2. Affiliate links
Affiliate links are a nice and simple way to make money as a blogger, even if your following isn't huge – in fact, you'll find that a huge percentage of the blogs and websites out there are making the money they need via affiliate links.
Essentially, affiliate links are supplied to you by a particular brand, for you to add into your content. An affiliate link looks like a normal hyperlink, but the difference is that, if the reader clicks that link, then goes on to buy the brand's product or sign up to its service, the brand will then pay you back some money. You can start building an affiliate marketing scheme on any of the best ecommerce platforms.
Typically, you'll take home around 7% of the value of the item that the user has bought. Usually, you'll still earn this money if the user clicks away from the brand's site, then comes back to it later – as long as they return within 30 days, and they haven't cleared their cookies – because the brand's tracking can recognise that their new customer initially found their product through you.
We can give you a transparent example of this in action right here. You'll have noticed earlier on in this article that we linked to a few website builders for you to try – Wix, Squarespace, and Weebly. These are affiliate links, which means that if you click on them, decide that one of them is right for you, and go on to sign up to that website builder, we may receive a payment for having helped you to find it (at no additional cost to you, of course).
The key thing to know is that our top priority is helping you, our reader, to find the right product. That's why we only host affiliate links to website builders that our experts really like, and that we know will be able to help you create an awesome website. That's the philosophy you'll need to adopt on your blog – your affiliate links should be genuinely helpful to the reader, and should come from brands that you think are fantastic.