How To Make Money From Christmas

We know, Hallowe’en is over and the Christmas Creep has begun already, but if you’re looking to make a bit of money from affiliate linking on your blog, now is the time to consider your content so you can get it all linked up and scheduled (leaving you more time for the parties that are sure to be filling up your calendar!)

If you haven’t already signed up to various affiliate sites, make that your task for today! The sooner you sign up, the sooner you can start linking to items on your blog and making a little money! If you are unsure what affiliate linking is, check out this post which goes through what happens in a bit more detail. We would personally recommend Shopstyle Collective for most bloggers – because, very basically, it’s much easier than having to sign up to various networks (they collate most brands together and makes it easy to link to places like ASOS and Topshop). Another good option is Amazon Affiliates, because you can buy everything from Amazon! 

While you’re waiting for approvals on your affiliate applications, you can still take time to consider how you’re going to incorporate it into your content. Perhaps you’re planning to write a few gift guides, outfit posts, or outfit round ups (10 favourite dresses for the office party? Taking looks from day to night?). You want to be seen as a useful resource for your readers, not just cramming a post full of affiliate links. Your regular readers will know when you’re promoting things you really like and when you’re just popping in a link for the sake of it.

Start creating your holiday content early, so you can catch those keen beans who want to get it all done before December even starts. According to one study, about 40% of respondants said they started their shopping before Halloween, so it’s time to get on creating that content! Posting your gift guides about 6 weeks before the big day will mean that you can reach more people.

Make sure that your content is optimised for searchability – attract people who are feeling so lost about what to buy a certain person that they Google something in frustration and end up on your site. Use strong keywords to get your post higher in the search listings – check out what topics are trending as well as using Google Trends to figure out what the best combinations are.

Once you’ve figured out the keywords you want to be found by, sprinkle them throughout your content, but in particiular in the following places:

• Post titles – probably the most obvious place to get that keyword in, but it’s the easiest one to do!
• Post URLS – make sure the URL to the blog post includes the keyword – if you’re not sure how to do that, check out these posts about how to change the permalinks in Blogger and WordPress. 
• Image filenames – just another way people searching for a topic will find your site. Depending on how your blog platform deals with alt text, the name of the file can also appear in the alt text which is beneficial to search engines, but perhaps not so much to people who need accessible sites. Give the alt text of your images a look over and amend as you need to.
• Social shares – many readers will be turning to things like Pinterest and Instagram for inspiration so make sure you use those keywords in your captions when you share the post so they’re easily searchable.

We’d love to hear your tips about what’s performed well for you in the past, and what you’re planning to do this year!