How I Made $9K From 1 Post
At the end of last summer I published a post on my blog, Frugal Fanatic, about how I make money shopping online. In the past year, this post alone has made me more than $9,000, and I haven’t had to do much work since it was published.
This post may contain affiliate links.
The money generated from that post is all because of affiliate marketing. I wrote 1 post last year, and have been consistently earning money from it month after month.
The amount of money I make fluctuates depending on the time of year and the traffic I am getting to this post, but it continues to be a passive stream of income every single month for my business.
Now I can’t promise you that you will make a certain amount of money on your next blog post, but I can share with you how I did it so that you can replicate the process in your business.
Identify your audience’s interests
The first thing I focused on before I wrote that post was figuring out what my audience was interested in, and what information they were seeking.
This is extremely important.
You don’t want to waste your time writing a lengthy blog post if it is something your audience doesn’t care for, or won’t even read.
Plus, your blog should be targeting a specific audience so that you are attracting the right readers with your site’s content. By identifying your target audience and figuring out their needs and interests, you can become very niche specific with your blog content.
Related: Finding Your Blog’s Niche & Focus
Honing in on their needs and producing content that will help solve their problems, or answer their questions, is the key to making money from this post you are going to write.
Do not skip this step.
One way to do this is by checking out the top posts on your site that get the most amount of traffic.
Go into your Google Analytics account and click on:
Behavior > Site Content > All Pages
This will pull up a report with the blog posts that get the highest amount of traffic. You can then edit the date range to go back as far as you want, to see which posts are receiving the highest amount of traffic.
Looking at this report will show you what your readers are interested in. If you are getting a lot of traffic to particular types of posts, or certain topics, you can start there by writing new content that is related to these articles.
On my blog Frugal Fanatic, my audience is primarily interested in saving money and making money.
At the the time that I wrote that blog post, I knew they would be interested in reading how to make money shopping online, because my top 25 posts with the most amount of traffic at that time included:
● 30 Side Jobs to Make Money & Pay Down Debt
Looking at my data, I saw that my readers enjoyed my posts that focused on making money, so I knew I wanted to write a post about one of the ways that I was making money shopping online.
Select affiliate partner
The next step of the process is including an affiliate offer. I am not going to go into detail about how to find the affiliate, or which one to choose for this post. If you want more information you can check out my Affiliate Marketing Beginner’s Guide to help you get started.
Here are 3 affiliate marketing rules that I follow:
1. Only recommend products that you use
2. Don’t recommend anything that isn’t helpful to your audience
3. Never come right out and say BUY NOW
You can read more about those rules in my How to Increase Your Affiliate Conversions post.
You do not want to just pepper your post with random affiliate links.
They need to be products or services that you use, recommend, and can show your readers why they need it.
Only choose 1 product or service to recommend in this post, and make sure it will be relevant to the topic you chose above.
This will help your audience stay focused on what you are talking about and recommending. You don’t want to include different affiliate products, because it can become overwhelming to your readers and they won’t know what to click on.
For my post, I was writing about how I earned money shopping online using ebates. I actually became an ebates affiliate years ago, but never really did much with it.
I was already making money using their site to get cash back when I made purchases online, so I wanted to share that process with my readers.
Since I knew my audience was already interested in learning more about making money online, this seemed to be the perfect way to give them what they needed, and at the same time monetize the post with an affiliate offer.
If you are not already an affiliate for any kind of product or service, you will need to do that before moving on.
Again, you can read more about getting started in my Affiliate Marketing Beginner’s Guide.
Write a tutorial post that is actionable
The next step is to write a lengthy tutorial or guide post that is actionable for your reader.
I recommend doing this because it will allow you to show your reader how you use the affiliate product rather than just telling them.
It will also help to position you as the expert, or the authority, on the topic. If you can provide a valuable tutorial showing your audience exactly how and why you use the affiliate product, you are building up their trust and not coming off as being salesy.
If you can help your audience easily achieve a result, or provide a quick actionable guide with your blog post, you have a better chance of making money from it.
The important part is to focus on the value of the post first, not the affiliate links.
I hear a lot of people complain that affiliate marketing doesn’t work for them, but it isn’t working because they only focus on the money they will make.
They forget about helping their audience or fulfilling their needs first. This should always be your number one priority. You can’t expect to make money from a post that isn’t providing some kind of value upfront.
This is why I say to write a tutorial post; because you can walk them through each step of the process as you recommend the affiliate product.
You can see in the post I wrote that I explain to them why I use it, how I use it, and how I make money with it. I even include images to lay out the entire process.
Going through each step makes it easier for them to see how I make money shopping and how they could do the same.
Instead of me just saying, “I make money with ebates and you can do it too”, I actually show them how, and the money I made from purchases. This is helping to provide the value aspect of the post.
Pinnable Image
The next thing you want to do after you have written this totally awesome blog post about one of your affiliate partners is to promote it.
One of the best ways to drive traffic to this post is by using Pinterest. I talk a lot about Pinterest on my site because it was a game-changer for my business.
Pinterest is a visual search engine that can help you to get in front of your target audience easily. Find out more information about How to Grow Your Business with Pinterest.
Here’s what you need to do:
● Create a pin-worthy graphic for this post to promote on Pinterest
● Pin it to your relevant group boards and personal boards
● Develop a pinning schedule to pin this image to your boards several times throughout the month
I create all of my images using Canva. It is a free design software that has a TON of different options to help you quickly create this graphic for your post. Be sure to check out my Viral Pin Blueprint for Entrepreneurs to help you create an image that will get repins and drive traffic to this post.
On my Frugal Fanatic Pinterest account, I am on a handful of group boards that focus on making money, so I began pinning this image for my post to both my relevant personal boards and group boards.
I do recommend using a Pinterest scheduling service to help you pin more frequently and promote this post as often as you can. I personally use Tailwind for both of my sites. You can find out more information about how I use it to grow my account and get more traffic to my site in my post on How to Grow Your Business with Pinterest.
The important part is having a pinnable image in this post so that you can drive traffic from Pinterest to the tutorial post you created.
Interlinked from high traffic posts
This is one of the most important steps that helped me to create passive income from this blog post. After it was published, I checked out that Google Analytics report that I told you about before, to see if I could link to this new post within that content.
At that time, my second most popular blog post was 30 Side Jobs to Help Pay Down Debt. You can see from my report that it had more than 100K pageviews from January - July. I went into that post and added a small paragraph about this new tutorial I wrote about making money shopping online and then linked to it.
This helped to drive more traffic to this post, which led to more conversions.
Related: 7 Ways to Dramatically Increase Your Affiliate Conversions
I then proceeded to look at other relevant posts that were getting a lot of traffic on my site and also added in the link to this new post.
Interlinking is important because:
● It helps to improve search term rankings
● It helps to lower your bounce rate
● It helps your readers by providing other relevant content
If you want to read more, you can check out Problogger’s article on Why Interlinking Your Blog Posts is a Must (and Not Just For SEO).
I took it a step further and even linked from my resources page to this blog post. This helps to bring more people to my blog post because I am linking to it in my top tools to make money and save money.
To help you visualize this process, I have created 2 examples of how you can replicate this process in other niches.
Photography Niche Example
Hypothetically speaking, someone in the photography niche could write a post called, “How to get a blurred background taking pictures.” (This is something I struggle with and would totally read!)
They could write an entire tutorial on how to take these types of photos with a particular lens they have by showing the settings you need, the lighting to have, where to focus, etc.. This blog post would provide value, and can be monetized by adding in an affiliate link for the camera lens.
This so-called person could then create an awesome pin-worthy image, like showing a before and after blurring the background, or get a free stock image in Canva following my Viral Pin Blueprint for Entrepreneurs, to promote it on Pinterest. Then they wouldgo through their blog and link to this new amazing tutorial on some of their posts that get the most traffic.
Organization Niche
Again, if you owned a blog that specifically talked about organizers and planners, you could write an entire tutorial post about your favorite planner. Show your readers how you use it, why you like it better than other organizers, and even pictures of you using it.
An entire post could be centered around how this planner helps you to stay organized every single day. You would then link to the planner with your affiliate link, create an awesome pinnable image, and then interlink to this new post.
As you can see from these 2 examples, it can be applicable in any niche. The key is to write high-quality content that includes a relevant affiliate offer, then promote it with Pinterest, and use internal tactics on your site to drive more people to this tutorial post.
I would love for you to share in the comments below if you are using affiliate marketing to monetize your blog posts and if you have created passive income from it.