“Selling” is an artform; not many people can pull it off, but in order to start making money, you need to learn how to sell on a blog without being too pushy, (i.e annoying).
What I tend to see most online is people going for the “hard sell” to sell their product on their blog.
It’s all about “buy this” and “buy that” accompanied with the “industry-standard” yellow highlighted text.
*Shakes head in disapproval”
Today, I’d like to show you how you can sell products (and make money) from your blog without being too much of a cheesy sales wo/man.
Don’t worry, it’s not complicated. You just need to understand these very few simple tips;
Don’t Sell At All
Wait what!? How are we supposed to make money if we’re not selling?
It’s my humble opinion that for the first few months you should try not selling anything at all. It is still a theory here but I believe if you refrain from selling, search engines and readers are going to give you more attention.
People on the internet are now getting used to being sold all the time and frankly; it’s annoying.
In the first few months, you’re not going to have much traffic and therefore not much sales so don’t worry; you won’t be losing much.
So When Should You Start Selling?
When you hit a certain traffic targets. Say like 50 or 100 visitors a day.
Once you start getting consistent traffic like that, consider doing some reviews for any products or services that are in your niche. (I’ll tell you why in the next step)
When doing reviews, see if the product has an affiliate program so that you can make money off it as an affiliate marketer.
(If you don’t know what affiliate marketing is, please check this out. It’s a must you learn about affiliate marketing.)
Once you create the review, link to that review from your 3/4/5 most popular blog posts and just see what happens. Analyze the data and move on from there.
Remember data is a great way to know if you’re moving in the right direction but don’t get analysis paralysis and don’t stress over data that doesn’t matter.
Create Product Reviews
Product reviews are the best way (I found) to convert a reader into a customer.
If you want to sell on your blog without being too pushy, you need to get into the habit of creating product reviews and here’s why:
It gives you an outlet to “sell”:
When you do a product review, you are telling your reader exactly what you think of the product. If they choose to buy it, then by all means you should make money off that.
If you helped them decide that it is right for them, then you deserve that commission.
Most often, people would want to buy that product off you simply because you’ve been helpful to them and had taken the time out to go into detail about the product / service.
Product reviews also rank very well in search engines so they can also help you get new readers.
You can link to them from blog posts:
Instead of constantly selling on every post, you should consider linking to these reviews instead.
For example; whenever I mention some of the products I promote here, I never link to the actual product, I link to my reviews.
If the reader is genuinely interested in what that product is about, he will click through, read my review, then make an informed decision. This way you’re not selling, you’re informing and educating.
Using this method of selling, I have found that my conversion rates on my reviews are the highest across the board.
Sell On Your Email List
This might take some skill to pull off but I personally know bloggers that don’t sell anything on their blogs and rather just sell to their list.
I can not tell you what the pros and cons of this are (because I never tried it) but I do know it works.
Basically what you need is a great sales funnel that runs through an email marketing autoresponder like Aweber or Mailchimp, and let it do the work for you.
It takes a huge amount of skill and a huge amount of subscribers to make money from a blog this way so this option might not be suitable for beginners.
It is however a great option of you want to sell without actually selling on your blog. I can definitely see it working fine.
Here are some great tips on how to build, manage and profit off your email list.
Things To Remember When Selling On Your Blog
Before I leave you, I have to to tell you this:
Whatever “business model” you chose on your blog, you need to remember these 4 things because they ring true in every scenario.
- Don’t sell something unless you think it’s a great product.
- Always aim to inform readers rather than selling to them.
- It’s ok to ask for the sale, just as long as you do it right.
- People will buy anything if you prove to them it’s worth their time/money.
That’s it from my end.
I hope this helps you achieve some of your sales goals on your blog and if you have any questions feel free to ask below in the comments.
If you want to know more about how you can increase sales and maximise profits from your blog, feel free to download my eBook “How To Win At Affiliate Marketing“.
It’s a free guide I put together for my loyal readers and I’m sure it will help you make sense of this whole “blogging for profit” business.
Thanks a lot for dropping by.
Chris Lee
