CashSherpa.com is not only about saving money it’s also about making money. One of the best ways to make money online is by starting a blog.

Now that you have a blog, you have quality posts and you have an audience that hangs on to your every article, the next logical step is to moneytize your blog. Moneytization is a term that was coined to describe each action that a blogger does to earn through blogging. The concept of selling through your blog is simple. Like in an outdoor activity where someone or something is attracting attention, the people who stand around watching you perform will need some refreshments, some souvenirs to re-live their experience with, and some useful stuff to take home.

Selling through your blog operates around the concept that “a good spectacle attracts a large crowd”. When your continuous supply of very good content keeps feeding your audience, the advertisers or those who will pay you to continue keeping the crown in thrall will start coming up with attractive offers. Although there’s a good possibility that your potential advertisers are among your fans, there are others who might still be in the dark about your blogging talent and so you need to introduce yourself to these people.

Joining Affiliate Networks

There are networks over the net that serve as venues for advertisers to meet potential sellers, more aptly called affiliates. An affiliate will have access to the merchant (advertiser) resources available to them and will put these on their blog sidebars, text body or in pop-ups. Every sale that the merchant makes through your blog will be counted and compensation will be given to the blogger in the form of commission.

What is Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate Marketing is simply sharing of the sale between the webmaster (blogger) and the merchant. There are several ways to be compensated for your efforts at selling the merchant’s products. Merchants will have very strict rules that you have to follow for compensation to be awarded. Some will pay you when the people you send to the merchant’s site buy something (counted as a sale), while others will pay you when the people you send to their site sign up for an offer (counted as a lead).
There are merchants who will pay you just for the interest of your blog readers. This means that they pay you for the clicks that your site generates on their banners. Though undeniably the fastest way for a blog to earn, the merchants are very much aware of the scams that some unethical bloggers think up to game this marketing system. Thus, they employ the most advanced means to protect themselves from “click fraud”.

Help Them Help You

For online trading through affiliate marketing to succeed, both the merchants and the website owners (also called publishers) must work together to come up with the best solution for their business. Affiliate managers will be assigned to a blogger or publisher when approved for a product campaign. There are the people bloggers communicate with via email, and if you have questions about their product, banners or marketing tools, they are the ones to approach. A blogger must also read through every single document that the merchant provides to ensure that whatever marketing schemes he thinks up is in line with the goals of the merchant or advertiser.

CashSherpa.com is not only about saving money it’s also about making money. One of the best ways to make money online is by starting a blog.

Your new job as an affiliate to a merchant and a blogger to a crowd who loves you already may take up most of your time. What you have to know is that affiliate marketing may also take up some of your own resources. Like any other successful business, most of the successful affiliates you will meet will tell you that they have had to shell out some cash for a very worthy campaign. In fact, you are already shelling out some cash by building a blog and paying for hosting.

Money coming in vs. Money coming out

Every now and then, you will find a merchant who is more than willing to give you the lion’s share of the profit. With that in mind, you go in a flurry of activity and try your best to get the product out there. The problem is, while you know that a product is useful, you can be sure that several more people know of this fact too, and have been recruited by the same merchant. A successful campaign is only successful when your efforts convert, i.e. you make a sale. If a product is hot, and there are other people aiming for the massive crowd that would love to buy the product, your main ally in making the campaign (which you are spending your own money on) work in your favor will have to be the affiliate manager in charge of your account. He can enlighten or clarify some regulations, as well as provide you with banners that you need.

Working with Affiliate Managers

A good relationship with your affiliate manager means keeping in constant touch, learning about which campaigns or products are expiring soon, and requesting for better banners.  Affiliate managers are also the ones who will help you when your clicks are not being counted, or if there are discrepancies in the computation of your commission.

Always start your letters to your affiliate manager with pleasantries, no matter how distraught you are (e.g. you have been keeping the campaign going, bleeding cash and still, your leads are not being counted). Set the mood to professional and explain your side calmly. Getting in a word war with an affiliate manager could endanger your investment and make your efforts seem pointless. Of course, you know quite well that they need your efforts for them to earn, but making yourself a liability by being difficult could just exasperate the most patient affiliate manager.

First of all, choose a program that has the best reputation for customer or affiliate service. How do you know which ones are good? Ask around, check out the sites that are promoting the products and politely ask for feedback. The easiest way to find programs with very good affiliate communication is to analyze how their campaigns are doing inside an affiliate network. Some questions to ask include:
1. Does it feel like the affiliate manager is offline all the time?
2. Do they send you newsletters to inform you of the new products that need promoting?
3. Do they have banners that fit your campaign? If not, are they willing to craft some new banners just for you?

From the moment you start posting on your blog, you should court people to subscribe. Why? Subscribers are a blog’s best friend, these are the people who are waiting for you to post, and waiting to comment on something you tell them through your blog.

How to Attract Subscribers

As soon as you start your blog, the first thing you need to do is to get rid of the “Hello World” that is the default post of a WordPress blog (if you’re using the WordPress platform). Your first post should be an introduction of who you are and why you are blogging about a certain topic. Take the opportunity to highlight your interests, your background (in relation to your blog topic) and why they should listen to what you have to say. Your first blog post will set the tone of your blog, so write it with your signature style.

1.    The ‘About’ link or page – As soon as you write your succeeding posts and your first one goes to the “older posts” place, the next thing you have to do is to make sure that anyone who visits your main page will get a feel of the exact topic of your blog. Your header image could be the central thing that will tell them about your blog, or you can simply make your blog title and description compelling enough for visitors to continue browsing through your categories or tags. Alternatively, you can post a small “About Me” snippet on your side bar. Those who are content with just writing an about me page should place the link to that page.

2.    A series of posts – Some blog writers have devised a way to keep their subscribers and regular visitors coming back on a daily basis. Posting everyday is not particularly difficult if your posts for each day of the week have themes. Browsing through the blogosphere could familiarize you with phrases such as “Meme Monday”, “Trendy Tuesday” and “Wordless Wednesday”. These correspond to the kind of posts that the author comes up with during a particular day of the week.

Make Your Series Unique

Your series shouldn’t exactly follow those of other blogs. Yours could be something different, such as a weekly debate which runs from Monday to Wednesday. The first blog post should contain an open ended question, which the commenters could answer. When comments on the post reach a certain number, you could write your reaction to the comments via another post. This cycle goes on until you post your conclusion and recap of the discussion.

3.    Disclose a Planned Event

If you’re planning a trip around the state or around the country to look for ways to improve your knowledge in your area of expertise, tell your readers about it. Ask them to stick around and “subscribe” to immediately receive your updates on how the event is going, or if you encounter something interesting during your trip.
This concept may also be applied to blog contests you will be joining and contests that you are planning on your blog.

Want to make money online? One of easiest ways to break into the world of making a living online is by starting a blog. There is nothing that gets indexed faster in the major search engines than articles you write for a blog. To get started you must first use the Web’s premiere blogging platform, WordPress. It’s easy to install with a web hosting company I recommend called HostGator.com. Host Gator automactically uploads WordPress for you when registering a web hosting package. Next, find a niche and write quality content on that subject. Be consistent and write daily. What if your English isn’t all that polished? Not to fear there’s a company called White Smoke that acts as a virtual editor. White Smoke isn’t just a basic spellchecker it’s a powerful software tool that improves and edits your English writing automatically. With White Smoke you will receive: Advanced grammar checking, community based spell checking, patented text enrichment, dictionary and thesaurus, and an auto correct feature. I can’t afford an expensive editor for this blog, but with White Smoke I don’t need one. CNN business 2.0 named White Smoke #5 out of 31 top business ideas in the world. There are several different versions of White Smoke including general writing, business writing, creative writing, legal writing, biotech writing, and the complete executive package. White Smoke is good for business writing, letter writing, essay writing, creative writing, e-mail, instant messaging, social media, and blogging. Whatever niche you decide to blog about, writing quality, polished, and grammatically correct content is the key to making money and succeeding long term online. Check out WhiteSmoke.com for a demo.