It’s not easy to make your website or blog profitable but it is possible.
Here are, what I believe to be the most important things you need to have.

The Blogger’s Bible
by Pat Sutton
FREE when you buy our full e-book package.

1. Products that sell.
2. An opt-in box on your website with a sign up gift like a useful e-book.
3. A great opt-in mailing list.
4. An easy to use e-mail marketing system.
5. Good affiliate partnerships.
6. Good publisher partnerships.
7. Traffic
8. Traffic.
9. Traffic.
10. Traffic.

1.)  Here is a list of items that sell quite well on the Internet.

•  Tangibles – items like mobile phones, gadgets and other IT stuff. The reason that people buy these things online is that they are usually cheaper than on the high street and sometimes difficult to find. The problem with selling tangible items is that you would either have to risk a lot of money to buy stock or you would have to use a drop shipping company. Drop shipping companies hold the stock and you merely showcase the products and set up a good shopping cart. When you make a sale they then ship the item to your customer.

• E-Books, any electronic device that features a controllable viewing screen can be used to read e-books. You can buy e-books to give to people who opt-in to your newsletter or you could even sell the e-books on your website. It is important to choose great titles and well written books to sell. We at “The Business Woman” sell our e-books for just $1 each to cover administration but you could sell them for much more. It is important that you buy e-books that give you reseller rights, as ours do, or you would not legally be allowed to sell them on. Take a look at our bookshop.

• Internet services, if you were looking for digital services like website builders or domain name registrations then you would automatically go to the web to find them.

• Normal books and DVDs. Amazon do very well selling paperbacks and hard cover’s as they have a massive infrastructure in place. It would not be a good choice for you as a start up for obvious reasons. Can you imagine how many books you would need to stock.

• Tarot readings and esoteric goods. There are so many Tarot reader hosting sites. The readers wait at the end of a phone for your call and you pay them for the reading by the minute. As a professional Tarot reader myself I am a little skeptical that one could read for someone they have never met. I believe that there is no replacement for a comforting, inspirational reading, face to face, but many people swear by these telephone services.

• Dreams. The Internet has spawned an enormous amount of “get rich quick” schemes. Some are great but some are…quite honestly, a mis-representation. My rule of thumb is…if it sounds too good to be true then it is too good to be true!

What ever you are selling there is one thing that is paramount….give them a risk free call to action! In other words make them feel safe buying from you.
Think of all the things that could be going through their head at that moment before they buy.
Is there a catch?
If I don’t like it, can I have my money back?
Can I hear from someone who has used this?
Do I trust this person?
Will my hair fall out?
Will my………

Remember a busy website with the right money making products can actually make money for you while you sleep but you need to work very hard at marketing it when you’re awake!

I have made a pact with myself, I will only sell products that I firmly believe in, like Darren Rowse’s Bloggers Workbook. This course actually helped me to change my blog into a great little business.
So my advice to you is to only sell the stuff that you would use yourself, that way you have more conviction in your sales pitch.

2.) and 3.) The mailing list is your life’s blood. Always have a sign up box on your website. If you can give something away as a sweetener then that is even better. Make sure that it is something worth having.
I would like to E-SHOUT an important point at you….do not abuse your mailing list. If they have signed up to receive a newsletter then that is what you should send them. Your marketing can be inside your newsletter.
If thay have signed up to a general mailing list then you have a little more freedom but the content of anything you send to them should be, value, value, value, a subtle sales pitch, then more value.

4.) There are many marketing systems out there, the one I use is Aweber, I find them the easiest to use and one of the cheapest. There are many more like IContact, Constant Contact, Getresponse.
The marketing system works by allowing you to set up e-mail campaigns. So when your visitor registers to be added to your mailing list it automatically generates an e-mail from you. You will have already been in to the system and prepared your follow up emails, all you need to do is tell the system which ones you want sent and when.
It’s as simple as that!
The beauty of this system is that any new subscriber, no matter when they join, will receive the first message and then the second and so on.
You can actually configure your sign up box within the system too! Here is a link to Aweber, take a look and see what they have to offer.

Try AWeber Email Marketing Risk-Free 

5.) Affiliate partnerships. Most online businesses have affiliate schemes nowadays. If you like a product, either you have used it or have bought it then search their website and see if they have an affiliate scheme. The other option is to join Commission Junction or one of the many other Affiliate management companies. Once you join you can search and apply to many different schemes.

6.) Good publisher partnerships. I am a publisher for a company called LinkLift. They are a link placement service. I would write a blog post and they would ask me to include keywords and phrases that would link to their client’s website. You see having external links is a great way to encourage Google to spider their site so people pay LinkLift to pay me to host the links in my posts. You would need to have a relatively busy website to become a publisher so that leads me to the last on my list….

7.) and 8.) and 9.) and 10.) Traffic.

We would all love to be seen on the first pages of the search engines and if you are selling something unique then you will probably be there after a couple of days. But there are many thousands of blogging sites out there, all trying to get to the top spots so the competition is fierce for us.
My answer for you is to do what you do best…blogs, blogs, blogs and more blogs.

“Blogging is a lucrative source of profit and blogs are easy to set up and maintain. Imagine a life where you are paid to write on stuff that interests you, whenever you want, wherever you are. The mere flexibility of blogging makes it easy for you to just kick back, relax and go on a vacation whenever you feel like it.
In this book, we are going to look into the profitability of a blog and set up a blog of our own at no cost! Interested? Read on!” from The Blogger’s Bible by Pat Sutton

When you write your blog post on your website you need to also upload it to the best networking sites as well, sites like EZines, Ecademy, LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.
There is no easy way to do this, you need to work hard at it but the rewards can be great. To make it a little easier, make sure that you have social bookmarking share buttons at the bottom of your blog posts so that you and your visitors can syndicate your writing out across the web.
Here is a screenshot of Google, notice how my blog, “6 steps closer to monetising your blog”, had actually got three….not just one spot, on the front page of Google and that’s not paying a penny in advertising.

Clever eh!

One last word:
“The baker puts bread on your table, not to feed your family but to feed his own“.