Monetizing Your Blog: Part 3 – Selling A Product
So far in our Monetizing Your Blog Series, we’ve covered Affiliate Marketing and Advertising. In this next installment we’ll go over what is potentially your most lucrative option – selling a product. Selling your own product comes with several advantages, but it also requires a bit more legwork. Below we’ll go over the pros and cons of selling a product, how to come up with a product, actually getting your product out, and how to market it.
The Pros and Cons
One of the biggest advantages of selling your own product is that you have more control over everything. When it comes to affiliate marketing you are selling someone else’s product, and with advertising you are again promoting another company.
With your own product, you control what it is, how you want to market it, how much to sell it for, and everything else. This gives you more freedom when you are determining how to work it into your website, and also gives you a greater potential when it comes to earnings. Other than the usual costs of doing business (creating the product, running a website, handling credit cards, etc), you get to keep all of the profits, unlike affiliate marketing in which you only get a portion.
On the other hand, creating a product will take more time on your part. With advertising, you only have to put a snippet of code on your website and you’re practically done. If, for instance, you want to create an eBook and sell it, you need to research the topic, do all of the writing, create a cover, and find a method for distributing it. You also need to closely track things like sales and customer feedback, and put more effort into marketing your product. While you may be able to automate some some processes as time goes on, you will need to put in the initial leg work, which will take time and resources.
Coming Up With A Product
If you think making a product is the way to go for you, the next question is “What are you going to sell?” A popular option among bloggers is to create an eBook. You already do plenty of writing for your blog, so why not turn it into a book? Many bloggers will turn their blog posts into an eBook, add some additional content that is exclusive for book buyers, and then market the book to their readers. If you become good at it, and are knowledgeable about a subject matter, turning out eBooks can become a quick process. Then all you need is a group of dedicated readers to turn into a decent profit.
For those of you that don’t want to write, there are other options. Perhaps you are into arts and crafts, and want to sell your unique creation. Many that do this turn to sites like Etsy, and then promote their products on their websites. Or maybe you’ve created some new invention, and you want to sell it to the world. You can then use your website to handle order forms, process payments, and market your new product.
There are plenty of avenues you can go, and it will really depend on what it is you want to sell, and what your blog is about. For more information, check out these guides:
- Creating Your First eBook
- The Ultimate Guide To Selling on Etsy
- How To Sell Your Product With Your Own Webpage
Getting Your Product Out
Now that you have your product, you need to get it into the hands of your customers. How you ultimately do this will depend on the product. For example, if you choose to make an eBook, you could simply upload it to the Amazon Kindle program and let them deal with payment processing and delivering the product. Or you could track the orders yourself, and email your customers a copy of the book upon completion.
If you have a physical product, you’ll need a system for handing payments, tracking customer addresses, and shipping out the product. There’s a lot to this, so you can check out this article – The Beginner’s Guide To Ecommerce Shipment And Fulfillment – for more information.
Marketing Your Product
You’ve decided what you want to sell, you’ve made the product, and you know how you’re going to get it to your customers. Now you need your customers to hear about it. Since you are running a website, that will be your main form of marketing. The best way to reach your customers is through an email list. If you’ve been collecting emails from your users (and you should), you now have a whole list of people who want to see what you have to offer. Send out an email to your subscribers, and alert them to your new product. Don’t over do it – keep it to one or two emails.
Past that, you should also market your product on your website. Create a separate page or blog post all about your new product – what it is, why they need it, how much it costs, where to buy it, etc. Whenever you market your product, you should link to that page.
Next, it’s not a bad idea to place an ad for your own product on your website. This can take the form of an image in the sidebar alerting your readers to your new product, or a pop-up screen that appears when they enter your website. Again, you don’t want to over-do it, but a few reminders that you have an exclusive product to offer them won’t hurt.
Finally, you want to market your product off of your website. Post on your social media accounts (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc) and let your followers know you’re launching a product. If you can, try to find guest posting opportunities on other blogs, and promote your product at the end of the article. For example, if you’ve written an eBook about cooking Italian food, find a blog that is about cooking, see if they will let you provide content, and in your author bio, mention that you are the author of this new eBook, and include a link.
Following Up
The above will get you started with selling a product through your blog, but your work shouldn’t stop there. You want to turn this first product into future products, and for that you’ll need to do some follow-up actions. For instance, on the page where you are selling the product, you should be doing some split testing to see if you can improve the copy or page layout.
Besides this, you should solicit feedback from your customers and find out what they did and did not like about your product. This information will be valuable when you go to make your next product.
Selling A Product Is A Great Way To Monetize Your Blog
Most people who are making serious money through their blog are doing so by selling a product. Affiliate marketing and advertising can be great ways to earn some money, but if you really want to get to the next level, your own product is the way to go. You get more control over the process, and can control how much profit you make on each sale. If you’ve built up a large, dedicated subscriber list, you now have a collection of people who are likely to be interested in your product, and you can continually sell to them.
Hopefully this guide was able to give you some insight into how you can sell your own product online in attempt to monetize your blog. If you have any questions or suggestions, please leave them in the comments below!