For many Internet marketers, blogs make up their entire Internet marketing empire and others use blogs to promote their websites. Either way, blogs are an important tool that you can use to significantly boost your income. Blogs have been hot for some time now and they show no evidence of slowing down any time soon. In the following paragraphs, we’ll look at a few advantages blogs have to offer.
You don’t have to Build a Website
Buy a domain name, pay for hosting, insert a WordPress theme, and Voila! You’re set to blog without having to know anything about building a website. Create content and your new site can be up and running in less than a day and for a very small investment to boot. Now you can post information about your products or make generic posts within your niche with links that lead to wherever your products are for sale. While you shouldn’t thoughtlessly throw together a website of any kind and expect instant results, blogs can be put together quickly and attractively.
Blogs Make a Great Home for Affiliate Products
If you’re wondering how to promote your affiliate products, creating and maintaining a blog may be the perfect solution, especially if you have several affiliate products within the same niche. This way, you can post on a variety of topics within your niche and include links to your affiliate products within the posts. You can also use a variety of links to advertise the kind of affiliate programs that go with just about any niche, such as Amazon.
Blogs are Great for Earning Passive Income
Now this will depend upon the subject of your blog but if you are posting information that won’t necessarily change over the next few months, you can write dozens of blog posts ahead of time and then schedule them to post over the next few months. This is another advantage of using WordPress for your blog. Then your blog will automatically be updated while you are working on other projects or creating more blogs or websites. Don’t forget to submit your blog to blog directories as well.
Network with Other Bloggers
The blogging community is huge and you can learn a lot from other bloggers. Whether you need technical help with an aspect of WordPress or have questions about your niche, you can easily find others that are usually willing to help. Many new bloggers ask more experienced bloggers and Internet marketers to have a quick look at their blog and provide feedback as to technical aspects or the overall look and feel of the blog. In addition, a simple search engine query will present enough free information about blogs to keep you going for some time.
Everyone likes to get something for nothing from time to time and your customers are no different. If you’ve studied your competition you’ve probably noticed that many of their offers feature bonuses; often, more than one. Make sure, though, that if you are giving something away that it is something of value and not just a piece of junk. Even though you are giving it away, look upon this as a trust building exercise. You want your customers to associate your name or your company’s name with quality products. Give away something of no value even one time and your future giveaways won’t impress anyone.
Giving things away is a strategic promotional tool, that if used correctly, can boost your profits and help you to grow your business. Some Internet marketers use giveaways to help them to build their email marketing lists. Offer an attractive product for nothing more than a name and an email address and you have a good chance of building not just a marketing list, but a targeted marketing list. As long as you offer a giveaway product that is in line with your overall niche, then you will be able to build a list of potential customers that are already interested in the kinds of products you promote.
Giveaways can also be used to entice customers to buy your next product. After all, if customers like the one they got for free, they are more likely to buy the one you are selling next. By the time you offer your next product for sale, you will have already showed them that you produce quality products and they will be far more likely to buy from you than from someone with whom they have no relationship whatsoever.
What is Your Competition Giving Away?
Take a look at the websites of your competition to see what kinds of products they are giving away to their customers. This will give you a great idea of what makes up a good giveaway. In addition to giving away free products to everyone, some Internet marketers hold contests and then give away one or more items to the winner. Holding a contest is a great promotional strategy that will garner you unique and repeat visitors. Talk up your contest in forums and when you comment on blogs. Have a concise contest announcement on your own site so that all the details are clear.
While there is no set amount of time for which your contest should run, you want to be careful not to make it too long or people will lose interest. On the other hand, if it doesn’t run long enough, you won’t have as much time to generate interest. Usually, a month or two is long enough to build interest and keep people coming back, especially if you post a running status of who is in the lead or something of that nature. When it is time to announce the winner, make a big splash about it and deliver the prize on time and with a lot of fanfare!