AFFILIATE MARKETING
How to Start a Blog for Free and Make Money
- Blogging is one of the easiest side hustles to start from home, but it isn’t always lucrative.
- Insider spoke with two bloggers who make more than $100,000 a year from their websites.
- They shared six strategies for getting started and earning an income from writing.
Starting a blog is easy, but making money from it is not. It can be one of the cheapest and easiest ways to make money from home, if you do it right.
Insider spoke with two bloggers who turned their writing hobby into six-figure businesses. They gave six tips for how to do it.
1. Use a call to action
It can take months, if not years, to build a large enough audience for lucrative ad income. Samantha North, 40, started her blog, Digital Émigré, in September 2020 while she was relocating to Portugal from the UK. The site aimed to provide tips and advice for getting residency in European Union countries.
Traffic was slow for the first few months. To find her audience, North created a Facebook group, called Get US Citizenship, where she shared blog posts from her website.
On each blog post she’d add a call-to-action link offering $175 consultations for people looking to make the move. She said she’d take about six calls a week.
2. Use keyword research to rank higher on Google
Search-engine optimization can help bring in organic traffic that can translate into ad revenue.
North said she researched the terms people were looking for and used that as a starting point to build content.
She said she’d notice that people were searching on Google for long, specific terms, such as “bank accounts for British expats in Europe,” and would then base a blog post on the terms to attract readers.
If she saw that people were searching generally for information about citizenship in a European country, she’d write five articles about that topic, each focused on a different country.
North said that when she started publishing blog posts using SEO every day in May 2022, she noticed a marked increase in her search traffic: Over six months she went from 5,000 visitors to her website a month to 100,000 visitors.
3. Use AI to help you write more content
Writing blog posts can be time-intensive. North turned to artificial-intelligence tools like Jasper and ChatGPT.
She said she learned to make the prompts for the chatbots specific. “If you give very detailed instructions about the tone, the style, and the outline, then you will get much, much better results,” she said.
North used AI to outline her posts, write headings, and put ideas into bulleted lists. She said she found that using AI tools to group keywords into topics helped her generate ideas.
“Let’s say you had 100 keywords — you could use AI to group them into logical topic areas,” she said. “Then you could write 10 blog posts on one topic cluster and another 10 blog posts around another cluster.”
4. Sign up for ad-management services to make passive income
Bloggers don’t need a minimum amount of traffic in order to generate revenue through Google AdSense. But when they reach a certain traffic threshold, they can sign up for ad-management platforms, which can be more lucrative.
Whitney Bonds, 34, was working a 9-to-5 when she became pregnant with her second child. She wanted to quit her job but needed to bring in an income, alongside her husband, to support her family.
She started searching for ways to make money while staying at home, and she came across bloggers who claimed to make $100,000 a month.
“I wanted to create a website for moms like me looking for legitimate ways to make money from home,” Bonds said.
In January 2018 she created Tried and True Mom Jobs, where she shared the stories of moms she’d found in Facebook groups and interviewed.
When she started getting traffic from search, she signed up for Mediavine, an ad-management service for bloggers with at least 50,000 visitors a month.
Bonds made $50,000 from ads alone in her second year. She said that ranking highly on Google helped make her income more passive. “Once you get in the search results, you’re really set up for long-term growth,” she said.
North started by using the ad-management site Ezoic. With about 30,000 visitors a month, she made about $1,000 a month. When she hit 50,000 readers a month, she applied to Mediavine.
“With Ezoic, I had to adjust the ads myself and tinker with technical things, which I didn’t enjoy,” she said. “I wanted a more hands-off experience.”
5. To succeed with affiliate marketing, sell products you use yourself
Bloggers can earn a commission through affiliate marketing, which encourages readers to buy something by clicking a trackable link or using a unique code.
Bonds received her first affiliate commission — $500 — after advertising a bookkeeping course she’d used on her website in 2018. She described it as a “light-bulb moment.”
Bonds included links to courses or products in her blogs. For example, in a post about stay-at-home-mom jobs that paid well, she mentioned someone who’d made money proofreading and included an affiliate link to a proofreading course she’d taken.
She said that to avoid scams, she’d make sure she knew someone who’d taken the course.
Last year she made six figures from her site; about half of her income came from affiliate marketing and the other half from ad revenue.
North said she tried to promote only things she’d used or tested herself.
She said that using affiliate platforms such as ShareASale helped keep affiliate marketing passive. “The only hassle is managing the affiliate links — making sure none are broken, making sure every post has the right affiliate links,” said North.
6. Reach out to brands for partnerships
North said brand partnerships could be more lucrative than affiliate marketing. North made £115,000 in 2022, with about half her income coming from affiliate marketing and referral partnerships.
She said she approached businesses that offered services relevant to her niche — such as relocation companies, lawyers, or tax advisors — for ad hoc partnerships.
“It’s more labor-intensive than affiliate marketing, but it’s more tailored as well,”she said. “Typically the commissions are higher and it’s easier to negotiate them.”
She’d write a post about getting a certain visa and include a link at the end for the reader to fill out a form to be introduced to a lawyer in their network. If a reader hired one of the lawyers through her website, North would get a commission. She said she’d make sure she knew the lawyers so that she could vouch for them.
Insider has verified these figures with documentation.
AFFILIATE MARKETING
A Buddy’s Franchise is Built for Success in a Recession Resistant Industry
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AFFILIATE MARKETING
How Small and Medium Businesses Can Help Their Communities by Innovating with Cloud Technology
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
The term small and medium businesses (SMBs) belies the sizable contribution these organizations make to economies and employment markets. According to the World Economic Forum, “Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which represent around 90% of all firms globally, provide roughly 70% of all employment and, by some estimates, contribute to up to 70% of global GDP.” They are also embedded in their communities, delivering innovative products and services that play a crucial role in accelerating economic development.
However, doing all of this while remaining competitive requires SMBs to perform a fine balancing act between three key goals. They must accelerate speed to market for their products and services, they must build customer trust and at the same time, they must work to reduce costs. So, how are these small but mighty SMBs doing it? And — more importantly — how can they make it easier and do it better? The answer, supported by a recent report from Accenture, lies in adopting cloud services and technologies.
Related: 4 Reasons Business Leaders Need to Accelerate Cloud Adoption
Leveraging cloud tools to unlock billions in benefits
The report estimates that by 2030, cloud-enabled SMBs in healthcare, education and agriculture will have unlocked $161 billion in productivity gains. These cloud-enabled SMBs will support 95.8 million jobs, equivalent to 8% of the total employment on average across the 12 countries studied. Meanwhile, SMBs in these sectors in the U.S. stand to gain a predicted $79.8 billion, a 26% increase in current productivity benefits. Within cloud computing, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are expected to have the most significant effect: 78% of businesses surveyed identified these technologies as the most significant in creating societal impacts in 2030.
Many businesses have already migrated services and computing to the cloud. Approximately 63% of all U.S. businesses (and 44% globally) now utilize cloud technology. Most of these will be large enterprises with the digital savvy and resources to make the move. This means there are many SMBs that are, therefore, missing out. First, on being able to achieve that fine balancing act between the three key goals. Second, on the opportunity to build on current achievements and continue to spearhead positive change across communities and economies.
By utilizing on-demand services and products, SMBs will gain access to the kind of tools and approaches historically restricted to large enterprises. This means they can capitalize on emerging trends by being first to market with new products (addressing key goal number one). They can also deliver secure, high-quality products and services, protect customer data and provide reliable customer support to help build customer trust (addressing key goal number two). Finally, as a result of introducing more efficient processes and better resource allocation and supply chain management, they can streamline operations and ensure they’re financially resilient (key goal number three).
Related: How to Revolutionize Your Supply Chain by Harnessing the Power of Smart Technologies
AI, ML and advanced adoption
The OECD’s definition of cloud adoption levels includes basic adoption, such as web-based email services or cloud-based storage solutions, and intermediate adoption, such as customer relationship management or enterprise resource planning tools. The average rate of basic adoption in the countries surveyed in Accenture’s report stands at 44%, and that of intermediate adoption hovers at 19%. There is clearly a large proportion of SMBs that are missing out, yet it’s in the adoption of advanced technologies that the greatest untapped gains lie. Within this third level of cloud adoption, the OECD includes the likes of AI and ML tailored for sophisticated tasks. The average advanced cloud adoption rate is currently 13%, yet 78% of respondents to the report identified AI and ML as the technologies that will have the most transformative impact on societies.
To realize that vision, this gap must be closed. As it becomes so, what can we expect to see and experience in critical sectors by 2030? In education, SMBs could help make learning more accessible and provide personalized content and individualized feedback to students. In healthcare, they could enable more medics to analyze results more accurately and synthesize high volumes of data for R&D: generative AI is expected to play a role in the development of up to 30% of all new drugs by 2025. In farming, we would see a greater uptake of AI and ML technologies for precision, data-driven agriculture, which uses fewer resources and yields greater results.
Reducing costs, enabling scalability and gaining expertise
This vision and the prospect of adopting cloud technologies will be significant for many SMBs that will understandably want to start small. Fortunately, the nature of the cloud supports this. Instead of investing heavily in new infrastructure, SMBs can use cloud services and virtualized resources on a pay-as-you-go model. Shifting from traditional fixed costs to a variable costs model means organizations only pay for what they use — which can be scaled up and down to meet demands – reducing running costs and freeing up capital. Starting small also means working with a cloud services provider that understands the needs of each SMB it works with and offers tailored support and training.
Of course, just because we start small doesn’t mean we can’t think big. In terms of migrating to new cloud technologies, SMBs should adopt a whole-of-business cloud migration strategy and draw on the knowledge and expertise of other organizations that have already made the move. For businesses operating in any market, these benefits will be attractive — especially to their bottom line. Finally, achieving this vision for 2030 can’t be attained without the buy-in of other markets and sectors of society. Moving towards this goal — and leveraging the cloud technologies required means continuing coordination between governments, educators and other industries.
AFFILIATE MARKETING
AT&T CEO Calls On Google, Meta, Apple To Pay For Subsidies
AT&T wants the seven biggest and most profitable tech companies, namely Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Tesla, to help subsidize Internet and telephone access in the U.S.
AT&T CEO John Stankey said on Monday at a telecoms forum that big tech companies should be required to contribute to the Universal Service Fund (USF), a federal program that spends $8 billion a year on phone, Internet, and other telecommunications services.
The fund supports lower-income customers, customers who live in rural areas, or those who reside in high-cost areas. It also brings internet and phone service to eligible schools and libraries.
“The seven largest and most profitable companies in the world built their franchises on the internet and the infrastructure we provide,” Stankey said, per a Reuters report.
“Why shouldn’t they participate in ensuring affordable and equitable access to the services of today that are just as indispensable as the phone lines of yesteryear?” he added.
John Stankey, AT&T CEO. Credit: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images
As a telecommunications company operating in the U.S., AT&T is required to contribute to the USF.
The fund takes a percentage of AT&T’s revenues, starting at 15.5%.
AT&T charges its customers a Universal Connectivity Charge based on the USF percentage — so at the end of the day, AT&T’s customers pay an additional cost that goes towards the fund.
“In the competitive industry we are in, we cannot afford to absorb the costs associated with the USF that have been imposed on AT&T,” a company webpage reads.
Related: AT&T CEO Reveals Cause of Mass Outage, Offers Account Credit
Stankey isn’t the only AT&T executive to recently call attention to the USF fee. Earlier this month, AT&T executive vice president of federal regulatory relations Rhonda Johnson wrote that the company’s USF contribution percentage was now 34.4% — and had remained at above 30% for the past four quarters.
Johnson wrote that Congress should expand the USF’s sources of funding to “tech companies – like Meta and Google – that utilize consumer broadband connections.”
These big tech companies have profited from having Americans online and should also contribute to a reformed fund, according to Johnson.
Related: AT&T Customer Data Leaked to ‘Dark Web,’ Millions Affected
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