Starting An Ebay Business: A Step-By-Step Guide

I have been selling stuff occasionally on Ebay over the last 5 years or so. I knew that a bunch of people had ebay businesses, but I didn’t realize how many. The last figure I heard was that there are over 1 million Ebay businesses. I am sure some of them are part time businesses, but that is just amazing to me that there is that much potential available.

Deciding to start an Ebay business

I decided to try it out and see if I could start a part-time ebay biz. The great thing about it to me was that I could essentially turn it on or off when I felt like it. If I needed some extra income for a vacation I was saving for I could sell some stuff for a month or so and then when the vacation rolled around I could temporarily shut it down just by not listing any items.

 1. Starting the Ebay biz

As I mentioned in an article I wrote called 7 steps to selling on Ebay for beginners I started by selling junk around my house. This is the best way to get your feet wet with Ebay. Actually, I take that back. The best way to get your feet wet is to purchase something on Ebay. This will benefit you in two ways:

1. It will help you to understand the Ebay community a bit better than you will if you just start selling. It is not the “virtual garage sale” that it once was and it is a rare case when you can imagine something that hasn’t been sold on Ebay.
2. I mentioned that Ebay is a community. This is not a cause for worry, but you do need to be aware that since it is still lightly based on an “honor system” that you need to prove yourself.Buying a few items and proving that you are an upstanding member who pays for items will help you out when you start selling.

I won’t go over the basics of Ebay selling since you can read that in the previous article mentioned. From here on I will assume that you know the basics of selling on ebay. So, let’s get started on the steps I took to start my Ebay business.

2. Picking a product to sell on Ebay

It may sound easy or difficult. It is some of both actually. I set out to supplement my current income, not necessarily to generate a full time income from it. Because of this I was able to take more of a chance by NOT picking the right product. I felt comfortable that if I jumped into an over-saturated market I could jump ship and try a new product.

I finally found a product that was related to something that I knew a decent amount about, since it was a hobby of mine. No, I am not going to tell you what it is, because I am sure I would see a surge in competition a week after this article gets posted  My “biz” is currently turned off, but who knows when I may turn it back on?I wanted to find something that I at least knew something about, since in my previous experiences of selling some of my wife’s clothes made me very aware that I know nothing about women’s clothes. I would get questions from buyers asking me how many inches it was from this to that. I didn’t even know what areas they wanted measured, let alone know how to measure them. Do yourself a favor and know at least a little bit about what you are planning on selling.

3. Finding a supplier

Google “(Your product) + wholesale” and combinations similar to find a supplier who will sell to you at wholesale prices. I know some people run small ebay businesses by finding clearance items at retail stores and reselling them on Ebay, but your profit margins will probably be smaller than if you bought them wholesale.

Most suppliers are going to want to make sure you are legitimately interested in becoming a dealer for their products, rather than just trying to get a deal for yourself. This process is probably going to be slightly different for different products. For me, I found some suppliers on Google and I asked a friend who he used.

Once you have an account with the supplier you should ask for a catalog and a pricing guide. If they have a website for dealers available, that will work as well.

If you plan on doing a drop-ship business (where the supplier sends the product directly to the customer for you, without you ever touching the actual product) a website called Doba has millions of products available to dropship.

4. Testing your Ebay market

Once I got a price guide from the supplier I was then able to see exactly what my purchasing price would be for the items that I would be selling. This is a very important number to get, because without it you won’t be able to test the profitability of the item.

Once I knew the price I would be paying for my items, I went on over to Ebay and did a search for each item. As you can see in the image below there is an “advanced search” link next to the search box. You can type your product in the field and hit the advanced search link.

That will then pull up this screen…

Make sure you check the completed listings box. This will pull up all of the results for the item that you entered. You will probably see some listings that were completed without selling and some that did sell. Ideally, each listing of your product would show as sold, but realistically I wouldn’t expect that. But skim through and click on the items that did sell and start a list of what prices they sold for. Hopefully, there is a decent sized variation between what the items are selling for and what you can purchase them for. Even if there is, don’t get too excited yet, because there are still lots of other expenses to account for.

Knowing what the items sold for is going to be very helpful in deciding if you should move forward with the product you have in mind. But even if it looks good, keep in mind that you still don’t know how many times the seller had to list the item to get it to sell. Currently Ebay allows you to relist one time for free, but if the item doesn’t sell again then you need to pay them another listing fee to list the 3rd time.

The easier option to test your Ebay market

What I just showed you is what I did because I didn’t really know there was another option. But there is and it is easier and will provide much more information for you. Ebay actually has aresearch area on their site that will basically give you the information we just talked about and a lot more. They do charge for it, but currently it is only like $2.99 for a 2-day pass. This will be the best $3 you spend.

5. Estimating other expenses

Now that I had gotten some solid numbers about what my item had been sold for in the past I had a starting point. From here I tried to get a best guess estimate (or exact if possible) of how much other expenses would be. These were a few other expenses that I had…

• Shipping and handling from my supplier to me
• Shipping and handling from me to my buyers
• Boxes and packing material (styrofoam peanuts, tape, etc.). I bought in bulk from uline.comand got an average cost of about $1 per item.
• Gas and wear and tear on my car from driving to the post office or bank. The post office is very close to my house, so this wasn’t very much for me.
• Ebay Fees (mine averaged about 6% of my selling price. This figure can vary widely.)
• Paypal Fees (my average paypal fee was about 3% of my selling price.)

After adding up all these expenses I still saw that I would likely be able to make a decent profit assuming that I would be able to sell each item within a couple weeks. If I would have had to relist each item 10 times to sell it, the Ebay fees would have eaten up most of my profits.

I was estimating that I could make about $20-$50 for each of the products I was going to sell. This was good enough for me, so I decided to move forward with it.

6. Buying the products

This was actually the easiest part for me. I decided just to sell the exact products that I had seen sold in my research. I figured if someone bought it before, they would buy it again (This was not necessarily true – I will explain later). I then just called my supplier and gave them my order. Two days later the shipment had arrived.

7. The photo shoot

I could only find one picture of each of my items on the supplier’s website. Knowing how important pictures are to Ebay buyers I decided I was going to take the most detailed and best pictures I could with the tools I had to work with.

1. I borrowed the best point & shoot digital camera I could find from a family member.
2. I found the cleanest and nicest looking background I could to shoot against.
3. I grabbed about 5 bright lamps from around my house and placed them to get good lighting.
4. I took about 10 pictures of each item. Some full shots and some detailed pictures.

I spent a good deal of time on this process knowing that it was work that would increase my chances of sales. But, the other motivation for investing a lot of time was that if I did it well the first time, I wouldn’t have to do it again later. Once I had good pictures for the items, I could always use the same pictures when I sold more later on.

8. Listing the items on Ebay

If you are looking to do this as a full time or even a part time gig, I suggest you use a listing tool. I used Auctiva which I was pleased with. The great thing is that they host all of the pictures of my items for me. So I could take the 10 pictures and have them all included in my Ebay listing for free. There are many time-saving features that they offer as well.

I knew the items didn’t have a huge demand so I listed them all only with a BIN (Buy It Now) price. If I would have been selling iPods or something I may have been able to get away with a straight auction, but since I was willing to wait to make the sale at the price I wanted, I did BIN.

9. Analyze the results

My test run of selling 6 different items went pretty well. I listed all of them BIN as mentioned before. One item sold in the first listing and three more sold in the relisting. The remaining two items had to be relisted again (incurring another ebay listing fee) and one sold very quickly. The last item taught me a good lesson that I mentioned I would get to earlier.

I had assumed that if someone had bought it before, they would buy it again. This did not appear to be the case with this item. I should have used a bit of common sense, it was a very specific and random thing that not many people would have wanted. It just so happened that it was one of the recently sold items that I saw. I ended up just listing it again as a straight auction with my starting price being my cost. It did quickly sell and actually fetched a decent price.

Selling quicker or more profits

I chose to take my time selling these items because I wanted to see if I could get the prices I was asking for each of them. I could have lowered my prices and probably sold them all in the first listing, but that wasn’t my goal for this test.

Here is a breakdown of how the test went…

As you can see, it is clear which items turned out to be more profitable. This is why I recommend doing a similar test if you can before jumping in head over heels after one product. Lucky for me, some of the products that yielded the most profit also sold the quickest!

What was exciting to me was to see that by selling just three products I could make $100. So, in theory if I could sell 30 products in a month, I was looking at $1000. That’s not a bad part-time income! And if I were to start buying products from Doba as a dropshipper it would take a whole lot less time each month as well.

Final thoughts about starting an Ebay business

There is really a lot to learn and as you sell more you figure out more and better ways to minimize expenses. I have learned a lot from selling on ebay, but there is still a lot more to learn. Just don’t be intimidated or afraid to try it out if it is something you are interested in doing.

I’d love to hear from others about their successes or struggles (whatever the case may be) starting an Ebay biz. Feel free to share in the comments below!

HOW TO MAKE MONEY BLOGGING

UNDERSTAND READERSHIP COMES FIRST, THE REVENUE LATER

Making money through blogging is not an instant process. You need to focus on readership first and revenue after you start to develop a readership. Am I saying you should launch a blog with no idea how to monetize it? ABSOLUTELY NOT.

Unless “back pats” and comments pay your bills, you need to have an idea of how you plan to monetize your blog before you start building it. But it can’t be THE focus from day one. Start with a plan regarding what niche your blog will target, what demographics your blog will serve and what topics and programs you’ll be able to turn to in order to monetize it.

That said, understand that in MOST cases you’re going to work on your blog for months before you start to see even an insignificant amount of revenue coming from it. Results will vary based on any “personal brand” you’re starting out with and how hard you work at PROMOTING your new blog.

When I originally started Blogspot, there were NO ads on it. My primary concern was building my personal brand and not creating a revenue stream. I’m not saying you should IGNORE monetization. I’m just saying you need to understand it is on the back burner compared to building an audience in the beginning.

UNDERSTAND THAT BLOGGING FOR MONEY HAS OVERHEAD COSTS

Expect to pay for hosting (I use Netwisp) – I’ve been over why you shouldn’t use free subdomains like WordPress.com, etc if you’re really planning to make blogging an income.

You should also plan to spend a few bucks on a design (assuming you’re not CSS and PHP savvy). I use the Thesis theme framework (you can find out why here), but also have my Thesis framework skinned. I’ve been doing this a long time, so I’ve obviously invested into my design (Proof Branding did the current one)… but you can find great low cost templates to alter (if you’re using Thesis, you can find some nice custom skins at Themedy) if you’re just starting out. It doesn’t need to be a custom design, but it shouldn’t look like a plain generic template either.

CHOOSE A NICHE

There used to be a time where I said choose what will make money versus choosing what you love. For instance, I started off in the telecom industry. I didn’t “love” telecom, but I always joked that I could learn to love any topic that made me money. But 2012 is a different playing field than 2002.

With Google’s love of “brands” – large and small, you’ll need to be sure that whatever niche you pick is one you can write passionately about – and regularly. It needs to be a topic you can become an authority on – and therefore build a brand on. And for most bloggers starting out with their first blog, the only way you can achieve that kind of authority and STICK WITH IT is to be blogging about something you are 1. knowledgeable about and 2. something you’ll enjoy blogging about.

On Blogspot, I blog about affiliate marketing, entrepreneurship and Internet marketing – topics I am obviously passionate about and – I think anyway – it comes across in my writing. I don’t blog as often as I’d like, but I try to make sure that when I do? It isn’t “fluff” so to speak.

Figure out what your hobbies are, what the things you enjoy are – then check the larger affiliate networks and ensure there are products that relate to your niche with affiliate programs.

SETTING UP YOUR BLOG

WordPress is free, and despite its security loopholes and constant updating, it’s my preferred platform. You can install WordPress in under ten minutes (they say five, but if you’ve never done it before, it might be more like ten). Next up, ensure you make sure you do basic SEO for your WordPress blog so it will do as well as possible in the search engines once you follow through on all the steps below. Get that design (and framework like the Thesis Theme if you can) and you’re ready to go.

BE REAL

Before you write a single post, I’d like to offer up some advice. BE REAL. Don’t be who you think readers want you to be. Don’t be just like the person writing for the most popular blog in your niche. BE YOU. Being you may not get you the most readers, but it will get you PASSIONATE readers.

I was talking with a very popular blogger a while back. His subscriber list trumps mine many times over. When I made a joke about that, he said, “Yeah, but your readers trust you, they listen to you – because you never bullshit them – you are what you are. I may be more popular in numbers, but your entire audience LISTENS.” I’ve long said I’d rather have 5K READERS vs. 50K subscribers. And it’s true. You may not be everything to everyone, but by being real, you will be “real” to YOUR audience. And that’s the goal. If you plan to make money online, it’s not about “numbers” but rather about a following. And people can see right through “fake” – so be REAL.

I curse like a sailor… I very regularly offend people. But I also don’t bullshit on Blogspot. What I say is what I’m thinking and not who I am “trying to be” to please the masses. You want the audience who likes you as you truly are, not as you try to be. A bullshit personality can only go so long before it’s found out.

FIGURE OUT YOUR POINT OF DIFFERENCE (POD)

I’ve been mentioning the need to have a POD in affiliate marketing and blogging since the mid-2000′s. When I wrote the affiliate evolution over six years ago now (and have never updated it, because it’s STILL relevant today), I mentioned within it (and the statement applies to traditional blogs as much as commercial affiliate blogs):

“Treat your affiliate site like any ‘real business’ and develop a point of difference. Sorry guys, it’s up to you to figure out how to do this. But, I can promise you that spending some time on doing this, on creating a POD, will be the single biggest thing you can do to keep your resume dusty and on your hard drive.”

I cannot overstate how important it is to find a POD – or a Unique Selling Proposition (USP), depending on the terminology people wish to use. In short, this equates to figuring out how to STAND OUT among the top competition in whatever niche you’re in.

With Blogspot, I think my POD is my “in your face” writing style and my in-depth product and service reviews. A lot of the online marketing blogs were doing their best to appear super professional and politically correct when I started. And, keeping in line with “being real” above, that wasn’t my style – so I offered up the same topics, but infused with my personality.

When it comes to my reviews, I noticed so many people were going the lazy route… here is the product, here are the generic screenshots of the product and here is my 500 word overview of the product (and honestly, half the time, I was wondering if they had even actually USED the product). My reviews take me a while to do, but I think they’re different than the rest of the reviews you find on blogs like mine – and that it shows.

Find out how you can leverage your “real” to be different than the top competition. When we launched a Blackberry blog, we noticed the top blogs catered to the tech geek crowd with news, scoops, etc. So we decided to cater to the not so tech crowd – focusing on teaching people simple things and give them understandable and simple solutions to their problems.

Check out the competition and figure out your POD. It will likely be a big factor in your “make or break” when it comes to blogging. Whatever the topic is of your blog – if you look at the top sites you’ll be competing with and find what they’re MISSING, you can likely get some inspiration to help in finding that POD.

THE BEGINNING: BLOG LIKE EVERYONE IS LISTENING

If you “wait until you have readers” to begin posting awesome content, then you’ll likely be waiting a long time. You need to blog as if everyone is listening from the moment you launch because when someone happens upon your blog, what will turn them into a READER vs. a VISITOR is said awesome content. Not everything needs to be a work of art – but you need to show readers you have a lot of awesome to share and give them a reason to keep returning.

Look at other popular blogs in your niche to see what kind of content is resonating with readers. Check Google Suggest for what people are searching for… start typing your topic and see what appears in the drop down – this is likely the exact information that people are searching for. All you have to do is start providing them with it. Keep adding a letter to find more suggestions. For instance, I might type “affiliate marketing a” and see what drops down… “affiliate marketing b” and see what drops down, etc.

You’ll read a lot of advice on blogging frequently. I’m more in the “blog when you actually have something to say” camp. I personally would rather post 1 (what I hope is a) truly helpful post a week than 6 “so-so” posts. But I will say that while you don’t need to be blogging daily, you do need to be blogging consistently – especially in the beginning.

That said, I have a very sporadic blogging schedule here on Blogspot – mainly because I run a few companies that can sometimes take my attention away from the blog for periods of time. However, I’ve had the brand for a long time now and it’s something “I get away with” and not something I SHOULD be doing. Additionally, my analytics tell me that every time I go a while without blogging, I begin to see a traffic dip (which correlates to an earnings dip) – so try and do as I say and not as I do in this arena for maximum benefit. ;-)

BUILD YOUR MAILING LIST FROM DAY ONE

Mailing list? I fully admit that I used to think of a mailing list as a “days of old” marketing technique. But my buddy Derek Halpern (one smart SOB) gave me a [headdesk] moment a while back. I knew he was an email marketing nut and we were discussing WHY he was one. I didn’t get the focus, because I got plenty of word of mouth and search engine driven traffic. And he looked at me and said matter of factly, “if Google or any other traffic source decides to stop sending me traffic, my mailing list ensures I have the audience I built via them STILL ready to listen to me.”

After Derek said that, I resurrected my old mailing list (which meant starting from scratch as far as subscribers since I’d let the old one I’d never put any effort into lapse) and began to actually put some focus on GETTING subscribers. I’d recommend that you do so as well. Lynn Terry offered up some great advice here as a guest post on starting your first email newsletter which you can read for more detail (that said, I second her recommendation of Aweber).

But simply “building” a list isn’t enough – you also need to send your list newsletters – which Lynn covers pretty well in the above post. I admit to being horrible at sending out newsletters even with my new-found effort to get subscribers, but that is something that I will be changing. Like with blogging, the frequency isn’t as important as the consistency – I know this because I utilize mailing lists on my commercial blogs (whereas Blogspot is my personal brand blog). And like with blogging, try to do as I say and not as I do. ;-) That said, every time I send a newsletter, I get increased traffic, increased sales on products I recommend and increased social mentions.

When the blog you’re working on is your primary focus, your newsletter can be an important revenue generating tool. Don’t wait to start building that list. For more email list tips and awesomeness, I’d recommend that you visit Derek Halpern’s site, Social Triggers. This guy is wickedly scary smart.

You can check out Derek’s interview below with THINK TRAFFIC on how he built a 17K subscriber blog in under a year. While we don’t always agree on every aspect of blogging, he’s a source of very solid advice.

The interview above is specifically about how he built his blog that centers around marketing – but you can use his tips to create a blog in any niche.

GET SOCIAL (OR NETWORK, NETWORK, NETWORK)

Let’s be clear – I don’t mean to sit on Facebook all day or to tweet your links incessantly on Twitter. What I mean by this is that you need to get involved in your off-site community. Why? Because people like to help, link, retweet and drive traffic to people they know and like. Look at all the things I’ve linked to above or people I’ve mentioned in this post. I “know” them all, except for one. Half of them, I initially “met” by interacting with them on social media. I communicate with people on a non business level through my social channels and the relationships I build ultimately help me promote my blog.

Traditional brick and mortar businesses get involved with their chamber of commerce, attend local networking events, sponsor local youth teams, advertise in local papers… bloggers need to be involved in their off-site topic community with social media.

INTERACT WITH YOUR ON-SITE COMMUNITY

Once you HAVE an audience commenting or sending you emails, be sure to interact with them. Don’t simply ignore the 12 comments on a post or the follow up questions readers might ask. Do your best to answer them and offer the additional help or advice they’re looking for. This is any easy way to help turn one time visitors into actual readers.

I’ll use an offline example to try and drive this home. My son plays youth football. Every year, he outgrows half of his equipment and we have to replace it. But I know nothing about how the equipment should fit, sizing, etc. One year, I happened to go to a local, non-chain store in our town. The prices were higher, I had to wait 30 minutes to get serviced… but it was because they used their specialty knowledge to ensure each customer was specifically helped, sized and fitted correctly. When I went to the big chain stores, I was pointed to an aisle. This non-chain store actually spends time fitting my child’s helmet specifically to him. So they are now the first store I go to for my son’s equipment and the first place I refer other parents to.

When you’re starting out – be that helpful blogger. People will remember it. They’ll return to your site, they’ll subscribe to your list and they’ll refer your site to friends. I understand this gets harder to do the bigger your blog gets – but if you’re reading this, you likely don’t have a big blog yet – and helping your internal community is a great way to help build your audience.

I was one of the first people to start using the Thesis theme. So when I started doing tutorials, I would have people frequently post questions about them and I did my best to help them figure their problems out. Even though my blog at the time had less than 10% content on Thesis, I suddenly found myself being linked to and mentioned on tons of sites as being a helpful resource on Thesis. My still small Thesis Tutorials category is now one of the most visited categories on my site – and those tutorials help drive people into other portions of my site, to my social profiles and to my mailing list.

PROMOTE, PROMOTE, PROMOTE

Honestly, I find that this is the stumbling point for most people wanting to earn an income through blogging. You build it and wait for them to come. [headdesk]

In addition to being social and interacting with your on-site community, you need to LET OTHER PEOPLE KNOW YOU EXIST. And you do that with good old fashioned promotion and hard work. Find guest posting opportunities and work hard to promote your new blog. Create a few pieces of flagship content. Ask friends to help promote said (only the truly worthy) flagship content. Ask friends to link to you from their blogrolls. Hold a contest. Market, market, market. This is the toughest part of building a new blog – and an absolutely vital one.

FORGE THROUGH “THE BLOGGING DIP”

It’s no secret that I absolutely LOVE Seth Godin’s book, The Dip. It’s all about knowing when it’s time to quit and when you’re just quitting. After the initial high from building something new wears off, you’re then writing great content and promoting your blog – the two hardest aspects of blogging – and it’s easy to start feeling deflated at all the work you’re putting in and watching subscribers only trickle in at the beginning. I’ve taken to referring to this as “The Blogging Dip” because it’s the timeframe in which most bloggers lose interest, give up and declare “it” didn’t work.

I’m not saying you should continue on the same blogging path for two years if you’re still not seeing results and audience growth after some time as passed. But you have to realize this dip exists and decide beforehand whether or not you’re willing to work through it. If not, there’s no point in even building a blog in the first place.

START MONETIZING

It never, EVER fails that at every Affiliate Summit, I will have a blogger come up to me after my session, tell me they have a decent readership, but they’re not making any money. When I ask how they’re monetizing their blog, the answer is usually the same… with ads on the sidebar.

Now don’t get me wrong – I run ads on my sidebar and those ads make sales. But they make a very insignificant amount of sales compared to the other ways I monetize my blog. You can’t simply slap up six 125X125 ads and expect to make a significant income.

You need to join affiliate programs (or a master affiliate network if your blog focus is very scattered) and link – tastefully – to products and services within posts. If you have a lot of pageviews, look into selling advertising on the site (either on a CPM basis or on a CPC basis with a program like Adsense). Create an info product you can sell. Market products and services you genuinely love to your mailing list (however, don’t simply blast them with ads – you’d better have some useful content surrounding any calls to action).

Additionally, don’t be SCARED to monetize. I meet one too many bloggers who tell me they don’t try and monetize their site for fear of alienating readers. Well, as Lee Odden once said, “It’ll be tough to pay the bills with a wallet full of famous.” I’m not saying to slap Adsense at the top of every page or shove offers down readers throats. But there is NOTHING WRONG with monetizing a blog to help afford you the time and money to continue helping your readers on a regular basis. The minority that IS offended might bitch the loudest, but if you monetize tastefully, they WILL be the minority.

If you own a productivity blog and do a post on “Six Ways to Find Two More Hours in a Day” then LINK, with an affiliate link if possible, to the products or services that you’re showcasing as making their lives easier. You’re actually doing your readers a FAVOR. You can either A. not link them and force your users to do a off-site search to find them B. link to them without an affiliate link or C. link to them with an affiliate link and potentially get commission on something you were going to link to ANYWAY. Why the HELL would you not choose to use method C?

When it comes to monetizing, I’m also a big fan of doing reviews. That said, never lie, always be honest in your reviews and never sell out your readership’s trust in you for a twenty dollar affiliate commission. Oh, and for the love of all things PLEASE only review products you’ve actually USED. There’s enough crappy, bullshit reviews on the Internet. Make yours worthy of being read.

NOTE: Once you start monetizing, you need to add a Disclosure page to your site. Missy Ward has a great Disclosure page on her site you can take a look at. I’d say to take a look at mine, but it’s not exactly one you’d likely want to model your own after – but it still does the job. ;-)

USE TOOLS TO SEE WHAT’S WORKING (AND WHAT ISN’T)

Once you have an audience, you need to start using tools to see what is working on your blog and what isn’t. You can use Google Analytics (free) to see where your users are coming from and what pages their visiting most. You can use Crazy Egg (paid) to see what users are clicking on (and what they’re not) when they’re on your site. You can use link cloakers (GoCodes is free – Eclipse Link Cloaker is better, but paid) to easily insert links (and be sure to use SID codes to identify which sales come from which ads) and as a result find out which ads and mentions are working and which aren’t. PopUp Domination (paid) is great for increasing newsletter subscribers.

CAN YOU REALLY MAKE MONEY BLOGGING?

Understand that most who attempt it won’t, but ANYONE CAN. You might be thinking, “Wow, thanks Rae. That was encouraging.” but the fact is that most people simply don’t follow through. If you really work at it and really FOLLOW all of the free advice out there you CAN do it. If you’re the type who would rather have condensed information in one spot versus searching the net, Then Traffic and Trust (paid) by Nick Reese might be a great starting point for you. But understand all of the free or paid information in the world isn’t going to help you unless you FOLLOW THROUGH.

Blogging isn’t easy money – it’s simply an easy opportunity. YOU have to decide what you’re going to make of it.

5 SIMPLE WAYS TO MAKE MORE MONEY FROM YOUR BLOG

MASTER AFFILIATE NETWORKS

I’ve written about master affiliate networks before. The master affiliate signs up with every affiliate program they can possibly find (most are partnered with over 10,000 merchants) and then recruits sub affiliates to use their master affiliate network links. They do all the work of joining the programs, getting approval from programs, maintaining the links to ensure they’re working, and even inserting the links on your website for you if you want (this is done by adding a piece of their code to your site header).

Because of the sales volume done by the master affiliate network with all their sub affiliates combined as a whole, they are able to negotiate higher commissions than you would be able to as an individual affiliate. The affiliate ends up making about the same amount as they would as an individual affiliate (in most cases) or a little less, but without having to do all of the above work. Master affiliate networks aren’t actually affiliates. They simply manage the co-op so to speak and take a cut of everyone’s commissions. That’s how they make THEIR revenue.

So let’s say you do a blog post and mention that you bought a new Canon Powershot and link to the page on Target’s website that features the item. Because Target is a merchant covered by the master affiliate network, they will automatically affiliate that link so that if anyone clicks thru and makes a purchase on Target as a result of you linking to them, you get commission on the sale.

I wouldn’t use a master affiliate network for products you regularly feature or advertise (I’d join the affiliate program directly if at all possible) but they can be extremely helpful in monetizing one off links to websites you’d never even check for an affiliate program otherwise.

While there may be multiple master affiliate networks out there, I only personally have experience with two: Viglink and Skimlinks. After testing it out on multiple sites, I’ve honestly found Viglink to be the better option for MY sites. However, I’d recommend you test out both for a month and then stick with the one that works the best for YOUR site.

IN-TEXT ADS

No, I’m not talking about selling links in your posts or content. In-text ad companies give you a piece of code to put on your site and then links any words within your content that it has an advertiser paying to appear on. The links aren’t direct, give no search engine credit and have double underlines that will pop-up a small (and obviously labeled) advertisement when moused over. The company that I use for In-text advertising isKontera.

If you go the In-text advertising route, be sure to keep an eye on your link density (meaning how many words in each post are linked). In my opinion, you want to be careful not to make the amount of In-text ads on the page to be obnoxious. With Kontera, you can increase or decrease the link density as you see fit. (P.S. if you have experience with alternate In-text ad networks, I’d love to hear about them in the comments.)

AD NETWORKS

Ad networks work to sell advertising on your website and then deliver the advertising to your site via you placing their code on the site. They handle all reporting to (and collecting payment from) the advertiser and reporting to and (payment to) you as well. In return, you pay them a commission – usually in the range of 30-40% or more in my experience. They usually require you to designate them as the exclusive way to advertise on your site (meaning if someone comes to you wishing to advertise directly, you are required to make them go through the ad network anyway) and require a contract term of about a year. Again, based on my experience.

Typically, most ad networks only work with heavily trafficked sites with a mega amount of impressions to sell. Ad networks like Tribal Fusion aren’t even going to TALK to you unless you’re getting 500K uniques per month. However, there are a few ad networks that will work with smaller publishers. BuySellAds (BSA – which I recently started using) is one of them.

They support 6 mediums – web, mobile web, RSS, Tweets, apps (desktop, iOS, Android) and email. If you’ve got 100K pageviews a month and don’t violate any of their guidelines, then they definitely want to work with you. Publishers that have less than 100K pageviews per month are “evaluated” to see if BSA wants to work with them.

They put you in front a large network of advertisers and take a 25% cut of any ad sales you make for doing so. You set the ad prices and get to approve all advertisers before an ad goes live.

If you’re able to get in with BSA, I’d suggest you set some realistic ad prices. If you’re not making 1000 dollars per month on your blog through all other advertising methods, then you shouldn’t be charging 1000 dollars a month for a below the fold ad slot. Check out what other sites similar to yours are SUCCESSFULLY selling ad slots for.

As with everything else, your experience may vary. I’ve yet to find an ad company I’m really happy with (thus why I recently signed up for BSA). (P.S. if you have experience with alternate ad networks, I’d love to hear about them in the comments.)

GOOGLE ADSENSE

I’m sure you know what Google AdSense is and how it works. You put Google’s code on your website and they show graphical or text based ads “relevant” to your content. The reason I don’t always use it is that you can’t control what’s shown (except for via an “exclude” list that is limited and means you have to constantly be checking your ads to add sites to it). Whether or not I use AdSense on a site has a lot to do with the site topic.

For instance, we chose not to use AdSense on our work at home mom site. Why? Because the site topic would draw nothing but those scammy “get paid to do surveys” type ads and we don’t want to advertise people stuff we know is basically crap. On our sites themed around cell phone use, the ads tend to be much more relevant.

Bottom line is that if I can find a way to get a CPM higher than the one I get with AdSense, I’ll gladly replace it. CPMs vary a LOT based on the site and topic. In some industries, it pays paltry compared to what you could make with affiliate programs and the above options. In others, it’s very tough to beat, especially when using custom channels.

You’ll need to test it to know which side of the fence your site is going to fall on in terms of relevancy, quality ads and CPM.

LINK CLOAKERS

I’ve written before about the various reasons why you should cloak your affiliate linksand that fact that I personally use Eclipse Link Cloaker to do it. The reason I’m saying that using link cloaker can help make you more money is simple…

First, I can set certain words to auto link whenever I mention them (and limit the number of times it occurs, etc) – this means I don’t have to go and find an affiliate link every time I mention a product. This decreases the chances of me being too lazy to do so and ensures I always have every product I directly affiliate for linked.

Second, if an affiliate link changes, I only need to update it in one place (the Eclipse dashboard) to change the affiliate link sitewide. This reduces the chances of me having dead affiliate links in past posts when a merchant updates their linking methods or changes networks, etc.

TACKLE MAKING MORE REVENUE WITH YOUR BLOG SMARTLY

Remember that you need SOME traffic to make any significant revenue. You don’t need 100,000 pageviews a month, but none of the above is going to make you cash if you’re only getting 20 visitors a day. Be sure you actually HAVE an audience to make money with (I typically don’t worry much about advertising, in most niches, until the site hits 10K pageviews per month – but your experience will vary depending on the topic and following).

Additionally, always monetize SMARTLY. I have a few ground rules when it comes to monetizing my websites…

• I always try to “incorporate” advertising vs. shoving it down peoples throats… if I can see three large Adsense ads on your site before I see any content, you’re doing it wrong – and Google might smack you for doing it wrong as well. You might make a little less money, but you’ll end up making more money overall by not alienating readers and increasing your overall following.
• I never sell text links. Ever. And trust me, I’ve been tempted. Especially in industries where tons of other people do it and don’t see any negative ramifications from doing it. But it’s against Google law. I think it’s a BS “law”. But if you depend on Google for traffic, know that selling links is a high risk monetization tactic.
• I always do my best to ensure my audience is served with legitimate ads from legitimate companies… for instance, I get tons of companies who want to advertise services that I know are BS here on Sugarrae. And I say no. Whatever fee they’re paying me to advertise won’t recoup the loss of a reader who was disappointed by their offerings and feels “I” am who led them to it. I’m not saying you have to use products by every advertiser who buys a 300×250 ad slot. I’m merely saying that if you KNOW something is crap, don’t advertise it to people.
• Same goes for reviews. I will never sell my reputation for an affiliate commission. You shouldn’t either. Always be honest. If a friend or colleague asks you to review a product and you find upon doing so that you can’t recommend it and don’t want to post a negative review, then I’d simply decline doing the review. But don’t sing the praises of anything you don’t personally believe in or like for any reason.

HOW TO CREATE TARGETED SIDEBAR ADVERTISEMENTS (WITHOUT USING CODE)

WHAT DISPLAY WIDGETS DOES

Display Widgets allows you to assign any widget to show (or not show) on the sidebar within any category, post or page.

Is Display Widgets the most advanced widget for showing widgets conditionally in WordPress? Nope. But it is the best of the “easiest” I’ve found for those who don’t know (and don’t want to know) anything about programming or writing code.

Just install Display Widgets via your plugin administration screen and activate it. Now, when you go to your widgets under Appearance > Widgets, you’ll see that every widget you open now has a set of options to show or hide a widget based on a variety of factors.

WHY YOU SHOULD USE TARGETING IN SIDEBAR ADVERTISING

There are plenty of reasons you might want to show targeted widgets in your sidebar. I’ll give a few examples below.

Showing people affiliated ads on specific topics they’re obviously interested in

If someone is roaming around the Sugarrae website reading all of my SEO related posts, chances are – you guessed it – they’re interested in SEO. So showing them ads for merchants like Raven Tools which offers services specifically related to SEO just makes sense.

Avoiding showing people affiliated ads on specific topics they’re obviously not going to convert on

If a user is in my Thesis tutorials category, chances are that they ALREADY USE THESIS. So showing them an ad FOR Thesis is simply a waste of real estate and revenue opportunity. Instead it makes more sense to opt to show them an ad for Themedy or Traffic and Trust from a potential conversion standpoint.

Utilizing custom AdSense channels

I’ve already written about how custom channels can help you increase AdSense revenue. I’m currently migrating several of my affiliate sites into one large (and new) brand (more on that later). The site includes several tightly connected but yet completely different topics. I’ve created a different AdSense widget for the sidebar for each topic section so that advertisers can target the topic that is actually related to their specific product. The more targeted the audience of an ad, the more an advertiser is going to be willing to pay to get in front of them.

Creating custom ad zones

As with Adsense channels, if you’re using an ad network to generate blog revenue, you can create targeted ad zones for the very same reasons (and results) as creating custom channels with Adsense.

Choosing different types of ads for different sections based on actual revenue numbers

Not every topic makes the same money with the same ad platform. You may find an affiliate banner converts like crazy in one section of your site while AdSense has an unbeatable CPM rate in another and your ad network ads kills it in another. Not only does targeting your sidebar widgets allow you to show more relevant ads to the user, but it also allows you to pick and choose which types of ad platforms to show in the best slots based on your actual conversions and earnings.

Registered users are different than non registered users

I don’t use registered user accounts here on Sugarrae (basically allowing or requiring a user to be logged in to comment), but I use them on a handful of other sites. A user that has taken the time to create an account with your blog is obviously “warm” to you – and your site – and can be marketed to differently as a result of that assumption. Let’s say you have a newsletter subscription widget in your sidebar. You might choose to create two. One generic sign up widget that shows to non registered or logged out users and one more specific to show to logged in users with different copy like “You’re already a member of our community, shouldn’t you be a member of our mailing list too? It’s FREE!”

TARGETING ADS INCREASES REVENUE POTENTIAL AND THE USER EXPERIENCE

If you’re not currently targeting the ads on your blog, you’re missing out on potential revenue. Additionally, users could be missing out on being shown potential solutions to their specific needs or problems. Whether you do it via custom code, more advanced (and slightly more confusing for newbies) widgets or a simple solution like Display Widgets, you should definitely be doing it.

Have experience with alternate conditional widget plugins? Please feel free to share your experiences in the comments below.

5 WAYS TO GET MORE OUT OF GOOGLE ANALYTICS

#1 – USE AVINASH’S GREAT PAGE EFFICIENCY ANALYSIS REPORT

Click this link , then click ‘Create Report’ in Google Analytics, and bam—shiny new report. This report tells you which pages are doing the best job of attracting and keeping visitors. By the way, Avinash has two other fantastic reports dealing with visitor acquisition and PPC in the same blog post.

#2 – INTEGRATE ADWORDS

I’d hope you’ve already done this, but if you’re buying Adwords traffic, integrate Adwords into your Analytics profile. The insights are priceless, from the cost per click to the value of each click from PPC. You’ll never waste PPC money again. (Click all pictures to see the full size image)

Follow the instructions in Analytics for Adwords integration. They change so often I can’t even try to approach the subject in a single blog post. But it’s never that hard to do.

#3 – LOOK AT QUERY DIVERSITY

Organic search is a HUGE traffic driver. It gets stronger as you diversify the set of unique phrases driving traffic to your site. That query diversity is the single best indicator of SEO health. Find it under Traffic Sources > Search Engine Optimization > Queries. See that little number at the bottom right? That’s your query diversity. More is better.

Note that you may have to set up Webmaster Tools integration, first. Go to Admin > Property Settings > Webmaster Tools Settings. Follow the instructions there.

#4 – TRACK ONSITE SEARCH TERMS

Google Analytics has a built-in tool for onsite search tracking. Go to Admin. Then select the individual site profile. Click Profile Settings and check ‘Do track Site Search’.

Then enter the search query parameter you use for onsite search. If you’re not sure what the query parameter is, go to your site, run a search, and then look at the URL of the search results page. Here’s one from our site, using Google Custom Search:

http://www.portent.com/?cx=007596975322806826722%3A6nbeigurb9o&ie=UTF-8&s=test+query

In that URL, the ‘s=test+query’ is what matters. ‘s’ is the query parameter. Enter that into the query parameter field, click ‘Apply’, and you’ll start getting great data regarding onsite search terms:

If you can deliver the content folks are searching for in the top 2-3 phrases right away, on the home page, you’ll see an immediate boost in conversions.

#5 – SET INTELLIGENCE ALERTS

In 2009 I started a blog about my favorite video game: Starcraft. I decided to give it a shot in the arm by buying some traffic. I put in a bid with no maximum budget.

You’d think I’d know better after 14 years.

The next day, I took a peek at my Adwords account and let out a screech rivaling The Sound of Ultimate Suffering. I’d somehow done a broad-match buy on ‘craft’, thereby bringing my site 5,000 worthless clicks. I won’t even tell you the price.

It’s so frakking embarrassing I nearly retired on the spot. It still makes me whimper. My. God.

If I’d had an intelligence alert set up for traffic, or PPC costs, or just about anything else, I wouldn’t known right away. Intelligence alerts send you an e-mail the moment something happens, like, oh, a sudden surge in paid search traffic.

To set up an alert, go to Admin. Select your site profile. Then click Assets > Custom Alert > Create new alert. Tweak as desired.

You’ll now get a daily notification whenever your site reaches the alert condition:

It’s not the be-all of site notification, but it would’ve saved me at least $900 or so. Le sigh.

Know what it can do

The most important lesson: Know what Google Analytics can do. It’s far more than a traffic reporting tool, and you can use it to refine and hone your affiliate sites for huge gains.

You don’t have to implement every feature on every site, but you should understand what’s possible. Your bank account will thank you.

TRACKING YOUR AFFILIATE PARTNERS AND WEBSITE EARNINGS

TRACKING AFFILIATE PARTNERS & PROGRAMS

I use a spreadsheet to keep track of every affiliate program I work with. I track the following in that document:

• Program name
• Main merchant website address
• Dashboard or network website address
• Dashboard or network username
• Dashboard or network password
• Name of my contact at the program (if any)
• Email of my contact at the program (if any)
• Twitter handle of my contact at the program (if any)
• The original uncloaked affiliate link for the program (to create new cloaked links when needed)
• My cloaked link for that program (why I cloak affiliate links)
• The link to my review of the program or product (if any)
• The product niche
• The product commission rate
• Whether or not I have a special commission rate (helps me know who I still need to ask for a higher payout if I’m doing a lot of sales for a product)
• How the program pays me (direct deposit, check, Paypal, etc.)

I also list the link to my post on creating SID codes for the bigger affiliate networks for easy reference. You can get a free copy of the template for the above spreadsheet here. I keep the spreadsheet updated as I add new merchants.

TRACKING AFFILIATE WEBSITE EARNINGS

I use spreadsheets to track each website I own individually. It helps me know where to put my efforts, especially when I’m pressed for time. The below is what I track (note, I include all contextual and display advertising programs as “advertisers”):

• Website name
• Website address
• Date creatives were last updated
• SID code used for that website (I use the same SID for all programs for that site)
• A list of the merchants I affiliate with for that site
• Earnings from each merchant for that site by month
• Gross yearly earning totals for each merchant
• EPC for each merchant by month and yearly CPC average
• Gross yearly affiliate income for each month with all merchants combined
• A list of the advertisers I affiliate with for that site
• Earnings from each advertiser for that site by month
• Gross yearly earning totals for each advertiser
• Gross yearly advertiser income for each month with all advertisers combined
• Gross total monthly earnings – all in
• Gross total annual earnings – all in
• A list of expenses (things like domain registration, hosting, promotional costs, development costs, etc.)
• The net income the website generated – all in – by month
• The net income the website generated – all in – for the year

You can get a free copy of the template for the above spreadsheet here. I update this spreadsheet once a month. I have a lot of websites, so it takes me a full day to do so. But I’ve found it’s helped me increase my website earnings (by knowing what is performing and where to focus) enough to warrant the time.

They may not be fancy, but they get the job done. :)