising at all (essentially like it is now). Rather use the blog and social media for engagement, and to funnel people onto your list. Then work from there, e.g. with affiliate promos or by selling ad space in your mailings.

      Again, use your own judgement and keep testing: I’ve seen people do very well with that model. And your test results seem to point that way. But that doesn’t mean it’s the best way for you!

      A heads up: I’ve had a quick look at your blog, and the “My Products” tab in the top menu doesn’t show in the black bar, but below that (at least in my browser). I.e. it’s very easy to miss it. You might wanna check that… :-)

  20. Can you please share some examples for Affiliate programs which you have used so that we can get some idea.

    • Rao,

      The specific affiliate programs I could recommend are mostly in the internet marketing area, and wouldn’t be a fit for your celebrity photo niche. So they won’t do you much good… If you want to get an idea, though, head over to my website and check the affiliate programs I recommend there.

      In general, the vendor is your business partner. So what you’re looking for is somebody who is reliable, trustworthy, and cares about his business partners.

      Sometimes you’re lucky, and other affiliates comment on an affiliate program in one of the marketing forums. Don’t listen to the complaints too much, though — people usually tend to complain much more than they praise…

      But if you find good, positive reviews about an affiliate program or a vendor, than it’s likely that you’ve found a good one.

      I also like to check how a vendor treats his/her customers. If you find a lot of reports from happy customers, the vendor usually is somebody worth doing business with.

      Not everybody has to be happy with the product. But if there seems to be a decent support, and refunds are paid out timely and without hassle, that means a lot.

      Finally, the conditions of the affiliate programs vary. Some people like Clickbank, because they find it easy and hassle-free for the affiliate. Some affiliates don’t like the delay of commission payments in Clickbank. If the conditions of an affiliate program are ok for you depends on your own priorities.

  21. Affiliate programs are difficult for me. It’s need tricks to get success. I didn’t have enough time to think about unique trick.

    • Rajib,

      It doesn’t take many tricks to get started. Follow the action steps I list in my post, and you’ve made a good start. And don’t forget to comment here again when you’ve had your first success! :-)

  22. Everything you mention in your blog is so true. Blogging is pretty basic yet it is complicated. I find it comes down to 3 things keywords, content, and backlinks. When you have good content, something worth reading for your audience and the content is focussed. Everything else takes care of itself.

    • Monty,

      Thanks. I was focusing on the content, but that also helps with traffic, of course.

      When you say “keywords” and “backlinks”, I assume you’re talking about SEO? Just as food for thought: There are other ways of getting traffic than SEO, and some people do very well with them.

      Imagine having links in quality places like ProBlogger (through a guest post like mine above), or having a very active facebook audience, or …

      Google isn’t the only way to get traffic… ;-)

  23. Regine,
    Great tips. The reality is most vendors are passionate about their products and the issues they relate to. They truly have a well of expertise that can really hit home with your audience. As you pointed out, tapping into their passion, problem-solving success and expertise only strengthens your blog.

    It’s great you’re putting all these pieces together at Syndicated Partners. And there’s nothing like a ready-made article. However, if there isn’t a good article ready-made for your blog, I recommend interviewing a vendor. It’s an easy way to create a blog post and the vendor may even help you with promoting it – sending traffic to your blog through your affiliate link.

    Thank you for the great suggestions, Regine.

    • Sarah,

      Glad you like the post and the idea behind it, and thanks for the tip with the interview! :-)

      An interview is a great way for generating content in collaboration with a vendor. And it also establishes a nice, working business relationship. Definitely worth trying!

  24. When I first started monetizing my blogs, I signed up for a million affiliates (an exaggeration) put links everywhere, then wondered where my checks were. Once I settled on a manageable number of affiliates and started promoting them, then the money came. I treat my affiliates as if they’ve already paid me; it makes promoting them and including them in my regular content a lot easier.

    • Kimberly,

      Thanks for sharing your experiences! It really IS about delivering quality, and about setting up relationships — not only towards your readers, but also towards other people.

      That alone makes a huge difference!

      If you haven’t done that yet, try to get in touch with the vendors (or the providers of the affiliate program) at some point. Not for any particular purpose, but just to set up a good, working business relationship. In the long run, you might get more support and better promo material out of such a relationship.

  25. I really like your article. Excellent information, clear instructions with 8 clear steps.

    You also mention in your article that bloggers should choose products that are within their specific niche. You talk about a gardening blog and gardening tools.

    I think that many bloggers miss the boat completely here. I frequently see bloggers promoting products that are completely unrelated to the blog’s topic.

    If the blog is about gardening, then the blogger should be purchasing the products themselves, testing them out and then it’s much easier to promote the product. The purchase is a business expense anyway and then I find writing about the product is much easier after using it!

    For example, Last summer, I purchased a tool to remove weeds from my lawn. At the store I looked a 2 fairly identical tools. One was made of plastic and the other was made of cast iron. I purchased the plastic tool because it was slightly cheaper (only about 10% cheaper!).

    The first tool I used had a hard plastic end and it broke after I used it for just 1 day. I returned it and purchased the tool with the cast iron end instead. It worked well and didn’t break.

    My experience will lend much credibility to the recommendation I write to my readers! I can also include a picture of me using this tool, or a video. An added benefit of including an image and video: the blog will generate additional SEO if these are incorporated & optimized properly.

    Thanks again! Great Article
    Steve

  26. I absolutely agree with the post above, though my blog still only generated income from sponsored post, and yet not from my amazon or CJ affiliate.

    I’m still working on increasing my blog traffic, but thanks for the article. It really useful for me..

    Regards,

    Verdi

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