Bloggers Should Offer Domains & Hosting to Their Readers

Google Adsense will make you some money if you have a large readership, but I am a fan of affiliate product marketing.  There are currently thousands of affiliate programs online that you can join to market their products to your readers.  I believe that one of the best affiliate programs to offer is a domain registrar company that also includes hosting and website services.

One such company that I have been working with is GoDaddy.  GoDaddy is the number one domain registrar in the world and for good reason.  Their prices are low in comparison with the competition and they also have many other products that can go along with a domain purchase.

 

If you join Conversant, formerly Commission Junction, you will discover that a lot of affiliates market GoDaddy.  This is most likely due to the fact that they have an excellent EPC.  For those of you who do not know, EPC means the affiliate earnings on average per 100 ad clicks.  A high value means that a lot of customers are impressed with the company, resulting in high sales.

 

You might ask the question, “If GoDaddy is so huge and is doing so well, why would they still need affiliates to help market their products?”  This answer is simple; all the affiliates are helping to drive the sales.  Sure, GoDaddy spends millions on advertising; however, it is their affiliates that bring them lots of customers each and every day.

GoDaddy provides affiliates with great promotions that aid in obtaining more sales.  As an affiliate, you can change your links and banners regularly to showcase these great sales.  This is the reason why a lot of people click on GoDaddy links and end up purchasing products from their easy to follow website.

As a blogger, your readers all have internet access.  And, many of them are website owners or are going to become website owners.  Domains are a good choice for bloggers which currently blog on subdomains, those who wish to make money online, those who want to do any kind of business online, and those who just want to have a personal website so that the family can keep abreast of family activities.  Also, there are a lot of individuals and companies that buy domains in hopes of selling them for huge amounts of money in the future.

Domains are big business.  The highest selling domain, according to Erik Overen was Insurance.com at 35.6 million in 2010.  Just look at this chart that I have compiled from Wikipedia.  Many domains are worth millions and in the future many more will be!

There are millions of domains currently registered.  And, GoDaddy has registered the majority of them.  More and more domain extensions are becoming available do to the fact that the market for domains is still increasing.  So my burning question is, “as a blogger, why are you not taking advantage of this huge market and marketing domains, websites, and hosting to your readers?”

Many times when someone purchases a domain; they also choose additional products to go along with it.  Some of the products that they can choose is a website, hosting and storage, a private server, shared servers, search optimization tools, extended period domains, blog hosting, SSL Certificates, online stores, shopping carts, and the list goes on.  Sales of these products greatly increase your affiliate commissions.

A typical commission on domains and domain products can be very high.  Only one sale per month can be more than you regularly make with Google Adsense ads.  Here is a secret that I will tell you today which is in December of 2015.  I know of a website hosting company that will pay you $100 USD for each sale.  Now do you see why as a blogger you should be marketing domains and web hosting?

If you do not like GoDaddy or would rather market some other companies products and services, there are many to choose from.  The hosting company I mentioned above is not GoDaddy, although it is very possible to make $100 USD on sales made at GoDaddy.

I am not in a hurry to abandon GoDaddy, though.  I have been using them for years and am very happy with their products and great customer service.  I have bought servers from other hosting companies and ran into problems.  GoDaddy has always been able to help me out. 

If you just have Google Ads on your blog, you are missing out on a lot of money making opportunities.  By simply joining an affiliate company and placing a few links in your blog, I can almost 100% guarantee that you will make more money blogging.  The main problem with making money blogging is usually traffic flow.

You can have the best blog in the world but if only 3 people find it a day, you are not going to be making much money.  However, if you do have good traffic flow it is time to monetize your blog with affiliate ads and think about getting rid of others that can alter the look of your blog and actually turn your readers the other way.

In conclusion, I hope that I have enlightened some of you and you’ll decide to market affiliate products on your blog or blogs.  The main thing to do if you decide to place affiliate links is to always keep them current.  Dead links or links that are outdated confuse your readers and they will stop clicking on them.  If you keep them current, you can reflect on the most recent sales and your readers will appreciate them.

Many people don’t tell others to market affiliate products on their blog because they are afraid of the competition.  But let me tell you, there really is no such thing as competition online.  Utilize your competition to actually help you and in return you will get more sales.  I came across a quote online that I would like to share with you.  “Competition makes us faster, Collaboration makes us better.” –FyreFly.  It makes total sense to me when you are a blogger.  You are much better off working with other bloggers to achieve steady income results than you are being a lone wolf and trying to devour them.

www.GoDaddy.com

2015 Blogging Tips 101.

Last night I heard on the John Tesh show that 25% of adults admit to not even reading one book in the last year.  So, if this huge number of people is not reading books what are they doing?

I researched this topic and discovered that watching TV is still the number one leisure activity.  According to the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average person spends 2.8 hours a day watching TV.  But this is the startling truth:  Young people are reading less and less.

Time spent reading for personal interest and playing games or using a computer for leisure greatly varied by age.  People aged 75 and over averaged 1.0 hours of reading per weekend day.  On the other hand, teenagers only read about 8 minutes per weekend day.  Look at the US Bureau of Labor Statistics table 11:  http://www.bls.gov/news.release/atus.t11.htm  for it is shocking how little people spend time reading these days.

So, if reading is on the way out, how can you possibly make money blogging.  It sounds like a bad time investment, does it not?  At first glance, it does seem that what is the use in blogging if nobody is going to read it.  However, if you tailor your blog posts to a certain age and keep them consistent for this age group, you can capture an audience.  

Blogging tip number 1 - Blog to older people!  

• Maybe they want to read about what made them happy as kids.
• Maybe they want to read about old stuff like old t.v shows, crafts, old furniture, etc.
• What was popular 50 years ago?  These topics will be hot blogs.  Drive-In movies, old movie stars, etc. etc. 
• Blog about money, stocks, bonds, retirement income and anything else that can benefit older people like hospital equipment, news on aging.  etc. etc.

If you blog to older people it will be easier to capture a greater readership due to sheer numbers of older people reading.  However, older people may tend to stick with the older ways and may prefer reading actual page books than to read blogs on the computer.  For this reason, the next age group you should target is individuals aged: 45 to 54.  

Blogging Tip number 2- Blog to the 45 to 54 age group.

• This age group is where the money is.  They are old enough to still like reading, (on average they read 15 to 20 minutes a day on the weekends)  they generally have money to buy stuff from your blog, and they are growing older and will read more in the future which provides a larger readership for your blog.  
• This age group is generally less technologically advanced, meaning it is a great group for blogs that teach people how to do something or for blogs that compare products that they might buy.

Blogging Tip number 3 - Forget about the kids.

• The kids are in a new technology world full of video games, YouTube, socializing with friends and could care less about reading your blog.  If you tailor a blog meant for teenage reception, watch out as the average teenager reads only 8 minutes a day.  That means that there are a whole lot of them that never read outside school.  

Help the aging population with your blog and it will grow faster than if you are targeting young people.  You might need to "ground pound" it a little which I will go over in a different post, however, you are going to have a more successful blog if you go this route.