Blog Tips, Marketing Tips |
Affiliate Marketing Mommy Blogger
What got you interested in blogging? Was it the promise of connecting with other like-minded moms? Did you begin blogging as a way to archive the day-to-day life of your children? Or did you become a mommy blogger to earn an extra income?
There are no right or wrong answers to these questions. But today, we are going to focus on how to make money by blogging.
We will give you eight simple steps on how to complete an affiliate marketing blog. Ready? Let’s go!
1. Create a website.
Look at our earlier post on how to use WordPress to create an inexpensive but beautiful website. Even those who aren’t particularly tech-savvy should be able to read through our steps to create and post a website that you would be proud of sharing.
2. Develop a niche.
Think about your interests. If your children are old enough to form opinions, think about their interests as well. The narrower your focus, the better. For example, is your child a swimmer? Is she interested in golf or horseback riding?
Perhaps you are interested in children’s fashion. Maybe you are into kid-oriented subscription boxes. Really, anything would work as long as there is a product or service that you can help promote with your blog.
3. Make a list of products or services you enjoy related to your niche.
Look at your credit card statement. What store names appear with frequency?
Maybe your money is not spent at traditional stores. Perhaps you spend a lot of money on camps or experiences for your children.
Regardless, think about what products or services you would recommend to a friend who has children with the same interests.
4. Look for affiliate marketing opportunities.
Hundreds of websites will help you find affiliate marketing opportunities based on your interests. Google “affiliate marketing programs for . . . “ and you will find lists for children’s books, homeschooling, and outdoor enthusiasts.
For authenticity, try to find affiliate marketing opportunities for products you love instead of the other way around. Your posts will have a much truer voice, and your readers will trust you more than if you were obviously trying to sell a product you don’t care about.
5. Sign up for marketing programs.
If you were able to figure out how to create a website on your own, signing up for an affiliate marketing program will be a piece of cake. Since each marketing program works differently, make sure you read the fine print.
6. Create content that drives business to your partners.
Write a buyer’s guides, reviews, and how-to guides. Create videos or write articles. Include your unique-to-you affiliate links within your content.
7. Spread your message.
We’re not going to lie. The hardest part of this entire process is finding an audience to interact with your blog. Use social media, email marketing, or a hot air balloon to drive traffic to your blog.
8. Spend your money.
Oh, the joy you will feel the first time you earn an income through your mommy blog! But since you are a mommy, that money will quickly leave your account to pay for tuba lessons, acne cream, or a team pizza party.
This simple step-by-step guide will get you started on creating a mommy affiliate marketing blog. Why would you want to go through so much hassle?
You can earn income while you sleep.
Have you heard of passive income? Passive income is money you earn with little effort. You can earn passive income from rental properties, by selling ebooks, or through affiliate marketing. Passive income still takes work, but once the job is complete, you will still earn money.
You can get paid to learn about the products and services you care about.
Another reason to add an affiliate marketing program to your mommy blog is that it will give you a reason to dive deeper into products or services that are already important to you.
You can become closer to your children while learning about things they love.
If your children love Lego sets, you can spend time together reviewing them, writing buyer’s guides, and producing video content. Your children will get to do something they love, and you will get to spend time with your kids.
You can help others.
Sometimes the goods or services that you promote are for entertainment or recreation, but you also could promote products to assist parents with common childhood problems.
If you are already an affiliate marketer, share your success stories with us!
This article was originally posted at Mom Marketing Coach!
Blog Tips, Blogging Success, Marketing Tips |
Affiliate Marketing in Your Mommy Blog
Perhaps you have been blogging for a while and have been lucky enough to earn a loyal following. Congratulations to you! It’s tough to get noticed in this competitive field.
While you care about your audience and the message of your blog, you need to earn a more significant income. Kids aren’t cheap, and as they age their clothes, toys, and activities become more expensive. Plus, nine-year-old boys eat like a horse.
It’s only natural that you would try to earn more money from your blogging habit by signing up for affiliate marketing programs.
Here are some simple steps to get started:
Step 1 – Choose Your Niche
Since you are visiting our website, I’m going to take a wild guess that your blog is somewhat “kid” related. When it comes to choosing affiliate marketing programs, you may want to narrow your scope a bit.
Perhaps you are a dance or ice-skating mom. You probably have spent hours bedazzling costumes, and you know all the best tools and tricks for maneuvering through that world. Capitalize on this knowledge. Maybe your blog can offer suggestions on the best reading glasses to purchase now that you have ruined your eyes from too much bedazzling.
Maybe your child has struggled as a reader, but you have found resources and strategies that you would like to recommend to parents going through similar issues. Why not make money from your recommendations?
Do you have the girliest girl who loves to dress in boutique-style clothes? If you are raising a model-in-the-making, why not make some extra cash along the way by offering an affiliate marketing program that focuses on kid fashion?
If you have been writing for a while, you probably already have a niche. It’s time to capitalize on that knowledge by sharing your favorite products and services with others.
Step 2 – Form Opinions
Your savvy readers will smell a rat from a mile away. They will be able to tell whether you are a genuine user and fan of a product, or if you are just saying you are to make some extra money. Find products that you really do use and enjoy.
Marketing experts know that this kind of publicity works to sell a product. In fact, millennials are more likely to trust the opinions of someone they view as a peer instead of any other form of traditional advertising.
Make a list of all the products and service you interact with that relate to your niche. Feel free to play with topics that are not directly related but are loosely connected.
For example, maybe your child’s dance team habit means that you travel to competitions around the country. Expand the scope of your affiliate marketing campaigns, so you write about dance-related travel.
Step 3 – Sign up for the Amazon Affiliate Marketing Program
Sure, there are other affiliate marketing programs out there, but since you use amazon, and your readers already use Amazon, why not start there?
Another benefit of using Amazon is that you can find any product imaginable on their website.
It’s an easy process. Here are the basic requirements.
If you are starting an affiliate marketing program on your website, you must own your own website. The content must be recent or no more than 60 days old. There must be at least ten posts, and the site must be live and viewable by the general public.
You can also run an affiliate marketing program through Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and Twitch.TV groups. Your social network account must be already established with at least 500 members. It, too, must be publicly available.
Once you have signed up, you need to have at least three sales within the first 180 days. You can’t make the sales on your own; they have to be from a third-party source.
Finally, you need to comply with Amazon’s extensive list of rules and regs. It’s Amazon, so they take their practices seriously. Here’s the complete list. Some of the regulations are written in shouty-voiced ALL CAPS, so you know they mean business.
One of the most important things to remember is that you need to identify yourself as an Amazon associate by using these words: “As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.” You cannot offer anyone a reward or incentive for using your links. You can’t say that proceeds from particular orders will go to a charity or non-profit organization.
Step 4 – Continue Producing Content
You need to be prepared before you sign up to become an Amazon associate. Amazon has high expectations that you will start driving sales within the first five months, so you really need to have your ducks in a row before you apply.
Good luck in expanding your mommy blog. Remember to stay true to your message, and your readers will follow.
Blog Tips, Blog Traffic, Blogging, Blogging Success, Grow Your Audience, Marketing Tips, Mom Marketing Coach, Mompreneur |
Mom Blog’s Five Content Ideas
Social media marketing has been one of the most effective strategies in introducing a brand. It’s also a proven tool to sustain a good reputation.
The question is, have you been using social media to boost your business presence? And if you are, are you using it the right way?
These are the questions that we plan to address in this post. If you’re encountering problems like not knowing how to start in marketing your online shop or mom blog through social media or running out of content to share, you’ve come to the right place.
What we’d like to share with you first is that you can’t post just about anything in your online shop or mom blog’s social media accounts. But you cannot be too careful either that you tend not to post anything at all.
For us, the perfect balance lies in the diversity and sufficiency of content that you share in these accounts. Here are some content ideas that will help keep your social media presence consistent.
Blog Posts
Obviously, if you’re a mom blogger with your own blog site, you should publish these blog posts to your social media accounts. If you write once, twice, or even more frequently in a week, then you should have more content to post in your social media accounts.
Even online shops should have a blog page in their website where posts can be published. This is where your ideas, tips, explanations, and elaboration about your products and services can be written.
Quick notes on publishing blog posts to social media:
- Always upload an attractive featured image that goes with the link to your blog post
- Make a very short description as the caption for the link post
- Instagram doesn’t show a clickable link so you might want to shorten the URL of your post by using third-party apps or programs like Rebrandly
- Better to have a uniform caption across all social media accounts for consistency
Your Own Photos
Photos are eye candies. This has been proven by the popularity of Instagram as a photo-sharing site. People love sharing and looking at photos whatever those photos may be so make sure you show yours.
If you’re selling products from your online shop, share photos of them on some days when you don’t have any new blog post to share. If yours is a mom blog site, share a photo related to your niche and write a catchy caption for it.
Graphic Design
As we said earlier, the content of your social media accounts should be diverse. Aside from purely single photos or collage of photos, post graphics on some days too. This kind of content is more catchy than pure texts and it’s effective in delivering a message at one glance. It could be a graphic design of your promo for the month or an infographic explaining something on your niche.
If your mom blog is about parenting, you might want to share a creative infographic showing a day in a businesswoman-mom’s life. If you’re selling healthy baby products in your online shop, you might want to share graphics showing the advantages of those products. Extend your imagination and go as creative as you can. You have so much time to do that with 7 posts a week, one each day, or more!
Website Pages
Still not enough graphics, photos, and blog posts to share? Then post a link of your website pages to your social media accounts.
Publish a link post of your About page and write a very short summary of it as the caption. Share your Reviews page so your audience can see how trustworthy you are. You can also share links to your Service pages to tell everyone what you can do for them.
Use these website pages to introduce yourself, your products, and your services to your audience little by little.
External Sources
Now, we’re going offsite. You can make your social media posts highly diverse by sharing something interesting from another website every once in a while.
For example, if there’s a latest global news that everyone is talking about, share a link from a news site to your page and put a caption that people can relate to. The same strategy applies when there’s a local news in your country that’s worth sharing.
Some other external sources that you can publish in your social media accounts are links, videos, and photos about trending online topics. They will easily catch the attention of your audience so expect to reap thumbs ups and hearts when you post them!
Last Piece of Advice
Consistency is the name of the game in social media marketing. You cannot stop because you don’t have a content to post. Instead, you should keep looking for content so you’ll have something to share with your audience. This is how you start building and maintaining a strong presence in this marketing arena.
This article was originally posted Mom Marketing Coach
Blog Traffic, Blogging, Marketing Tips, Mom Marketing Coach |
Other Ways Mom Blogger Earn Income
Just recently, I came across an article that talks about mom-and-pop online stores which started small but are now earning hundreds of thousands of dollars annually.
These stores are not the Alibaba or the eBay type of shops but those that were established by ordinary people like you and me who just wished for better products in the market.
The only difference with them is that they are so passionate about what they wanted that they quit their jobs and took huge risks until they reached the peak of success. One such risk is to see zero income for the first few months of operating their online stores.
Just to be clear, we’ll not talk about tips on how to grow your online business today. You can find those tips some place else in our blog. What we’ll discover today is how to earn some more cash while you wait for your Mom blog or online store to be phenomenal.
When you take on the mom blogging journey, you must understand that you’re also taking the risk that it might take months or even years before you’ll receive profit from blogging. So if you’ve quit your job for this pursuit or you’re on your way to doing so, here are some home-based online jobs that you can apply to so you can earn additional income while you wait.
Content Writing
I suppose you’re an enthusiastic mom blogger with so much creative ideas running inside your head. The best place to use those creative ideas and excellent written communication skills is in the websites of clients who are looking for amazing writers like you.
This job does not require a college degree or decades of experience in writing. You can look for a specific niche or field where you’re most familiar with, and you can start sending your application letter and writing samples to clients hunting for content writers in that niche.
Content writing is so far-reaching in scope that there are thousands of topics to be written about, including technology and gadgets, health and fitness, home improvement, and a lot more! The niches are as numerous as the industries all over the world. Some require technical knowledge while some only require research skills and creativity.
Transcription
Transcription simply means converting an audio file into a written form. This job is so in demand these days because of the growing need for online reading materials and subtitles for videos published all over the internet.
An experience in transcribing audio materials is a plus but normally, clients only require typing skills and the right device to hear the files clearly. Earnings from this type of job range from $4 to $10 per page of transcription.
Paid Online Survey
Another job that awaits you is answering online surveys for companies. Online surveys are helpful measuring tools for these businesses. They use survey results to make decisions on how to improve their products and services.
Data Entry Jobs
This is one of the simplest jobs that you can find online. Any person of any age, with or without job experience, can do data entry. It could be as simple as transferring data from a Spreadsheet to a Word file to something more challenging like typing text from several images into a document. In any case, all you need are typing skills and familiarity with certain computer programs.
Graphic Designing
If you have experience in making graphic arts, this is a suitable online job for you. Many businesses are in need of artists who can produce appealing graphic design for their websites. Even without experience in this field, you can try this out if you can create basic graphics and if you’re familiar with programs like Adobe InDesign, Photoshop, and Illustrator.
Social Media Management
Social media marketing has become one of the most effective strategies in growing your business in this day and age. Contrary to what you might think, social media marketing is not simply posting appealing content in your social media accounts whenever you can. There is an effective way to publish and manage posts to convert likes and hearts into actual sales.
This is the job of a social media manager. So if you can reap hundreds to thousands of likes in social media, you might want to develop that skill and manage the accounts of clients looking for social media managers.
Virtual Assistant Jobs
Another hot online job these days is that of a virtual assistant or VA. Being a VA requires administrative skills like managing websites, online researching, sending and responding to emails, organizing files, creating presentations, and a whole gamut of admin tasks for a businessman or a company. Most VAs are paid based on the hours worked while some receive a weekly or monthly salary.
Final Words
If you will notice, these jobs that we’ve listed above do not have regular calling as part of the tasks. All of these online jobs only involve typing, research, and designing tasks that are perfect for mom bloggers and mompreneurs who don’t have a quiet working environment most of the time. These jobs don’t require fixed working hours as well because that would be very difficult for moms like us.
Now that you’ve learned about these income-generating jobs that you can do everyday as a mom blogger or mompreneur, we hope you’ll have a sense of financial security while you work your way up in the bloggerverse.
This article was originally posted Mom Marketing Coach
Blog Tips, Blogging, Blogging Success, Grow Your Audience, Marketing Tips |
Improve Mom Blog’s Traffic Using Social Media
Every blog in its early days will struggle to get enough traffic to sustain it. It’s totally natural, but it is disheartening for many new blogging moms.
Fortunately, there are some simple social media hacks that can help you get more traffic for your blog and grow a loyal audience that will sustain you for the rest of your blogging career!
Facebook
First up we have Facebook! The titan of the social media sphere, practically everyone is on Facebook, making it the perfect place to begin your social media work. Best of all, you probably already know quite a few people on Facebook who would happily follow your blog’s page and help promote your posts!
Don’t be afraid to leverage family and friends here! The more exposure you can get the better. Your focus on Facebooks should be to provide excellent, in-depth content that you can promote over and over. Of course, don’t be afraid to promote other people in your niche as well and share the love. This is a great way to make friends and create some good will. Good karma never hurt anyone!
Instagram
Of course, not every blog is ideal for Facebook! Some blogs have a stronger focus on photography, food, or fashion than in-depth articles. If that’s what your blog is all about, then Instagram is the place for you.
A social media platform dedicated entirely to photos, Instagram is the perfect place to promote your beautiful, enticing, or delicious photo skills and earn followers that love you for them. Your focus here should be on creating the most alluring photos possible. Make sure they’re well lit, colorful, and fit a cohesive style that your whole blog contributes to.
And don’t be afraid to share articles here as well! Just focus on providing a beautiful image to link people back to your article, and make sure the photo relates to your topic! That way the people who come to your blog from Instagram have something to stick around for beyond your photography skills.
Twitter
Next up we have Twitter, one of the often overlooked younger brothers of the titans that are Facebook and Instagram. Hopefully, you won’t make the same mistake of underestimating Twitter that many of your competitors do!
If you’re an engaging writer and are proud of your wordsmithing skills, then Twitter is the perfect place to begin finding an audience. Because of the short character limit, Twitter works best for promoting articles on your site with catchy headlines and memorable quotes.
Of course, Twitter has its own unique requirement when compared to Instagram and Facebook, and the focus is more on your existing readers than on new ones. You can use Twitter to remind your audience of a new post, and encourage them to visit your site. When they read your article and love it, encourage them to retweet it to help you reach a broader audience.
If you already have a small, but loyal fan base, Twitter may be a great place to get started on your social media growth, letting you leverage existing readers to gain a new and highly engaged audience.
Pinterest
Last, but definitely not least, we have Pinterest! A strange hybrid between Instagram and Facebook, Pinterest requires both great writing and quality graphic design, but the payoff for the extra work is immense.
While a Facebook post or an Instagram photo may last on someone’s feed for four or five minutes, a post on Pinterest can continue to be circled around for years after you initially created it. That means you get a huge return on your time investment, making Pinterest one of the best social media platforms for beginning mom bloggers!
Because of this, Pinterest has a ton of moving parts to keep in mind. Setting up rich pins, joining group boards, and even just the basics of designing pins can all seem super intimidating at first. However, once you’ve done the research and mastered these skills you’ll be a pinning genius in no time, and can reap the rewards Pinterest has to offer as one of the fastest growing social media platforms around!
Thanks to all of these great social media platforms, gaining new traffic for your growing mom blog is more attainable than ever. Since everyone already congregates on these platforms, why not take advantage of them? They’re free, easy to use and learn, and the perfect way to jumpstart your blog’s growth and success!
This article was originally posted at Mom Marketing Coach.
Blog Tips, Blogging, Blogging Success, Marketing Tips |
9 Marketing Tips for Mom Blog this Holidays and New Year
You know that the holidays are coming up and that everyone is looking to finish (or start) their holiday shopping. You want to draw all of the online shoppers to your blog, but you aren’t sure where to start. Fortunately, there are some easy marketing tips for your blog during the holidays that can increase traffic and maybe even make a profit at the same time.
These marketing tips do not mean that you should throw everything you usually focus on out the window. The first thing you need to do while considering this (and really, you should apply it to any of the suggestions) is remembering to stay true to yourself and the reason you have the blog. You’re a mom first and foremost, and that’s why your readers follow you. The more genuine and approachable you are, the more attractive you will be to new visitors.
Affiliate Marketing
If you aren’t already using affiliate marketing, you should consider it (find out more about one of the easier ones to join here). If you are already using affiliate marketing, add links to what you think might be your more popular posts. If you can tie products into your posts, you increase the chance of your blog coming up in a search for the products.
Focus your attention on companies that moms will be most likely to buy from. For example, take a look at Gymboree’s program and feature their holiday outfits in your blog. Partner with MindWare and give your readers suggestions on educational toys for different ages. You can never go wrong with promoting Amazon’s products. Learn more about their associate’s program. Utilizing affiliate marketing can help people build their shopping lists, give people new ideas for gift exchanges.
(Note: Make sure to read the guidelines of the affiliate programs carefully, as some have restrictions that may make you ineligible).
Create a Gift Guide
You can make this as big or as little as you prefer, but creating a gift guide is probably the number one way to utilize your blog to its full potential during the holidays. Yes, there are a lot of gift guides already out there, but make yours unique and follow a theme.
For example, instead of the usual “20 gifts to get your animal lover,” do a guide that covers gifts for the entire family, i.e. “Have a soccer player? Gifts for everyone in the family to take to the fields.” And then suggest everything from gear for the kids to the best camp chairs or insulated mugs for Mom and Dad.
Be creative, but choose items that you can suggest with authority; do not pick items that do not stay true to your brand. You want to be the trusted person to your readers. Moms are generally loyal readers because they will find a common bond and hold onto it, however, they can also be easily turned off by something that feels forced or unlike your usual material.
Produce Holiday Content
This doesn’t mean overdoing it with snowflakes and holiday decorations. The key is to stick with your brand and your focus. Discuss fun kid crafts that can be used to decorate a holiday table. Talk about family-friendly places that have holiday events. Give tips on how to make memorable holidays without breaking the bank. These are things that moms think about all of the time, so give them the information they are looking for.
Recycle Old Content
Revisit blog posts of holidays past. Update the content, check to make sure links are still active, and make new graphics or update pictures. For example, if you posted about your kid’s excitement about the “best gift ever” that he received last year, update your readers on the status of the gift. You could cover several years in a retrospective approach (“Whatever Happened To…”). Readers will love revisiting memories with you.
Any readers you have gained over the past year probably haven’t gone too far back into your archives, so all of this will be new material for them. It will give them a better feeling for who you are and help to create that bond and loyalty even faster.
Share Festivities
Take some time and put together a calendar of holiday festivities. It is not feasible to do one that includes every single event, but you could do one that highlights local activities and other events within a certain radius.
You could also look at the bigger cities and find the exact dates of their holiday events. For example, knowing when the tree is lit in Rockefeller Center in NYC or the hours of special shopping events at malls or holiday markets. Amusement parks often have special winter wonderland hours; find all of the big ones and post them in one handy place. (Remember your readers aren’t always just local)
People are often traveling for the holidays and sometimes find themselves with extra time after all of the family commitments are winding down. How helpful would it be for them to know what might be going on near them, especially if it’s an area they are unfamiliar with?
If you can make yourself useful at a particular time of year when people want quick answers, you can create loyal followers who will bring others with them to your blog.
Take the Pressure Off
Moms are going 100 miles an hour in 7 different directions during the holidays, and they often do not have the time (or, let’s face it, the energy) to do all of the research or planning that they should. Be a good resource for your readers. Make your blog the “go-to” place for gift information. Loyal followers will know to trust you and your recommendations.
Review products, or do some “shopping” and report what you have found. If there is a hot ticket “must-have” gift that everyone is talking about, do the research on it and post it on your blog. (This would be an opportunity to work on sponsorship for your blog that could carry into the New Year as well). If the gifts turn out to be successful, you may gain yourself some new followers in the process!
Be Creative
People are stressed out during the holidays, so give them a place to have a little bit of a brain break. Do a holiday-themed quiz (“Name the holiday movie from the screenshot.”). Get interactive and have a user-generated photo contest (“Funniest Family Holiday Card Photo”). Offer a gift card to the “winner.” If people have fun with your quizzes or contests, they’ll stay for the rest of the year.
Optimize SEO
Regardless of what you choose to do to enhance the marketing of your blog during the holidays, make sure that you are using effective SEO practices. Compile a list of keywords that you think will bring hits to your blog and scatter them throughout your posts.
Plan Ahead
To be truly effective and to see a marked difference, start earlier next year. By many accounts, it takes time for word of mouth buzz to really take effect. This doesn’t mean you have to do holidays in July, but you should start your planning early so that everything is in place to roll out at the appropriate times to catch that wave of holiday fever.
Whatever you choose to do to promote your blog during the holidays, remember: stay true to your voice and your brand. Your followers will appreciate the consistency and your new readers will get to know you even faster.
This article was originally posted at Mom Marketing Coach.
