How to make a blog attractive for affiliate marketing

Hey everyone, I'm here to share how to make money with affiliate marketing. So far, I have not made any money, but I totally think eventually that I can. Let's talk about all the ways I plan to implement affiliate marketing into this site and what that could mean from an income perspective.

The first thing you really have to get in place is some content. So far we have published 9 articles and added a few pages for some basic information (About Me and Contact Information). Probably not what an affiliate partner is looking for. After speaking with other bloggers we are going to need to publish, 30-50 articles to really gain some traction. They also need to be published in a relatively short period of time, approximately 4-6 months. That way we are churning out content on a regular basis and giving our readers something new to read at least twice a week. After that here are the next steps that you'll really need to focus on.

1. Google Adsense - these are plug-ins that will drive revenue on my site

2. Affiliate programs - there are so many! I'll write up an article in the near future, link it back here, and cover some of the affiliates I've tried to sign up for. I'll also include a few here

   1. Wix - this is the website I used to build The Saving Dude - on the waiting list to be approved

   2. CJ Affiliate - most of my applications were denied - probably because I don't have much content yet

   3. Home Depot - same story as CJ

   4. Personal Capital - waiting to hear back from them - they provide financial planning and wealth management, so right up our alley here at The Saving Dude

3. Maximize my SEO for each of my blog posts - this will help drive "free" traffic from Google

4. Add images to my posts - this will help on social platforms and for topics that can use quality visuals, like posts about painting, these will come in handy as well

5. Find topics that have lower competition - there are a variety of tools out there to help find good topics to right about (Ubersuggest and Google Trends are two that I use). Typically I'll try to find a topic I like to right about that is "in season" on Google Trends. Otherwise, Ubersuggest has a ton of free and premium tools you can sign up for.

Basically, affiliate marketing isn't for the faint of heart. You have to have a desire to write good content, stick with it, and grind your way to a site that can eventually make you some money. Most of what I've read says that it takes about 18 months for a blog to become profitable, meaning 18 months before you are making money comparable to what you make at your day job. That is a long time to write and post a few times a week. For many that just isn't something they are going to stick with. They either run out of content or run out of desire. That won't happen here, so keep coming back to The Saving Dude for fun content, keep up with our Net Worth reports, and look for more articles on how to make money with affiliate marketing (eventually we will make a profit here!).