You begin to consider monetizing your blog as soon as you build loyal readers.

You start researching the topic of monetizing a blog, and uncover hundreds of tips and tricks. Reading about the methods available makes you feel that there is at least one method that will suit you.

You narrow it down to say, writing an e-Book. Just do what you are good at (writing) and sell the e-Book to your loyal readers. Sounds easy right? Theoretically, yes. But once you get into it, you will find that it’s more complicated than you imagined.

Months into the journey you’ll feel frustrated, and use the low risk, low return method; which is placing AdSense all over your blog. Maybe some of you have more patience, I didn’t, and I know tens of others in the same boat as me.

My advice: Don’t give up too easily. Do not settle for AdSence, there is another low risk method that provides a higher return. It’s called, “Amazon Associate Marketing.”

What’s So Great About Amazon Affiliate Program?

Straight forward answer: Amazon is the most popular and trusted online store. Yes, their commission is low compared to other affiliate programs, but promoting products from a trusted store makes it easier to convert your readers into buyers — as long as you are promoting products that are relevant to the post.

Amazon affiliate marketing gives you peace of mind when it comes to tracking sales and producing summary reports. Amazon has a sophisticated system to help you track clicks, earnings, conversion rate and much more.

All this is user-friendly and easy to read. With Amazon you don’t worry that the vendor won’t respond to your emails and questions. Neither do you wonder whether the vendor will be honest when it comes to transferring the commission to your bank account.

The different ways Amazon allows an Associate to promote their products- is the icing on the cake. You can promote products using links, widgets or by creating a niche store using an eStore.

The one that I like the most is Amazon widgets. These small customizable widgets can be added at any location in your post. You need only know how to copy-paste to create them.

So if you want to monetize your blog all you have to do is:

1. Login to Amazon associate central.
2. Choose the method you will use to promote Amazon products. For example, an Amazon widget.
3. Follow the steps to build the widget.
4. Copy the widget code.
5. Paste the code into your blog post.

You are done!

You now have Amazon products placed on your blog. If you are a Word Press blogger and looking for more options and customization than what Amazon provides, use one of the Amazon Word Press plug-ins available out there.

As I said, if you want to monetize your blog easily without allocating too much time or cash to it, then the Amazon Affiliate Program option is great. Once you give it a try you’ll wonder how you did without it.

Byline:

Areej is the coauthor of WinkPress.com–a web resource about leveraging WordPress and its tools for online publishing. She enjoys anime and dreams of becoming a pianist.

I have searched far and wide, through tens of hundreds of blog tips and come up with this one piece of advice for all bloggers, ‘If your write one blog post today, make it a list.’

Here are the top most compelling reasons why you should make your blog post a list:

1. People are Lazy: Yes, I am talking about you. Yes, I am talking about me! There is so much information available online that people have become speed readers. We as online readers tend to scan text rather than read it. So I could write complete nonsense here and only one out of ten people would actually read this. So make a list since people scan content.

2. We have no time to read. When posts become long and winded people tend to get bored and leave. So any text written as a list has more chance of being read. So make your content concise and to the point.

3. Readers like organization. The thing is we may be the laziest of people at home, we may have laundry from last week lying on the kitchen floor but when it comes to reading we like it organized. You got it. Organized. Wouldn’t your mother get a laugh out of that word coming from your mouth? Fact is, lists look neat so we should make blogs posts in list format.

4. Easier to Write Blogs. Everyone is a writer, at least that is what it seems like when you go online and search ‘blogs’. While we may not like what people out there are writing, and we may not like the style of writing many blogs use, with lists there is no going wrong. I mean come on. Who can really mess up lists? It is easier to write blogs that are in list format.

5. Lists are more influential. I can write ten paragraphs about the same thing without the bullet format and no one will read my post. Make a list and there is an epidemic of readers. Lists are easy to remember and hence, more memorable.

6. Dummy 101. No disrespect here but come one. Lists make things less complicated. It’s like the books, ‘…for dummies.’ It is all about easy writing and lists. Reader’s online want to have everything spelled out so, make a list!

7. Easier Layout. The layout for lists is pretty easy and titles just become better. You can have ‘best of…’ lists, ‘top…’ lists and the list just continues. Just make a list.

Don’t make all your posts a list. That would be too lazy. Write well, write often and then to make things easy for everyone make a list.

You did not agree with me? Well here is food for thought when you read this article did you read all the words or the two sentences I wrote in bold at the beginning and end of the bullets?