How To Be A Good Blogger And Still Make Sales – The Top 3 Ways

How would you like to sales without overselling to your readers? Will you be happy when you make a sale and your reader thanks you for referring to it?

You probably read my previous posts about overselling. The first one asked you whether you are overselling and the second one was about the five warning signs of overselling. So you know how to find whether you are overselling or not. Let’s take one further step and find how to be a good blogger and still make sales. And let me tell you I’m going to talk about the top 3 ways that works (worked for me).

Image Source: jspatchwork

1. Don’t Sell But Recommend
There’s a lot of difference between selling and recommending. Selling is more of a business related term while recommending, in my opinion, looks more like a helping term. Recommend products to your readers. It would be better if you have used the product. It will clearly show in your recommendation whether you have used the product or not (in most cases). When you have used a product, you have good knowledge about it. You will know the pros and cons of the product. As a result, when you are recommending it, you will be able to point the good and bad of the product easily (especially when you are writing reviews). When you know that a product really works, there is nothing wrong in recommending it. Don’t sell it, but recommend it. When you are writing about something and you know a product works, recommend it in the article. But don’t link to products that doesn’t have anything to do with your article.

2. Call To Action
When you want your readers to buy something from you, you need to tell about it. A strong call to action will get you many times more sales than a poor call to action that is mentioned 100 times in your blog. How do you write a good call to action? As I said in the above point, make the product that you referring to, as much related to the article as possible. When you are writing on how to get traffic using videos, you can link to a product that shows people how to create videos or software with which they can edit videos. Don’t link to products like “how to earn $1000 overnight”. Don’t use words like click here, order here etc. These don’t get people to click. Try using words that describe the product. With good call to action, you can make sales without overselling.

3. Give Lesser Options
When you give lesser options to your readers, they will be comfortable taking action. Don’t recommend a dozen of products. Stick on to one or two products and promote them when you get a chance. This will also let your readers know that you are sure the product works. By recommending few products, you are going to get higher conversion rates. Consider the following two situations. First case, in this blog post, I recommend you one product related to affiliate marketing that works the best. Second case, I recommend (sell) you 3-4 products that are related to affiliate marketing in this post. Which one will work the best for me? You have understood what I’m trying to say, if you said “first”. There might (MIGHT) be many clicks to your affiliate links when you follow the second case, but the sales will be less. The first case will get you a higher conversion rate. Above all, you will be known as the good blogger who recommends only what works.

There is a difference between recommending and overselling. If you do the former, you will be a good blogger and make money while if you chose to do the latter, you are probably going to end up making less sales and be looked upon as someone who sells to his/her readers. The key point of this post is that you should recommend products that works well and helps your reader. This is a win-win situation. You earn money recommending something and your readers are happy that they have found something that will improve them by least 1% from what they are now.

Do you recommend or oversell? Do you have a strong call to action in your posts? Please share your opinion in the comments.

Written by Ramkarthik from Blogging Tune
Posted on October 25th, 2008 and filed under Making Money
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