All the rage with PPC has left some major affiliate cake on the table. Just sitting there, all alone and needing a home. Here’s a bug in your year. That coin could be lining your pocket. How? One of the best ways to rake in affiliate revenue… It’s spelled B-L-O-G. No, it’s not a miraculously attractive word, but it can drive traffic and conversions like an ox.

That’s because blogs are the heavy-lifters of the Internet. They’re the beast of burden that all the freshest of the fresh daily content gets loaded onto. Readers flock to them to get their daily feed of pulp news, knowledge, buzz, anecdote, and gossip. They’re also a great way to “presell” to your target consumer too.

Blogging: Easy as Le Cheese

So what’s so bodacious about blogging? For one, you don’t have to be a 5th level code-wizard named Chester Merlin The Third to make your blog operational. You also don’t have to know any scripting languages either. Good news for those allergic to code, right? No more Java rashes, thank you very much. I choose to exercise my constitutional right to “Not-Know-Code.”

Truth is, any online marketer can build their own blog and give it life quickly and inexpensively. In fact, if you’re focused, you can have your blog up and running in a matter of minutes and be promoting your offers and services to the online world within the hour. Snap, just like that.

What’s even better is that most blog services (such as WordPress and Blogger) provide free hosting, site building software, templates, and other forms of benevolent assistance. This is especially meaningful to the beginner affiliate marketer that doesn’t really know what needs to be done to write and publish successfully online.

How To Make Blog Payola

The most popular way of generating revenue from your blog is by placing textual hyper-links to your sales page in the body copy of your blog posts, and by placing sponsored images or logos in various areas of the blog page.

In effect, everything in your blog should be linked to your sales page and optimized for the highest conversions. All the reader/customer has to do is “click” on one of these links to be taken to the product sales page you’ve so skillfully designed to correspond to the great content you’ve packed into your blog.

Be aware that the amount of revenue generated from a blog featuring affiliate marketing links will vary dramatically depending on the amount of traffic the blog receives, as well as the payouts offered by the merchant.

A good rule of thumb to follow is that the amount of traffic is often determined by the quality of your blog’s content.

Why Quality Unique Content Is The Shiznit

Ok, so this is where we come to the slippery slope in the matter. You absolutely don’t want to create a blog that is cheaply constructed. When we say cheaply we mean little effort and attention was put into the actual CONTENT.

Quality content should be your number one priority. That means if you’re promoting a Driver Update software product, your blog content should feature original content on that subject, not keyword-stuffed meaningless garbage or copy & pasted fluff.

The key here is quality. You want your blog to be an original and authoritative site that offers something of REAL-VALUE to the consumer. Yes, this is where the hard work comes in on your part. You’ll need to write original content or contract it out. The content you offer will have to be highly-correlated to the product you’re promoting. Also add in the right kind and amount of keywords related to your product to get picked up in the search engines. Trust us, that effort will come back to you tenfold in the end!

A well-focused blog helps to ensure that visitors will not only be interested in the affiliate marketing links enough to click on them, but also not be distracted by links that don’t yield revenue.

Monitor Your Blog’s Performance

There are a few important factors affiliates should consider that will help optimize their profits. This includes regularly evaluating the effectiveness of the affiliate links you’re using to promote your products.

Basically, you want to know whether or not they’re generating sales. You can do this by comparing the percentage of blog visitors who click on the affiliate links to the overall blog traffic, and the number of visitors who click on the links that actually make a purchase.

If you’re blog has high traffic but a small percentage of click-throughs on affiliate links, you need to smack yourself in the face and start making some changes. Tweaks can include switching up the colors, sizes or locations of the ads as well as rewriting your copy for style and emphasis.

Remember: Making just one change at a time makes it easier to evaluate which ones work the best.

From The Grassroots Up

One way to create more sales traction is to occasionally mention the products you’re promoting directly in the blog posts. When you use this method, be sure not to flog it to death. Consider it a subtle suggestion technique rather than a keyword stuffing bonanza. The occasional shout out to the product you’re promoting within your blog content can help generate grass-roots interest in the hyper-linked ads.

Respect The Terms and Conditions

Pay careful attention to the affiliate marketing agreements you enter into. Some merchants put restrictions on the representation of their products and websites, and you have to follow these when designing and uploading content to your blog.

Always make sure to represent the integrity and image of the brand you’re promoting. As an affiliate marketer it’s your responsibility to showcase the product as the merchant would. If you stay within these parameters your blog could generate significant sales!