As a general rule there are four main ways to earn blogging income: ad revenue, sponsored posts, selling your own product(s) and affiliate marketing.  Affiliate marketing is by far my favorite way to earn money as a blogger and it makes up a huge chunk of my blogging income each month.  So, let's talk about some surefire ways to boost your blogging income immediately through affiliate marketing.

How To Boost Your Blogging Income

Identify Your Most Popular Content

You may think you know what posts drive the most traffic to your blog, but until you really research it in Google Analytics, you may be making some incorrect assumptions.  I used to think if a post got a ton of re-pins on Pinterest, I must be getting huge traffic from it.  Unfortunately, that is not the case.  Re-pins are not getting you traffic unless people are clicking through to your site. 

For that reason, I recommend taking a few minutes every month to evaluate your most popular content in Google Analytics.  If you are not already set up on Google Analytics, check out this article on how to do so.  It is vital that you use Google Analytics.  

Select a 30-day date range in the upper right-hand corner.  Then, move to the left sidebar and scroll down until you see Behavior—>Site Content—> All Pages.  Finally, above where all the URLs are listed, click “Page Title” so that you can easily identify your blog posts by name.

Make a list of your top 20 traffic-driving posts.  

Optimize Your Most Popular Content

The absolute best way to immediately boost your blogging income is by optimizing your most popular posts.  Start by making sure it is well-written and has some beautiful images that people (including YOU) can pin to Pinterest and use on other social media channels.

Next, take the time to add relevant affiliate links to your top 20 traffic-driving posts.  This may mean that you add Amazon links to the materials that you used for a particular DIY project if you are a DIY blogger.  If you are a fashion blogger, this may mean adding affiliate links to the outfits or clothing items you are talking about in a particular post.  Or if you are a food blogger, you may want to add affiliate links to your favorite cooking tools in your most popular recipe posts.  Whatever the case may be, make sure you add links that are relevant to your readers and to the post you are optimizing!

Most importantly, use text links only whenever possible.  I generally refrain from sharing images and prices of the items I link to because if you provide all that information, your reader won't have any incentive to click-through and you need clicks before you can make any affiliate sales!  Remember, your readers do not need to purchase the exact item you linked to in order for you to earn a commission.  You just have to get them over to the site and hope that they purchase something…anything!  I have had people click on links to inexpensive craft supplies and they wind up purchasing very expensive items, such as a home theater system.  

Below you can see an example of how I include affiliate links in the form of text only (the affiliate links appear in pink).

Make Sure Your Most Popular Posts Link Readers to Your Other Most Popular Posts (that are also optimized with affiliate links)

Many bloggers fail to take steps to keep readers on their sites for as long as possible.  You want readers to click around and read several posts.  The best way I have found to do this is to link them to related posts at the end of each blog post.  You want to make sure the posts you are sending them to are relevant to the post they were already reading (and therefore are clearly interested in) AND are posts you are really proud of.  In other words, you should include links to your other most popular and relevant posts.  Most importantly, you want to make sure that those posts are also optimized with affiliate links!  It's a really simple way to increase clicks on your affiliate links and keep readers on your blog, which will help to increase your blogging income.

You want to make sure the posts you are sending them to are relevant to the post they were already reading (and therefore are clearly interested in) AND are posts you are really proud of.  In other words, you should include links to your other most popular and relevant posts.  Most importantly, you want to make sure that those posts are also optimized with affiliate links!  It's a really simple way to increase clicks on your affiliate links and keep readers on your blog, which will help to increase your blogging income.

Here is an example of what I do at the end of each post:

I created the “you will also love these posts” graphic myself and insert it as an image.  I then use Code Canyon's Go Portfolio plugin to create the clickable gallery that appears below the graphic.  The Go Portfolio plugin is a paid plugin it costs only $23.00 (a one-time charge) and is the best money I have ever spent.  I will tell you that it's tricky to set up–I finally figured out how to set it up with the help of this awesome eBook: What the Tech? A Guide to Ease Your Technical Blogging Frustrations by Lesley Clavijo.  The 290-page reference guide to the technical side of your blog covers everything from re-sizing your header to installing a new child them.  As mentioned, it also covers how to set-up Go Portfolio galleries.

Get to work!

By implementing these 3 simple changes you should be able to quickly increase your blogging income by simply optimizing your existing content.  Talk about working smarter not harder!

[go_portfolio id=”blogging”]