Now-a-days, it’s very common for you to see people who write about their life, post pictures of what’s going on, and even make a video blog (called vlogging) about their successes and achievements.
But what isn’t as common is making money with those blogs, and making sure that you do it right. We’ve written before about different ways you can make money with a blog. If you’re interested in specific ways, make sure you check out the article.
But in this article, we’ll be specifically looking at tips for converting your traffic into sales on your site. You may be asking, “How can I make money with blogging and all the traffic I’m getting”? If that is you, then continue reading to maximize your conversions.
1. Finding Your Specific Niche
The very first thing you want to do, to maximize your sales for your blog is by making sure that you’re blogging about one specific topic.
You’ll find a lot of blogs out there, and they seem to be all over the place. One day they’re writing about their favorite snack bar candies, and then the next day they’re writing about their favorite Football team.
While these blogs are great if you’re a celebrity who has a lot of followers, this won’t work for the normal, every-day person.
You want those who come to your site to spend as much time as they can on your site – not to go to other people’s blogs, but to stay on yours. And so because of that, you want to write about one topic (or niche), so that people will continue reading your blog posts.
For example, if you blog about men’s swimwear, and have a blog post about popular Speedo’s, another blog post about men’s swimming trunks, and another that discuss the pros and cons of Speedo’s vs swimming trunks, you can easily link those articles together.
When you link them together, your visitors will be able to naturally click through each link, and read more. On top of that, because your visitors came for the men’s swimwear, they’ll most likely stay if they can find more posts on that same specific topic.
So make sure that you’re writing for a very specific niche. That way you can keep people on your site longer, engaging them with potential things to buy, and thus have a higher conversion rate at the end!
2. Writing For Your Audience
If you want people to purchase things through you (or have them make money for you), then you don’t want to sound what I would term, “sales pushy”.
What I mean is, make sure that your central focus for writing this blog is so that you can help people out with whatever your specific niche is.
For example, I don’t get scammed all the time because I make a lot of money – I do it so that I can help those who are continually getting scammed, and helping them find out how to tell what is a scam and what’s not.
Of course, at the end of the day I need to make money, but when I write content and engage with my audience, I make sure to try to do it in a way that it doesn’t come out like I’m constantly telling them to buy some new product.
Also, it’s a good idea to have a vision of what your ‘target’ audience is. Are they Millennials? Or an older generation? Having a vision of who you’re writing for is a great way to help get your points across in your posts, as well as help get people to do what you want them to do (whether it’s a certain action step, or purchasing a product).
If I have a blog on where I write about the latest technology, I’m going to write quite differently for the many different generations out there. If I write for those who are 60+ years of age, I’ll most likely ‘dumb down’ the jargon that I could use for other younger generations.
So another great way to get people to trust you (and thus buy your products) is to not be so pushy with any sales/action steps, but try to write in such a way, so as to engage with the specific generation that you are trying to bring to your site.
3. Building A Contact List
If you don’t want to constantly be promoting your blog, so that you continually get organic traffic to your site, then it’s best to start building a contact list. Most people do this in the form of an email list.
Email lists are great ways to engage your audience and continue to bring more conversions to your blog. The process is very simple.
You build an email list, and periodically email them about an article that you wrote recently (or one that you wrote a long while ago). If you write a review post about a certain product, you can easily send it out to a large number of people via your email list.
If you email out to your contact list about a review about a set of kitchen knives, and see that it converts a lot of sales, in the next email send them a review about kitchen utensils, or cutting boards, and you’re sure to convert a few more sales.
With an email list, you don’t have to wait for people to find you blog organically, and then wait to see if they’ll do what you ask them to do. All you need to do is just email your list that you have a new post, and many will check it out and decided within a few days, if not a few hours.
Generally, it’s been said that you should wait until you have about 100 visitors into your site daily before you start building your email list. But it really doesn’t matter. You can start as soon as you can!
How best to get people to subscribe to your blog?
One of the best ways is to offer something in exchange for their email. Take some of your old articles, bundle them up into a simple PDF or e-book, and give it away ‘free’ on your site.
In the end, it’s a win-win situation. The visitor is giving you their email (which is what you want), and you’re giving the visitor something of value basically for free (which is what they want).
So, all in all, make sure you start building out a contact list at some point. It will be extremely instrumental to converting sales later on down the road.
4. Find The Converting Stage And Target It
If you’re making money by promoting products on your site, oftentimes you write some review posts. What I mean is an article that is called something like “The [product_name] Review – is it worth it?”.
People who are close to purchasing a product are usually the ones who are looking up review posts. So writing those types of posts are essential to maximizing conversions.
Now, that doesn’t mean that every single one of them should be a review post. You do need other content on your blog besides those. But if you truly want to convert your traffic, then write a few review posts every now and then, so that you can convert that much faster.
If you interested in the life cycle of a purchasing customer, then I highly recommend that you check out this article. In it, the author goes through the difference cycles that people go through as they decide whether to purchase something.
In it you will also learn of several other ‘action steps’ you can take to continue to maximize your conversions. It goes much deeper into the emotional side of articles, and how to target people much better.
If you can find the converting stage of your customers, you can also try to use ads to help bring in even more conversions. Of course, ad campaigns can be a challenge at times. But at the end of the day, if they work, it’s easy to scale them.
Targeting a group of people with ads, like Facebook Ads, has been known to bring more conversions to people’s sites – even when you have to pay for the ad.
On the flip side, this way of maximizing your conversions can turn out to be a disaster. Many have misjudged their target audience, and converting stage, and been left with a large bill, and little to no conversions.
It may take a few tries before you find the right target. But who knows? You may be one of those lucky ones who gets it on the first try!
To summarize, make sure you target your audience in the best converting stage they are in. Make sure to write review articles, try some ads, and you’ll be able to maximize your conversions even further.
Finding Help With Earning Money
There is many tutorials and courses out there with people who claim they can help you with earning more from your blog. And most of them probably can help you in some way or other.
But the one I most recommend and would choose above the rest is Wealthy Affiliate. Specifically, Wealthy Affiliate teaches you how to make money with affiliate marketing.
But Wealthy Affiliate is much more than that. Inside, there are thousands of fellow people who are earning from blogging. In Wealthy Affiliate, you can find training and tutorials that will help you convert your sales and maximize your results even more.
Check out my review of Wealthy Affiliate today!