Just a few short years ago, when you were planning a trip, you would plan the route by laying out the road map. Which is what I am going to do here to explain what digital marketing is how you can do it and successfully make money from it.
It is so easy to get lost in the amount of information out there. Everyone has their idea of what works best and how to do it. Take a wrong turn and you can easily get lost and discouraged.
I have created sites that were working in the past, and getting a steady following but I lost my mojo. I would come across a site that looked better, or I would read new information and think “am I doing it wrong?”. Sometimes you just have to not stray from your path. Visualize your goal.
So my plan is to educate on what I have learned, through much trial and error, and have become proficient at. I know which sites to go to for help and which ones to stay away from.
Website Or A Blog? Which One Should You Choose?
Website and blog are terms that are thrown around a lot. Websites can contain blogs, and blogs can be their own dedicated website. I will give you details to make an informed choice.
What Is The Difference
A blog can be written on free platforms such as Blogger and use their domain, or buy your own which keeps the costs low because you are not paying for hosting, just your domain name.
A website is where you buy a hosting plan and buy a domain name. With a website you have more control over how you display your content.
As you post content it is presented in chronological order. Your newest post appearing at the top of the blog.
When you purchase a domain and have a blog around a specific niche you will rank higher in google, which is very important in order to get new readers to your blog. The difference being this. The first example is a blog hosted on blogger without purchasing a domain name ~ https://studyguidecis.blogspot.com/ OR https://MyHomeworkGuides.com. The 2nd one is with it’s own domain name which will rank higher and faster on Google.
When you use a site that is free you are encumbered with their domain in your blog name. This does not carry as much weight with Google when you are trying to rank on the first page of their search results to bring in more readers.
An example of a static website would be a business site: McHugh Roofing
It is a site explaining their business, services they offer, how to contact them, a gallery and more. They would not need to update this often since they do not advertise prices. The gallery would probably be the thing that was updated, if at all.
Then there are websites like this one that has a blog roll so it is updated all the time.
What Is Best?
If you are a business and just want a static brochure type of site, then most likely you are not reading this. On the other hand, those that are reading this would be best to have a blog website, with a personal domain on a hosted site. My suggestion would be to use WordPress to build your site.
Not gonna lie. WordPress can be very difficult to learn. But it is the number one content management system out there right now, so you can find an answer to everything that you need help with.
So That Brings Us To Money
It costs money to make a good site. You can spend a little, or you can spend a lot. Hosting can be found for a lost cost at SiteGround and most throw in a free domain name. After that you are ready to go. WordPress provides free themes already installed for you to use and it is all up to you if you want to get a different theme that is a paid theme. Even those are not too expensive.
This brings us to the nitty gritty of Digital Marketing.
What is Digital Marketing
“Digital marketing is the marketing of products or services using digital technologies, mainly on the Internet, but also including mobile phones, display advertising, and any other digital medium” (Wikipedia)
You will find many reasons why someone creates a website but it does cost money to keep it running. You will rarely find a site that does not have some form of marketing on it. From Google Adsense to Affiliate Marketing to an Online Store.
Some make just enough to keep the bills paid for the site and some can get a huge following and make quite a bit of money.
You may have heard the term “passive income” thrown around a lot on the internet, but there is nothing passive about it. You have a lot of work to do to create a site with content to draw people in to click your links to earn that money. The “passive part” is that people can read it and buy from you even while you are sleeping.
If you are looking to just have a 2nd income or make it powerful and make it your first income so you can quit the 9 to 5 rat race it all starts the same. Building your site and the great thing about it is YOU CAN DO IT and you can compete with sites that have been around for years without having to lay out big bucks like you would if you wanted to open a physical store.
3 Major Types Of Digital Marketing
Google Adsense – this program from Google allows you to put text and images on widgets on your website or in the article. The ads you see on YouTube videos are from Google Adsense. Everyone has seen these somewhere. Example:
You earn money through impressions and CPC (cost-per-click). So if anyone visits your site and clicks one of the ads you earn money. The problem with this is it can be just pennies at a time. Takes a long time or a lot of visitors to get a decent amount of money.
Selling Products – this would be an online store like all the major retailers you see. You will need to invest in inventory, handle shipping and returns. This one can be costly because of the inventory investment.
You can choose to do drop shipping where you connect with a wholesaler and they ship the orders to your customer for you so there is no need to heavily invest in inventory.
The 3rd way to sell products is by signing up with Amazon Fulfillment. You get your inventory and ship it to an Amazon warehouse. List your items for sale on Amazon and they handle shipping and returns for you. The best part of this is the amount of people who go to the Amazon site daily.
Affiliate Marketing – this consists of signing up for companies who are looking for people to promote what they sell. You get either a percentage or a flat rate for any sales they make through you.
There are millions of affiliate programs out there for you to join. Just scroll to the bottom of any website and chances are you will see an “affiliate program” category. Example is a well known company. Target. These companies have come to understand the power of personal blogs and they provide a way for you and them to benefit from it.
But let’s say you were writing a blog on drones. You wouldn’t want to display an ad for Target and women’s clothing. This will not do anything for your target audience. You can type in Google search ~ drones affiliate program. Example:
That’s a pretty good affiliate program right there. I may need to start a drone site. ♫☼
The digital marketing industry is growing constantly and forecasted to grow $8 billion dollars per year in the next five years! More and more people are getting connected to the internet everyday and let’s face it people are addicted to it. Your potential audience is HUGE.
If you gave enjoyed this post please “share” so others can also benefit from it!
If you have any questions, comments or feedback please share your thoughts within the comment form at the very bottom of this page.
Love the info!
Definitely some great motivation to get started online.
Have you seen your best success with affiliate marketing or another platform for earning money online?
Affiliate marketing is the most successful for me right now. I also have another site that sells digital products which gets steady traffic and sales. The digital products is definitely easier. It pulls in people on its own.
Very clear and thorough. I learned so much in the last 30 minutes or so. I had no idea how the drone affiliate program worked, I didn’t even know it existed.
Thanks Ken. There are so many good affiliate programs out there. Specially with the lessor known companies who are trying to build a customer base.
This article is good, and is inline with what I’ve just started to get into. It’s easy to understand and a good starter kit for starting an online business. Could you help me by sharing on how to attract traffic to my site ? Otherwise those affiliating marketing ads that I put in my site would not be noticeable.
Social media is a great way to start getting your site noticed. Ask your friends and family to share too and it can snowball from there. Also, the more content your write the more Google will recognize you as an authority on you subject matter and rank you higher in the search engines. Shoot for getting on the first page of Google search results.
I enjoyed reading this article a lot. it is very clearly written and simply explains the top ways to digitally market online. I wish I had found an article this straightforward when I was deciding on the route in to online business to take, but it will still serve as a great point of reference for me and others who are interested
Thank you. I am glad this can help you and others. That is what I aim to do here. Help people who ended up clicking all these sales pitches instead of real information and hundreds of dollars later they own all these programs and information and have no results. I have fallen for it too. Sounds so great, doesn’t cost much, but the reality is the information is stuff you can find online for free. They don’t know the secret to making money online, no magic bullets. Time and commitment are the 2 things that will get you where you want to be. Of course, you have to learn the tools to get your there also, which is what I will be sharing here. For FREE.
Hello, I really liked this article. A lot of good information. Very well written and the flow was nice. I think I might get the drone business, very nice commission 🙂 if you think about it, a lot of You-tubers are using them for their videos, trying to make their videos unique. Again, thanks for the info!
Thank you Christin. I had not thought of that about the drones. I think of them as people fooling around or businesses using them but there are alot of people who are making real videos with them.