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Disclaimer: The information provided is for educational purposes only and does not constitute professional advice.
Affiliate Disclosure: Some links on this page are affiliate links. I may earn a commission if you make a purchase through these links, at no cost to you.
In order to earn income from your blog, it’s very important to drive traffic consistently.
🌷1. Pinterest Marketing
The #1 way that I recommend for marketing your blog is through Pinterest marketing. It's the main way that I promote my blog :) It’s free and not difficult to learn. We'll go over:
- What is Pinterest?
- What is affiliate marketing?
- How do I get approved to become an affiliate?
- How does Pinterest affiliate marketing work?
- How do I create a pin?
Pinterest is a search engine. When you type in a search in Pinterest, it will pull up mostly images, or 'pins.' Sometimes you will also see video pins.
According to Pinterest Business' page, Pinterest has around 570 million monthly users. It's a popular tool for people searching for topics such as gardening tips, home decor ideas, food recipes, fashion, wedding tips, DIY, blogging ideas, travel tips, parenting ideas, Bible Scriptures, and much more.
Pinterest affiliate marketing is where you post pins to Pinterest so that when viewers click on your pin and go to your website, that article will contain an affiliate link(s). For Pinterest affiliate marketing, you'll need:
1.) your affiliate link
2.) a free Pinterest business account
3.) a place to host your links
Once you have your link, you would create a pin which links to your blog article, where the affiliate link would live.
🌻 Tips:
- Your affiliate link may be long and/or have lots of random characters. That can look unprofessional and make your readers suspicious and hesitant to click. You can use a link shortener tool and link manager like 'Pretty Links,' which is a free Wordpress plugin. Short.io is another tool with a great free plain with up to 1,000 links and allows your custom domain in links (even on the free plan). You can 'cloak' links and track them :)
- Many affiliate programs require you to have your own website, while some only require a social media account. It’s good to have 7-10 articles before you apply to programs. While promoting your link can be fast and easy, it may take time (days, weeks or even months) before you get any sales, and it also takes time for the algorithm to catch on. It all depends on each individual's effort.
With Pinterest Scheduler, you can schedule up to 10 pins (individually), 30 days in advance. This is perfect if you only need to schedule a small amount.
🌸 For those looking to schedule in bulk, and pin to different boards at once, I recommend Tailwind, which is a scheduler tool for Pinterest (and Instagram). Tailwind uses Smart Scheduling to help you know the best times to pin for more views. You can also join 'Tribes' in the Tailwind community.
The keys to being successful are:
- Creating optimized pins
- Pinning strategically at the right times (but NOT in a spammy way, or your account could get suspended)
- Consistency, and …Patience!!! (You may not see result or earnings right away but that’s normal)
🌸 In order to make pins, I recommend using Canva, which has a limited free and also paid version called CanvaPro. I use CanvaPro to create pins and Instagram posts and it's a very nice software with beautiful graphics. You can also create many other things such as resumes, business cards, eBook covers, social media posts, invitations, animations, blog graphics, logos, and much more.
🌻 Tip: This is not related to traffic growth, but you can use Canva or CanvaPro to design both your logo and favicon - which you will need for your blog.
After you create your Canva account, you will need to create a free Pinterest Business account (not a 'personal' account).
🌻 Tip: Canva has many templates pre-made for you, and you can also check out Etsy marketplace, where you can find beautiful templates. Just search in Etsy “Bulk Pinterest Templates” and you will see many different colors & styles. I purchased a few packages and they are designed nicely and came in different colors and layouts :)
✔️ How to set up Pinterest:
1. Choose a niche
2. Create a Pinterest Business account (go to Pinterest.com, click "Sign up" and choose "Business account")
✔️ How to create a pin:
1. Go to Canva.com and sign up for a free account (or free Canva Pro 30-day trial)
2. Choose "Create a Design"
3. Type in "Pinterest Pin" or "Pin" in search
4. Choose the vertical 2:3 size ratio —> 1000 x 1500 pixels (I recommend this size)
5. After creating your pin, download and upload it onto Pinterest
✔️ How to upload to Pinterest:
1. On Pinterest, go to "Create" then "Create Pin"
2. Upload your pin, fill in title, description, tags and your article URL
3. Pick or create a board to pin it to
**Optional: You can schedule your pin for the future with either the Scheduler or Tailwind
🌼 Tips:
- Create professional-looking pins that are EASY TO READ! Use a clear font(s), and don't use too many words. Just keep it short and sweet, while using KEYWORDS. Remember, it's a search engine where people are scrolling and if your pin is difficult to read, they may just skip over it and not bother, so make sure to create attractive pins that people will want to click on that can be read quickly.
- I recommend starting off with pinning 3-7 times a day, preferably morning, afternoon, and evening, etc. or whichever works for you; if you're pinning incessantly, your account could get flagged for spam. You can read more about Pinterest's polices on best practices to prevent spam here. You can always increase to pinning more, later.
- I personally don’t use the largest pin dimension (1000 x 3000px) because in the mobile app, it can easily get cut off from the screen, and it can look bulky and cumbersome. But, you can choose the size dimensions that work for you.
- Joining group boards can help you engage with more people in your niche and raise awareness for your blog
- You can use Pinterest Trends to study popular search trends and see what people are searching for
- Use 3-7 quality hashtags or so, but don't overdo it with, like, 50 or it may look spammy to your audience; keyword quality in your image, title, and caption is much more important :)
- Repinning others' pins in your own niche can help your SEO
🌸 Under FTC law, you have to disclose affiliate links in your Pinterest posts so that visitors are aware. You can put something like #Affiliate, #Ad, #AffiliateLink or something similar. I recommend placing it where your viewers can immediately see.
If you have a website, you must also disclose any affiliate links on there as well. You can say something like,
"This pin article contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may earn a commission at no cost to you."
🌻 Tip: a good advice is to make sure that you're only recommending items that you know will provide quality to your viewers
🌷2. Pinterest Group Boards
Another way that can help drive traffic to your blog is through joining Pinterest Group Boards. It can help bring exposure to your account and you can also connect with others in your niche. You can create your own Group Boards as well and invite others.
Here is a tutorial on Group Boards: https://help.pinterest.com/en/article/group-boards
🌷3. Google Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO is the process of making your site more visible on Google search engine. In other words, you are 'optimizing' your site for Google. When you go to search for something in Google, the results populate in the form of a list, and as you scroll down, you will see that there are subsequent pages, hence the many o's in "Gooooooooogle." There is a strategy to the ranking method. When we use Google, we do sometimes click on the 2nd, 3rd, 5th, etc. pages of the “ooooooooo,” but obviously more commonly stick to the first page or so.
1.) Researching keywords: understanding what keywords people tend to search for
a.) --> Long-tail vs. short-tail keywords: keywords that have more words with more specific searches will have less competition that shorter searches. Example: if you search for the keyword "gardening," since it's such a broad topic there will be more results pulled up than if you search for "organic tomato gardening in Arizona."
2.) Optimizing your titles and content: this means including relevant keywords in your titles and also articles3.) Meta tags: this gives visitors and search engines info about a website before they click on it (it's just the short summary that they see when search results pull up)
4.) SSL certificate: although this is not directly related to SEO, it helps tremendously. SSL stands for "Secure Socket Layer." It is that padlock in the address bar that you see on the left, next to the website URL - it means that the information is encrypted between your browser and the server - preventing interception of information. Encrypted websites have an "s" at the end of "http," so it shows: "https." Users tend to trust sites with SSL. Nowadays pretty much all web hosts automatically provide a free SSL certificate with your website hosting package and it's the bare minimum standard.
Here are some free keyword research tools:
- Ahrefs
- SEMRush
- Google Keyword Planner
- RankMath (for Wordpress)
- Answer the Public
🌻 Tip: For Wordpress sites, I like these plugins --> All in One SEO (AIOSEO), The SEO Framework
Here is a free SEO course for beginners:
- Ahrefs: https://ahrefs.com/academy/seo-training-course
🌷4. Social Media Marketing
Since it can take a while to rank on Google and sometimes the algorithm can be unpredictable, you should not depend on Google only. In addition to Pinterest Affiliate marketing, you can promote your blog through other social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, LinkedIn, Rumble, YouTube, etc. If your budget allows, you can use paid ads.
You can also use a social media management tool like Buffer, which has a generous free plan.
🌷5. Write Effective Meta Descriptions
Meta descriptions are basically those brief few summary lines of a website when you pull up search engine results. You’ll want to include keywords in there.
Here is a tutorial on writing meta descriptions: https://yoast.com/meta-descriptions/
🌷6. Guest Blogging
Guest blogging is where you write for other blogs. You can reach out to sites you want to guest blog for, and some will have a "Write for Us" link or something similar.
🌷7. Email Marketing Campaigns
Building an email list is a very popular and effective way that MANY bloggers and businesses use to promote their site and services and/or to convert visitors to customers. Email marketing helps you stay in touch with your readers, build rapport, and turn subscribers into loyal readers. If you're serious about growing your blog and keeping in contact with readers, an email list is very valuable.
Here are some uses of email marketing:
- Promoting your content (such as new articles, posts ...)
- Announcing new products
- Giving discount codes
- Providing updates
- Sending free stuff
- Lead magnets (you offer a free product or a resource in exchange for the person's email signup)
- Sending newsletters
- Building rapport (you can send advice, tips, freebies, and let the reader get to know your story)
🌸 Email marketing tools that I recommend:
EmailOctopus: UK-based, affordable, easy to use, features are more basic and has a great free plan, good for beginners.
(Free plan up to 2,500 subscribers and 10,000 emails/month)
Kit (formerly ConvertKit): simple platform with strong features like automation, includes landing page builder, good for solo content creators
(Free plan up to 10,000 subscribers)
MailerLite: easy to use, affordable, comes with basic and advanced features including automation builder, includes landing page builder that has A/B testing, heat maps, etc., good for beginners and growing businesses
(Free plan up to 1,000 subscribers and 12,000 emails/month)
Omnisend: powerful tool, had landing page builder, good for e-commerce businesses
(Free plan up to 250 subscribers and 500 emails per month)
🌷8. Landing Pages/Single-page Websites
A landing page is a one-page website that helps grab your reader's attention and provide a call-to-action. You can use a landing page for a product or service you offer on your blog, OR - if you're not looking to start a full blog but just want to sell a product, a landing page is excellent (there are entrepreneurs, professionals and businesses that only use landing pages for their products). That way, you don't need to worry about having multiple web pages if you don't need them. Example: you're a real estate agent offering free home valuations
Different examples of what you can use landing used for:
- Selling an ebook
- Selling a course (we'll go over this in the next section)
- Sign-up for email list (some people use a pop-up or a landing page)
- Sign-up to book a coaching call
- Sign-up to register for a webinar
- Sign-up for a free PDF download
- Sign-up/subscribe to newsletter
- and more
Go to next --> Monetizing Your Blog or Website
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