by Gordon Hamilton

Created on: August 29, 2011

Blogs are started by different people for a great many different reasons. Blogs can be started to promote a business, purely for fun, or as a very focused attempt to earn money online. One of the most popular and profitable ways of monetizing a blog is by offering products for sale, usually where the blogger is a representative of an affiliate marketing company. The revenue generation which is possible in this way can be considerable but there are a few traps in to which the unwary can fall, leading to significantly lower sales levels than may otherwise be achieved.

The first point to consider when you are looking to monetize a blog by selling products is relevance. Particularly where you are an affiliate for a huge company like Amazon - which offers products for sale of just about every type - there is a natural temptation to stray off topic in the name of a higher profit margin and greater perceived bargains for your blog readers. It is vital to remember that just because a thousand dollar TV is available at a third of the price, this does not make it a legitimate product to offer for sale on a blog about vegetable gardening. It may indeed be the case that a visitor to the blog will recognize the bargain and be inclined to make a purchase but far more visitors will be confused by the inclusion and even consider you a form of sales spammer. Only products which are extremely relevant to your subject should be promoted and offered for sale on your blog.

Quality is the next point for you to consider. It is important that you offer only products for sale from a reputable company, where the customer will be getting something of the quality for which they are paying. A bargain purchase of sub-standard merchandise is not really a bargain. Dealing with only reputable affiliate companies is also important in the sense that you know you are most likely to be paid the commissions and the revenue which your blog generates.

The number of products which you offer for sale on your blog is very important to your chances of sales success. It may seem that the more products you offer for sale, the better the choice range you are offering visitors and the likelier you are to make sales. Actually, the opposite is true. If you pack the side bar of your blog with products for sale, or include sales panels between each paragraph of a blog post, you will only confuse and irritate readers. They will not know what you are actually recommending and will again be likely to view you as a

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