How To Make More Money From Sponsored Posts

If you have been blogging for 12 months or more, the chances are that your blog is at a point where it can start making money from sponsored posts.

These are posts which you put up for a company in order to advertise their service or product, usually in a non-promotional way.

It is important to disclose these posts as either a collaborative, guest or sponsored post.  It is also up to you whether you follow or no follow the links inside the post.

You may have already been approached by companies wanting to guest post and contribute to your blog.  Or, perhaps they want you to write an article and link to them. Or, include a link to an existing post.

Sponsored posts are an additional revenue stream for many bloggers.  And for companies a great way to advertise their product or service.

In this post, I’m going to give some tips on how you can make more money from sponsored posts.  I’m going to focus specifically on the types of things Marketing Managers are looking for from the bloggers they work with.

To make more money now and into the future, it is important to make sure your blog is exactly what the budget holders are looking for. After all, they are the ones making a decision about whether to work with you and how much they can pay.

Foster An Engaged Audience

Marketing Managers are tasked with working with bloggers who are at different stages of their blog. That means they are not just looking for blogs with big audiences.  

However, there is one thing that every Marketing Manager wants to see, whether the blogger has 100,000 per month traffic or just 1k traffic per month.  

That is engagement.

​Your blog should have comments and social media shares which show that your audience is interested in what you have to say on your topic of choice.

It’s advisable to spend a good percentage of your time interacting with your audience and replying to comments on your blog and different social media channels. Interaction leads to a more engaged audience likely to comment again.

Make sure you have visible social sharing buttons, make it really easy for your readers to share your content. Another tip is to sign up for Tailwind.  On this platform, you are able to join Tribes relevant to your niche.

These are groups of bloggers who are interested in pinning and engaging with each other's content.  This is a great way to boost your shares.

Keep your blog focused on one or several key topics

Marketing Managers are looking for experts, not generalists.  You might think that by having a section on business, beauty, lifestyle, fashion, travel, food & yoga, you are broadening your chance to get sponsored posts.

This might work in the short term, but you will likely end up working with lower quality clients and get yourself into a sponsored post rut.  

The higher paying clients are going to be more picky about who they work with - and they are looking for topic experts. Stick to your area of expertise and your earnings in the long term will increase.

Strike a balance between original & sponsored content

A ratio of 70:30 is ideal.  70% original content, 30% sponsored content.  So, if you were to publish 10 posts in a month, 3 of them would be sponsored.  

If your ratio is a much higher % of sponsored content beware, you may be putting the long-term success of your blog at risk.  

Higher paying clients care about original vs sponsored content ALOT.   You are also at risk of triggering a spam score from Open Site Explorer.

Open Site Explorer is a tool you can use to see the backlinks coming into and out of your blog.  If you have too many outgoing links and not enough coming in, this can be seen as a sign that your blog is spamming or selling links.  

​It is very important that you keep your internal and external link ratio in check.

CHECK YOUR SPAM SCORE HERE

Provide extra value

Always think about the long term relationship you are fostering.  There may be more campaigns for this client, or the Marketing Manager may move on to a different client.  

If you are front of mind as a blogger who delivers extra value, you will be front of mind for the next campaign.  

Extra value includes; a quick response, quick turn-around time, friendly manner & social media sharing.

Provide a high quality sponsored post

Whether you are writing the post or the client is submitting it, the amount of time you spend on the final post matters.

Make sure the post is spell checked, formatted correctly and includes high-quality images.  Adding tweet this buttons to encourage social sharing would really stand out!

Content quality has become absolutely paramount, so make sure you are the type of blogger who always does their best and puts their audience first.

We hope this list has helped you! Have we forgotten anything?  Let us know your own tips in the comments below.