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For our next installment of useful festive blogs, we have asked  Jessica Berger, iFabbo‘s* Content Developer, to share some of her tried and tested unconventional ways to help you drive even more revenue this holiday alongside your native advertising strategies. 

We all know when it comes to monetizing your blog there are quite a few options out there. Affiliate links and advertisements are the most used and common ways to increase your income, but there are more less-traditional ways to make money.

Besides Ads and affiliate links, the next most common way to make money is by opening a shop! Jewelry, self-made clothing items or anything related to your blog is no longer monopolized by big department stores. Websites like Etsy or eBay can turn any blogger into a retailer. Websites like Socialbliss can help you not only spot your favorite fashion look but also sell it from the comfort of your home!

And did you know you can sell your own advertisement space on your blog? You don’t need to stick with Adsense, instead set your own rules regarding fees and ad space and sell it via your blog!

Become a brand ambassador! Many brands like to promote their products by cooperating with bloggers through brand ambassadorship. Most likely you will get products sent to you for free and you’ll be expected to promote the items on your blog.  Your duties as a brand ambassador can include sponsored tweets, using their ads in your posts and much more. However, since those projects can be pretty intense in terms of marketing, you should truly be a fan of that particular brand. If a company offers this type of partnership they usually have a little section on their website dedicated to that. Keep your eyes open or simply try to Google it!

If being a brand ambassador is not for you, how about guest blogging? Some companies have their own blog on their website and like to invite bloggers to contribute on a regular basis. You might not get paid money but store credit and gift cards are usually always part of this partnership. Browsing through your favorite company sites, keep your eyes open for those blogs and their contact information!

Are you a Youtuber as well? Make sure to join their partner program and earn money with their ad system. Find information on the YouTube Partner Program here.

Of course lets not forget giveaways! Let a company sponsor a giveaway on your blog! Would you like to take it up a notch? How about a sponsored event? Some brands like to spread their name and products by sponsoring your party or selling event! Once they contacted you for a giveaway, if it is the right fit, ask for other sponsoring possibilities!

Promote a service on your website! Makeup artist, photographer, designer or stylist, you can always promote yourself and your work through your blog. Offer classes on how to design a dress, makeup classes or your service as a stylist to your readers. You would be surprised how many of your followers would love to meet you in real life as well!

And once that is achieved, don’t forget to include enough material of your work into your blog in form of a portfolio or resume. Some of you might not thrive for a career as a blogger but whatever it is you are blogging about can help you find a job!  Use that to your advantage and show off your talent. Many companies these days love to get to know future employees through blogs and social media.

Finally, as an established blogger with much to tell, have you ever considered writing a book? We aren’t talking memoirs but rather tips and tricks, short stories, anything interesting you might have come across along your work as a blogger. Writing an eBook and self-publishing via Amazon doesn’t require a book deal! Just good writing skills.

*More info on iFabbo: Founded in 2010, iFabbo™ is a leading international organization for fashion and beauty bloggers and publishers. iFabbo focuses on quality, engaged and vocal influencers who are at the forefront of online publishing and content creation.  iFabbo’s innovative product placement platform, The iFabbo SHOP, allows brands and technology companies to selectively seed their products to highly targeted influencers they want to reach. With thousands of quality members worldwide, iFabbo works with brand marketers, agencies and publishing partners to harness the power of social influencers through targeted, content-driven campaigns, events and conferences. Brands immediately garner a stronger online presence within the blogger community quickly and effectively, while members gain access to some of the most coveted beauty and fashion and technology items.  In addition to iFabbo’s product placement platform, the organization is a premier education provider by introducing new and emerging technology, tools and resources to its members so they remain informed and up-to-date in ways to enhance and develop their publishing career.  For more information on iFabbo visit www.ifabbo.com.

The festive season is now truly upon us and we want to make sure you make the most of the holiday time, we are kicking off our series of useful holiday posts to help you make your blogs as popular as possible with a guest post from Bradley Taylor. Bradley is a freelance writer from Derby, England who knows a few things about getting your blog to stand out. Bradley writes across a variety of subjects and enjoys writing about everything automotive. You can find him on Twitter and connect with him on Google+ for more info and to read his other top writing tips. 

Whether you run a few small blogs of your own or you engage in creative content marketing, selecting the best possible titles over the festive season could have a significant impact on the amount of attention they receive. There are millions of different blogs online, and even if you have a dedicated readership, the chances are they’ll overlook anything that doesn’t seem initially eye catching.

Knowing how to come up with the best titles and the most appealing content is an art form, but that certainly doesn’t mean the techniques can’t be taught and learnt with the implementation of a few basic rules. Below, are my top suggestions to help you get writing desirable blog posts in no time.

1. Be Comical

We all love a good joke or pun, right? Well then, no matter which subject you’re writing about, doing some research online and coming up with a couple of funny lines can be a great way of catching the attention of your readers and increasing your views.

2. Be Thought Provoking

Another good way of keeping people gripped is to include thought provoking text within your first paragraph. This could mean asking a question or making a statement that encourages your readers to interact (even if only mentally).

3. Keep To The Topic

All writers will know how easy it can be to stray from the matter at hand, but this really isn’t ideal when writing short posts for a wide readership. So, whether you’re creating a car related post detailing the latest models or talking about dating advice, it’s vital you stick to the facts and avoid including irrelevant information.

4. Use Suitable Images

As there are many websites online that offer royalty free images in exchange for a credit to the author, you’d be mad not to include them in your blog posts. For whatever reason, human beings are drawn to photographs and other images much more often than they are to text.

5. Include Statistics & Proven Facts

When writing a blog post, most people will have some kind of agenda, beit advertising or awareness. This is why including statistics and proven facts can be very useful, as they can be used to back up any arguments you might make.

6. Close With Style

It’s very easy to write the main body of text and forget about how significant your closing paragraph really is. This is the place in your post where a roundup of all the information should be present, so avoid simply ending abruptly and spend some time thinking about the best way to reinforce your argument one last time.

7. Check Out The Competition

As I mentioned earlier, there are millions of blogs online, which means you’re able to perform some serious market research into your competitors without drawing attention to yourself. This should be done regularly and if you ever get stuck for title ideas. Obviously you don’t want to copy anyone else’s work, but getting inspiration from it is completely acceptable.

So as we reach the end of this post, I hope that you’ll be in a much better position to ensure all the posts you write this Holiday season will be as informative and engaging as they possibly can be. At the end of the day, we all want to gain as many readers as possible and it can be a little disheartening when failure rears its ugly head, but perseverance is the key, and I have complete faith in you!

Incase you missed our announcement last month – we have teamed up with the wonderful international organization for fashion and beauty bloggers and publishers, iFabbo, to bring you a monthly guest blog showcasing their expert content-creation advice.  This month they share all you need to know about promotion and driving traffic. 

We are also very excited that one of the Co-founders of iFabbo, Sinead Norenius, will be speaking at our next big blogging event  on November 14th - That’s What She Said. It is a co-produced event with Trymbl and She is Media and is gearing up to be the best (free!) blogging events of 2014. Do join us, just follow this link!

You have put a lot of time and effort into creating and designing your blog, writing posts, and uploading content. However, your work is not done yet. To get the most out of your posts and to drive traffic to your blog, you must promote it as much as you can. We will cover several ways that you can promote your blog (the majority are free). Treat this as a check-list and with a little work, you will get the most leverage out of your blog posts.

Bookmarking Sites

• Create an account on StumbleUpon.com and start stumbling your posts.

• Reddit.com is one of the most popular bookmarking sites, be on it.

• Submit each post to Digg.com so that they can be shared with others.

• Help others find your posts when you submit them to Delicious.com

• Being on Technorati.com is a must as it is the top search engine for blogs (even Google says so).

• Triberr.com is a great site to promote your newsest blog posts and get social shares from it.

Social Media

• Add your recent posts to your personal and blog Facebook pages.

• Tweet about your latest posts at least once a day.

• Create a board on Pinterest for you to pin all of your posts to.

• Share your posts on Google+ for additional SEO perks.

• Instagram an image from your latest blog post to grab your followers attention and let them know that you have new content.

• Share on your LinkedIn profile and relevant groups.

• Bloglovin is becoming more popular as Google Reader is going away. Plus, they will drive traffic to you the more followers you have.

• Tumblr is a microblogging site that is perfect for sharing niche-based content.

• Empire Avenue combines social media and networking tools to help you drive network engagement to your blog.

• Quora.com is a question and answer based community. Perfect for your how-to posts.

Your Community

• Add your latest blog posts and URL to your email signatures using WiseStamp.

• Add your blog posts to your email newsletters.

• Share your posts with people in groups or forums that you belong to. Have you submitted your post to be featured as our Favorites of the Week or to our Favorite SHOP Reviews?

• Submit your posts to RSS directories. Your published posts will be published on other blogs automatically.

On Other Blogs

• Comment on other relevant blogs. Be sure to include a link to your blog or include a link to a post.

• Ask influential bloggers to link to your posts.

• Guest blog on other relevant blogs to capture a new audience.

• Join a blogging community and exchange links with other bloggers.

SEO

• Use Google Keywords to promote your blogs via SEO. Their Keyword Tool helps you to search keywords and see how many people are searching for particular keywords and how competitive they are.

• Look in your Google Analytics to see how people are finding your blog now. If it is a specific post, you may want to revisit that topic.

• Add relevant keywords in your image “Alt” tags. Images can be searched for too.

• Link to other posts within your site. This helps to build authority for your posts and keeps your readers on your blog longer.

This blog post was written by Michele Wang, one of our iFabbo contributors

More info on iFabbo: Founded in 2010, iFabbo™ is a leading international organization for fashion and beauty bloggers and publishers. iFabbo focuses on quality, engaged and vocal influencers who are at the forefront of online publishing and content creation.  iFabbo’s innovative product placement platform, The iFabbo SHOP, allows brands and technology companies to selectively seed their products to highly targeted influencers they want to reach. With thousands of quality members worldwide, iFabbo works with brand marketers, agencies and publishing partners to harness the power of social influencers through targeted, content-driven campaigns, events and conferences. Brands immediately garner a stronger online presence within the blogger community quickly and effectively, while members gain access to some of the most coveted beauty and fashion and technology items.  In addition to iFabbo’s product placement platform, the organization is a premier education provider by introducing new and emerging technology, tools and resources to its members so they remain informed and up-to-date in ways to enhance and develop their publishing career.  For more information on iFabbo visit www.ifabbo.com.

Jeannine Crooks, from Affiliate Window, has been involved in affiliate marketing since 1999 and is always happy to share what she has learnt from her experiences. She recently created the BloggyMoms.com group, Affiliate Marketing, dedicated to sharing tips on everything affiliation (I would strongly suggest you check this and the other groups out). As you can imagine, we were over the moon when she asked us to share some of our data and expertise for her BloggyCon 2013 talk, so we asked her to do the same for you  – here is the top takeaways from the event.

One of the biggest lessons coming from BloggyCon 2013, a conference sponsored by BloggyMoms.com, is Moms know how to have fun!

The conference was held at Cedar Point in Sandusky, Ohio, the self-proclaimed “Best Amusement Park in the World.”  Sessions ended early enough each day to enable everyone to go into the park and enjoy some of the dozens of rides there, including an unbelievable array of the biggest, fastest, highest, baddest roller coasters anywhere.

The opening keynote by Debba Haupert, creator of Girlfriendology.com, offered excellent suggestions to Moms about maintaining balance in their lives:

• Find a creative outlet – take an art class, find a writer’s group, join a dance group.  Choose something which will keep your creative juices flowing as an adult, not just a mom.

• Find your “artist’s colony” – your tribe, those friends who understand you, encourage you and just let you be yourself.

• If it’s not useful or beautiful, don’t have it in your house – don’t let useless items in your home suck up your energy because there are so many more useful ways to spend that precious resource.

An especially enjoyable session lead by event sponsor Honda shared ideas for pitching a sponsored post, including some surprises such as bloggers forgetting to specify what they are requesting!  Special emphasis was placed on metrics including showing data when the program is complete, measuring the impact by the level of engagement, number and general attitude of comments on the post, and how the post was promoted.

One of the most enjoyable aspects of this gathering was the creativity of the attendees; business cards came attached to packets of seeds, with tiny handmade buttons, or sporting other assorted gifts.  The attendees shared parenting suggestions, crafting ideas, and money-saving tips as often as blogging strategies. Just as many attended with their whole families as those who came solo, making the entire event quite a different and wonderful experience combining business and family, which is the reason so many of these ladies (and a few gentlemen) started blogging in the first place.