This post may include affiliate links; read more about that here.
I am very much a fan of good blogging and love to write myself. When I started my garden blog a few years ago, my husband got me some books to support my project. Well, like usual the books had concepts I hadn’t considered such as making money through blogging. Making money is nice but I was so passionate about writing and gardening and the information about making it profitable was overwhelming to me at the time.
Fast forward to now while I’m working from home while raising my little pumpkin and it’s not easy to be profitable at anything from home unless you devote loads of time. With a child depending on me for attention, my time was limited, so were my profits. Now I’m beginning my journey as a Teachers Pay Teachers Seller which will be my primary business and this blog will support that as well as operate as a content-driven blog about teaching and “momming”.
Since I want my content and words to take center stage, it’s important to me to have a clean design with minimal media so that it reads like a book instead of a search engine. I don’t want my readers to be inundated with ads and pages that are difficult to load; I want readability. Of course, having a clean professional looking blog comes with an annual price.
I also have loads of recommendations for products that are not my own. If I already plan on sharing links where you can get a great deal on wonderful books from Amazon (free advertising), and Amazon offers an affiliate program in which they’ll pay you a commission for creating business for them…it’s kind of a no-brainer. The new challenge became one of learning the technology.
I envisioned just hyperlinking a text whenever I happen to mention something I buy on Amazon for my teaching so that it’s there as a resource for anyone who wants it without being a billboard. I may want to monetize, but I don’t want to be tacky. So for example, having texts like this:
Find Some Children’s Books Here
See, I like that. If you want to follow that search for your own shopping at no extra cost to you than you’d pay shopping it independently, it will simultaneously help this blogger cover her costs. No banners, no pop ups, no annoyance. I like that. The trouble is, I want to learn how to make a link to a specific book if I bring up a book I use in a lesson plan and seamlessly hyperlink within the context of my text (click it if you want it too, keep reading if you don’t need it, simple). Well, when I try, this happens:
Now that’s tacky! So I’m going to work on that 😉
So while I was touring around my blog settings trying to figure it out, I came across WordAd and thought it was something I could install to get my coding right and make pretty and simple links. I was mistaken.
What you do through WordPress is you apply to use WordAd and if accepted they email you with the next steps for them to start placing their ads on your WordPress blog where they chose to place them. When I received the email asking for info and confirmation I got anxiety. Did I just sign up for my blog to turn into a billboard? I almost cancelled before even starting.
Then I went ahead with the process to see how it would look because I learned that it could be turned off any time. The result? It’s actually not bad. It’s tasteful. Nothing “pops up”, there are just small inconspicuous ads placed between posts and at the bottom. I’m taking advantage of the monetization to cover the costs of my blog without being tacky. That’s what I want. If the ads start overrunning the blog however, I’ll turn them off.
Let’s hope I learn how to effectively incorporate affiliate links well soon because I have so many ideas for upcoming post that involve my favorite product–Books 🙂 Thanks for joining me in this start up. Look for more memoirs soon about my adventures in teaching.
Mission4Walls 