As a blogger, earning an income is always a difficult. Over half of all bloggers never make five figures. But you can successfully earn an income through working with brands. It’s one of the best ways to earn a lot of money through your words. At the same time, it’s also one of the hardest niches to break into.
This guide is going to show you what you need to know about building and maintaining trustworthy relationships with brands and making the most from these arrangements.
What it’s All About
First of all, you need to grasp what the nature of this relationship is. You are there to deliver value to companies that want to reach your audience. Think about your audience and what products they would want to buy. Then think about the companies selling those products.
Those are the organizations you want to be pitching to. Anything else is a complete waste of time. The only reason a brand would want to connect with you is that you have an audience they want to reach.
Numbers Aren’t Everything
You may have a few hundred subscribers and a few hundred views per day. At first glance, this is not enough to work with a major brand. But it may be the case that this blog is targeting an extreme niche. Companies operating in this extreme niche understand that audiences are smaller in this field, and so a few hundred subscribers are a significant amount.
Don’t be turned away from the idea of blogging with brands just because you don’t have thousands of page views every day.
Smaller Companies Can Be Just as Good to Work With
It’s easy to concentrate on the huge corporations that you want to work with. You may desire to work with the big names, but small companies can be just as good to work with. They can be more personable and they will always have lower standards, making them less of a headache to deal with.
It’s always worth building up your portfolio by working with smaller companies first.
Engagement is the Number One Metric
You can have thousands of views every day and yet none of this matters if your audience is unlikely to react to what you’re publishing. Companies want to know that your audience is actually going to respond if you work with a company. Any brand you work with will want to know what level of engagement they can expect, roughly.
There are many forms of engagement. This could be clicks, comments on your blog, or shares on social media. Whenever you put together a media kit, social engagement should be the strongest part of it because this is what companies want to know about.
Trust is Everything
Once you lose the trust of your readers your careers as a blogger is over. Brands may provide you with a healthy income, but if you aren’t fully transparent about your relationship with that brand you are going to lose their trust. It should be clear when a post is sponsored and you should only promote something that you would use yourself.
There are many bloggers that have lost reader trust as a result of not being transparent and promoting anything a company wants them to. Make sure you are gaining their trust before selling.
Remember that this is still your blog and you aren’t becoming an ambassador for that company.
Your Media Kit Says Everything
Your media kit is the first point of contact you’ll usually have with a company. Put a huge amount of time and energy into creating your media kit because it spells the difference between a door opening and that same door being slammed in your face.
There are plenty of guides online for anyone who is building a media kit for the first time. This kit should tell the company about what they can get by working with you. Make it all about them. Give them real numbers. If you have previous experience, reveal the results that you gained through working with them.
Diversify Your Offerings
There are many bloggers who will decide to work with sidebar ads and leave it at that. But if you do this you are leaving a lot of money on the table. There are so many ways you can monetize your blog through working with brands. Some of the ways to boost your bottom line include:
- Sponsored posts.
- Giveaways.
- Social media promotions.
Be willing to try new things and see what you can offer companies. It can turn a few dollars into hundreds of dollars in a matter of months.
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