Day 5 – Faith Blogging Course: Additional Tips for Passive Income from Blogging

Welcome to Day 5!

In yesterday’s email, I wrote about different ways to make money from your blog. In today’s email, i want to expand on affiliate income which is a great way to make passive income on your blog.

Oh, you still have to work to put things in place, but once you do, you can make money even while you sleep! I know that sounds too good to be true, but it really works. It’s not magical. You have to do lay the groundwork, but then it truly will pay for you.

I earn around $500 per month from my affiliate income, and I have only been working with affiliates for about a year. You can do the same or even more. I know some bloggers who make $10,000 or more from affiliate sales. It can be done!

Affiliate income happens when you place an affiliate link in your blog posts. When people click the link and buy something, you get a commission.

It’s so easy to set up. There are strategies involved, but you can learn them easily.

Affiliates can be a good way to make money because you can write about products you love. You can review the products or naturally mention them within posts. You can even make supply lists if you write about an event or activity for church or small group.

The passive part of this income comes when you’ve already written your reviews, posts, and tutorials and included your affiliate links. Then, those links can earn you money for years without you having to do much more to that post at all.

It’s awesome!

Here are some tips to using affiliate links successfully:

• Disclose that you are using affiliate links. Affiliate companies have guidelines, and you need to be sure to follow them. You should let your readers know that you may earn a commission when they click your links, but you can tell them that it will not cost them extra to do so.
• Use the Pretty Link plugin. I use the free version of this for all of my affiliate links. Most affiliate links are a long mess of letters and numbers. When you use the Pretty Link plugin, the links look more professional and much easier to recognize such as “lovingchristministries.com/siteground’.
• Make sure that you are honest when you right reviews. Don’t be gushy and fake. You’ll want to develop trust with your readers.
• Monitor your affiliate activity. Make a spreadsheet to keep track of companies you’re an affiliate for so that you can stay organized and on top of any sales you make.
• Publish crafts or activity posts with product lists and instructions on how to create each item. Show the readers how they can benefit.
• Join affiliate programs. There are many different affiliate programs to check out. I’ve used Commission Junction, Shareasale, and now Amazon’s Affiliate Program. If you have a specific product in mind, you can often find their affiliate information within one of these programs if they don’t have something directly on their site.
  
• Use affiliate links sparingly within a post. If you put too many links, a reader can get overwhelmed and not click on any. Put them at the beginning, middle, and end. That should be plenty.

I recently bought Tasha Agruso’s book, Affiliating Marketing for Bloggers, so that I could learn more about maximizing affiliate income. I highly recommend this book as a guide for you, too.

If you are not a student of this free faith blogging course, you can sign up by entering your information in the form below.