Hey, hey!
If you’ve been following me for a while you know that my “New Year” never starts on January 1st. And this year was no different.
I had some personal family stuff come up in January where I was out of pocket for several weeks.
(If you’ve ever had to work on a small 15-inch laptop screen when you’re used to a full desktop computer with two large screens, you know how hard it is to actually get work done on the go. 😂 LOL)
To start, I’m detailing how my income was broken down for 2022, then followed by 2023 income goals.
Finally, I detail what I’ve been working on in February and sharing an update on how things are going. Throughout the year, I’ll continue sharing the exact strategies I’m using to sell my blog for half a million dollars.
If you’re new here, I own the travel blog, Hashtag Colorado Life and I have big goals for selling the site for $500,000 in the next 12ish months.
2022 income stream breakdown
All this to say that my “New Year” officially started on February 1, 2023. So, here I am sharing my goals for what I’m calling my “Q1 2023” which is really just the next three months (Feb, Mar, April).
Each month will have a “theme” and a particular thing I plan to work on in order to make affiliate marketing my highest income stream overall.
In 2022, my total blogging income was $58,786.77 just from the travel blog. Here is how the income streams are broken down into percentages.
Ads - 89.7% (includes YouTube)
Affiliates 7.0%
Book/Course - 1.3%
Sponsors - 2.0%
TOTAL = 100%
2023 income stream goals
My goal for 2023 is to pretty much flip the script and have Affiliate income be the highest percentage of earnings, somewhere around 60-70% overall.
2023 income breakdown goal:
Ads - 20-30% (includes YouTube)
Affiliates 60-70%
Book/Course - 0%
Sponsors - 5%
TOTAL = 100%
Obviously I have A LOT of work to do if I want to make this switch and see my income streams completely changed this year.
But I’ve done it in the past with my first site and I know I can do it again! Anyways, let’s move on to how February is stacking up.
February: 20 blog posts in 20 days
I started February with the goal of writing 20 blog posts. This works out to approximately 1x blog post per workday (minus a day or two for Valentine’s Day + when I’m out for a business retreat).
I did competitor research, keyword research, and prepped outlines for all 20 posts at the end of January.
But if you know anything about the blogging world, you know that things move fast. By the time February came I decided to make those blog posts, 11 affiliate posts instead.
Meaning, instead of writing about random Colorado travel destinations, I was going to write specific posts related to products I could promote for a commission.
3 steps for writing high-converting affiliate posts
However, in order to write a well-converting affiliate post that gets a good amount of traffic, you have to put in about twice as much time, effort, and work as a normal blog post.
I have been writing affiliate content since I started my first blog in 2011 all about self-employed finances. I used to earn $3k-4k a month from affiliate income alone from that site.
I sold that site in 2018 for $93,500.
Here is my process for writing high-converting affiliate content that ranks well in search.
1. Keyword research & outlines
With an affiliate article, you still have to do keyword & competitor research like a normal blog post. Then of course, you need to create the outline and write the article with as much detail as possible.
In some cases you may have to test out the product, or service, and take screenshots (if it’s an app, for example) or post photos of your experience.
I use Keysearch to do the keyword research for all my content, including my YouTube videos. It has different sections for website content and competitive analysis, as well as YouTube research.
For every blog post I write out a complete outline, link to sources, and include reminders for details to include. This makes it so when I sit down and write the actual article I’m not staring at a blank Google doc.
Having a detailed outline is crucial to a high-converting blog post!
2. SEO & content optimization
Once the content has been fully written and edited, I then run it through RankIQ to see where I can optimize it for better SEO.
RankIQ is a keyword and SEO content tool that helps you get the highest traffic for lower volume keywords. You can also use their Content Optimizer tool to compare your content to the top results on Google, with suggestions for things to add to make your post better.
I’ve been using RankIQ for the past 14 months with many of the posts ranking on the first page of Google. Right now, Hidden Hot Springs in Colorado was a small volume keyword but it’s my 4th highest traffic article in February to-date.
RankIQ also tells you what to name your blog post title, as compared to the top results on Google. I constantly use RankIQ to update and add to content I’ve already published so it remains fresh and accurate.
Anyway, before publishing an affiliate post you definitely want to make sure it stacks up to the rest of the content on Google in order to rank well. Don’t skimp on this step!
3. Deep linking & tracking
Once the content has been completely written, edited and optimized for SEO, it’s time for affiliate links. You’ll likely want to create and grab all of the deep links for the affiliate products you’re featuring, and insert them into the post.
You may also want to create call out boxes or fun graphics for each product. For example, listing out how many stars a specific tour has, highlighting a customer review, or any other details to help the reader decide if this product is for them.
I have currently written and published 8 affiliate posts in February with the intention of producing a total of 11 by the end of the month (half-ish of 20 due to each post taking 2-3 days to complete).
Revised Goal: 11 affiliate posts in February
Status: On target
That’s all for this month’s goals. I’ll be back next week to share my strategy for March!
Thanks and have a great week.
- Carrie
And don’t forget, you can comment on this post or reply to this email. I read/reply to all of the comments and messages I receive. :)
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