You might know Michelle Schroeder-Gardner from her super-popular blog MakingSenseofCents.com where she gets hundreds of thousands of readers and makes 6-figures a month.
Around $50k of that monthly revenue (or more) comes from affiliate marketing.
Michelle’s online journey started in the summer of 2011 when she decided to start blogging about paying off her student debts, “I didn’t know what blogs were at the time… I literally didn’t know that you could make money with a blog,” she said looking back.
It was when she made her first $100 six months later with a sponsored post that she knew she wanted to build an online business.
“It became super addicting,” Michelle said.
Fast-forward just two years and Michelle had become a full-time blogger making money through affiliate marketing sponsored posts, working as a freelance staff writer and selling display advertising.
She started to focus on affiliate marketing, and with her most profitable post making more than $400k to-date, it’s fair to say she’s nailed the right way to do affiliate marketing.
The secret to her success?
Listening to her audience and providing relevant content that solves a pain point.
Sounds simple, right?
Tune in to hear Michelle explain how she finds the right affiliate products to promote to her audience, as well as her tips to maximize conversions, increase your social media following, diversify your traffic sources, and much more.
Don’t have a blog yet? My free video course will help you get started!
Free Bonus: Download Michelle’s Top Tips For Maximizing Affiliate Revenue
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Learn:
- Why Michelle decided to start a blog.
- How she became a full-time blogger within two years.
- How she turned questions from her readers into a $400k blog post!
- How to find the right affiliate products to promote.
- The mistakes most people new to affiliate marketing make and how to avoid them.
- How to optimize your blog posts to increase conversions.
- How to build trust with your audience so you’re not seen as a “sellout.”
- How to properly disclose you’re promoting affiliate products.
- Michelle’s #1 tip for Side Hustle Nation.
Links:
- Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing (yep, that’s my affiliate link! If you use it to join Michelle’s course just forward your confirmation to nick [at] sidehustlenation [dot] com and I’ll send over my Blog Traffic Guide bonus!)
- Making Sense of Cents
- World Nomads
- Amazon Affiliate Program
- Pretty Links (WordPress Plugin)
- ShareASale
- Commission Junction
- FTC affiliate disclosure rules
- No Follow Check Box (WordPress Plugin)
- Thirsty Affiliates (WordPress Plugin)
- ConvertKit
Disclosure Examples:
Here’s what Michelle has on her Recommendations page:
And here’s what she has as her standard blog post disclosure at the top of every post:
Download the Free PDF "Highlight Reel" from this Episode
With all of my guest's top tips and resources included.
Enter your email to access it now:
Success! You just unlocked the highlight reel from this episode ... AND over 200 other subscriber-only bonuses. Check your email for details :)
(If it doesn't show up in 5-10 minutes, check spam/promotions.)
You'll also receive my best side hustle tips and weekly-ish newsletter. Opt-out anytime.
I have interest in affiliate marketing with my blog.
I used AdSense and other ad networks but didn’t got any satisfying results. But now after reading this, I wonder that I can also go for affiliate marketing. But I also wonder that affiliate programs only pay for purchase made through link (as far as I know). Then it will require many people to click links from one blog and make purchases to earn a decent amount. Am I right?
Can you provide links to your other podcasts with her?
@Apoorv Adsense is killer if you have a decent amount of traffic and you’ve created a niche site on a highly competitive market with expensive PPC numbers. As an example: legal, insurance, and education. You will have to focus on a very specific subset of any of these. I have earned upward of $18 per click for educational (college) ads that run on one of my sites. Once you have one of these niche sites up and running, you can also look into CPA networks to boost your earnings.
Affiliate marketing kicks ass. :-)
Daayyumm $18 a CLICK?! Good work Travis!
Thanks, it’s amazing what advertisers pay to pop across various platforms.
The key is standing out. You MUST differentiate to both climb up the SERPs and get someone to stay on your page.
Most websites are complete shit these days.